"The Liberals shall rise again," says Conrad Black

[Cdnleaf]

If they don't have status, they can't join the Leader's Debate(s) in four years, unless the other parties take pity. 

Seen - was thinking about that this am.  Definitely in the interest of the NDP to pursue; kind of a win/win for the conservatives either way now and in the future.  I.e. they can argue it's not democratic without the Bloc/GP at the debate(s) or pursue removing their status depending on the terrain.  I'll go you a Tim's they (conservatives) won't be lead on initiating the Bloc Status removal  :cheers:

:facepalm: with the OBL article - I thought he would atleast get moved into Stornoway.....

 

[Dennis Ruhl]

Does the Liberal Party still have the overwhelming support of the Canadian broadcasters?  If they do, I envision the Conservatives will continue being reported as Neanderthal knuckle draggers while maybe the NDP will be reported as being incompetent amateurs.  There still might be hope.

 

[Container]

Here is a followup to that NDP story about the Bin Laden photos:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2011/05/05/mulcair-explains-comments.html

I think basically it means "Oh my god....people are listening to us now?"

"We're new to the whole international relations stuff."

 

[PanaEng]

First problem is that a great man needs to be, you know, great. A guy with no visible accomplishments should not be in contention at all (although people like Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashien and Barrack Obama would seem to refute this theory). Of course when the rubber hits the road buyers remorse will kick in very fast.

Your love of  Mr Obama seems to permeate every thread you post in...

anyway,
I reread the thread from the beginning and found many amusing comments that are now a reality; like an NDP official opposition when hell freezes over  :facepalm:

 

[a_majoor]

Looking at where the Liberal Party evolved from isn't very promising for today's Liberals:

http://freedomnation.blogspot.com/2011/05/fall-of-liberal-party.html

The fall of the Liberal Party

In 1896 the charismatic Wilfrid Laurier won a majority government for the Liberal Party. He was not the first Liberal Prime Minister, but there is a reason that his name is revered while the name of Alexander Mackenzie is largely forgotten. It was Laurier that built the Liberals into a united and focused party. It was Laurier who began the century of Liberal dominance of Canadian federal politics.

Laurier has been much praised for being a pragmatic politician whose success was founded on his ability to compromise. This is fair praise, but he has not been given enough credit for his ability to compromise while holding on to his principles. In the 1892 election he was soundly defeated largely due to his stance on free trade. In 1896 he did not reverse his position but moderated it by promising to only reform the tariff system. This was a compromise but it was a compromise that did not sacrifice his principles.

Is it any wonder that he remained in power for 15 years?

It may surprise some to learn that Laurier was a firm believer in the “watchman state.” He believed that there was much that could only be accomplished by private enterprise and little that could be done by the state. He resisted the urge to have government attempt to manage the lives of individuals even as such urges were gaining popularity in the United States.

Laurier’s immediate successor William Lyon Mackenzie King for the most part agreed with his views. The grandson of the famous rebel William Lyon Mackenzie, he was brought up in the same liberalism as Laurier.

It is difficult to tell if Mackenzie King’s personality was less firm or if it was because the times were different, but either way he showed himself far more willing to bend principle than Laurier. Still government under the Liberal Party remained smaller and closer to the “watchman” ideal than the United States or any European country. By the time Louis St. Laurent came to the Liberal helm, expenditures and imprudent entitlements in the United States had far outpaced Canada’s.

At the same time the Liberal Party was drifting away from Laurier’s solid principles. Leader after leader took the Liberals a step further away. The party drifted so far that it is doubtful that Wilfrid Laurier would have been able to recognize Pierre Trudeau as a Liberal. You can argue that there was a slight drift back in the 90s if you like, but this was only temporary at best. The modern Liberal Party looks nothing like the party of Wilfrid Laurier.

It is laughable when men such as Dalton McGuinty and Micheal Ignatieff claim the mantle and heritage of Wilfrid Laurier. If Laurier was alive today he would be accused by both men of being a radical and scary conservative. Terms like “hard right” and “ideologue” would roll off their tongues. The Liberals are ignorant of their own history. They look at their past and all they see are victories and they don’t understand from what these victories came.

The truest sign of the fall of the Liberal Party is the movement to merge with the NDP. The mere suggestion that the Liberal Party could merge with a socialist party would have given Mackenzie King a conniption fit and would have left Laurier puzzled. Socialism is the antipathy of liberalism. How could liberals and socialists possibly exist in the same political party?

I don’t mean to say that the Liberals have become socialists. That would be giving them too much credit. The drift away from Laurier did not lead them into some other ideological harbour. Instead the Liberal Party has moved in whatever direction the wind blew. Some have praised this as being politically astute but eventually the clear lack of any mission or ideals has crippled the Liberal Party. Ask a Liberal what the Liberal Party stands for and you will get an answer that is the Canadian equivalent of an apple pie.

The 2011 election was a disaster for the Liberal Party and some have wisely said that the Liberals need to completely rebuild, a project that could take a decade to complete. It would be a mistake, however, to think that it is only the organization that needs to be rebuilt and reorganized. The Liberal Party needs to reconstruct and define its mission; its core ideals; its reason for existing.

I will not be so bold as to predict that the Liberal Party is done for good. When I say that it has fallen I mean that the Liberals have lost their ideals. A political party is a vehicle for power but it also needs a core mission statement to drive it forward. For too long the mission statement of the Liberal Party has been power for the sake of power. It is time for the Liberals to decide who they are.

 

[a_majoor]

And a view from the Liberal party. Read carefully and you can see they still don't get it:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/05/05/jeff-jedras-why-the-liberal-campaign-failed-on-the-national-level/

Jeff Jedras: Why the Liberal campaign failed on the national level
   
Jeff Jedras  May 5, 2011 – 9:38 AM ET | Last Updated: May 5, 2011 10:42 AM ET

I’ve already written about my experience in #elxn41 on the ground in Vancouver Island North, where I got the campaign office closed Wednesday and the last of the signs taken down. I’d like now to offer some thoughts on the national campaign and the way ahead, although I’ll try to save thoughts on the way ahead for the Liberal Party for the next post. To be honest, it was hard for me to follow much of the national campaign, certainly for the first two weeks. I was too busy trying to get a local organization built and running to watch/read the news or keep up with my Twitter stream. The daily Nanos crack and its release timing did cause an unfortunate habit, though: waking just after 4am, checking my BlackBerry for the numbers, and then trying to go back to sleep … usually in a less than positive mood.

Going into the debates, my superficial sense was that the Liberals had run a pretty solid campaign. A few candidate hiccups — these are inevitable for all parties — but it was relatively error-free ball after the initial bungling of the obvious coalition question. Michael Ignatieff matured into a solid campaigner and packed in big crowds. I liked some of the policy we rolled out. We’d already heard about the family care program, and I liked the tuition funding and particularly the funding for veterans education.

Still, in retrospect the warning signs were there early. Despite a few Conservative miscues, like their failed one-on-one debate challenge, we were unable to gain any traction. We were able to push the NDP down a little before the debates — running the same “only we can stop the Conservatives” strategy we’ve run for years — but not enough.

There was one thing that began to strike me as the campaign went on: we were still running as a party that expected to govern, and perhaps felt it its due. Now, there is something to be said for pragmatism. But it does make it difficult to capture the imagination, and to think big. Our policy proposals were too measured, our language too careful. Despite all our anti-Harper/change rhetoric, we ran more like a government than an opposition.

One incident crystallized this for me. We have a lot of veterans in my riding, and a major issue is the claw-back of their pensions. NDP MP Peter Stoffer sponsored a private member’s bill to change that in the last parliament; it passed with the support of all the opposition parties with the Conservatives in opposition, but as the speaker deemed it a bill needing royal assent as it involved money, it died. Incumbent Conservative John Duncan voted against the bill and was vulnerable on it locally.

My candidate and I wanted to promise to fight to end the clawback, and as the party voted for Stoffer’s bill I felt I was on fairly safe ground. But just to be sure, I checked-in with the LPC policy shop to confirm the official position. And I was floored by the response. “There is a lawsuit involving this matter before the courts,” I was told, “and we’re not commenting as we wait for it to be resolved. Please don’t go beyond that language.” I think my language was more muted, but my response was that that was a chicken-shit answer of the sort governing ministers give in question period to dodge a question. We’re an opposition party running in an election, this is an issue where what’s right is clear as well as politically advantageous, but we’re too afraid to take a position because of bureaucratese. It was hugely symbolic. I ignored the directive and we were careful to say our candidate, not the party, would fight the clawback.

Watching the debates, I thought Ignatieff did fine but no knock-out punch. Jack Layton didn’t wow me, but I’ve never been a big fan and consider myself a little too biased to judge his performance. My take was Harper won by not losing, and the Liberals had lost their last chance to win this thing, barring some 2nd/3rd place coalition scenario. I confess I didn’t see the NDP wave coming, and for awhile it seemed to me as more of a media-created phenomenon. It quickly began to feed on itself though in a self-propelling circle, as media coverage encouraged people to move, and people moving encouraged more media coverage. Whether the chicken or the egg came first I don’t know, but it certainly did lay a golden egg for Layton.

As well-managed and planned as the Liberal campaign was, one thing quickly became clear: it was unable at worst, and slow at best, to move off the plan that the campaign team had crafted many months ago. I’d urged a focus on health care years ago; a sudden shift during the campaign without laying a foundation just softened up the ground for the NDP. And the campaign was very slow to respond to the shifting dynamics caused by the NDP rise. For nearly a week the strategy seemed to be to ignore it. When they did respond, while the ads were nice pieces of negative advertising they didn’t speak to why the vote was moving to the NDP, and so weren’t effective in stopping them. I remember when we attacked Layton’s misguided mumblings on monetary policy: sure, we were right on policy, but the vote switchers could care less about monetary policy.

What of the rise of the NDP? They didn’t offer much new on the policy front; their platform was mainly recycled promises from last campaigns. The narrative they offered a positive campaign rings hollow: they launched the campaign with very effective negative pieces in health care, went pre-emptively negative on the Liberals, and in B.C. ran very negative (but well produced) negative radio ads warning Harper will fire B.C. doctors and nurses by demanding the HST equalization funding back if BCers vote to scrap the HST. I think Layton benefited by being an established, likable known quantity not scarred by years of Conservative negative advertising. This made him a safe place for people to turn that wanted a change. And while he did run very negative advertising, his stump message was a positive one that tapped into a public desire for a more positive and hopeful message. It was also very clear what the NDP was about and what they stood for.

In contrast, Ignatieff was very negative on the Conservatives and, while I certainly didn’t disagree with his critique, I think we forgot that not everyone dislikes Harper as much as we do. He is a known quantity who, while not warm and fuzzy, is viewed as competent and reasonably effective by a large swath of mainstream Canada. It also wasn’t enough to be upset with Harper over respect for democracy: we failed to offer meaningful reforms to address it.

The Conservatives ran a fairly safe bubble campaign. The media made much of how many questions he took or didn’t take but let’s be honest: we wish it were different, but most people could care less if Harper is mean to the media. I agree it’s anti-democratic and I agree it’s wrong, but that doesn’t change the reality. Harper offered stability and a steady course with a familiar face, and that was appealing to many. And as galling as his request for a majority was (essentially, it was hiring the arsonist to put out the fire) people were tired of the perpetual minorities and when it came to giving someone a majority, better the known quantity even if he does have his rough edges.

Lastly, the Green Party. I confess I was betting against Elizabeth May in SGI. Not because I didn’t want to see her win, but because I didn’t think she could pull it off. If Briony Penn couldn’t pull it off it off in 2008 with no NDP candidate, I didn’t like her chances. I didn’t get too worked-up over her exclusion from the debates because she’d made clear she wasn’t running a national campaign. Clearly, though, SGI residents decided to make history, and I think her election is a great thing. The question, now, is what will she do with it? They have their seat, but the singular focus on getting May elected cost the party support in the rest of the country. Their challenge will be broadening beyond the Liz May show to become a true broad party. I wish them luck.

I think we’re in for a very interesting four years. We’ll see what the Harper Conservatives do with a majority: will they unleash the hidden conservative within in a rightward shift, or carefully hug the centre-right with meaningful but less polarizing change with an eye to building a stable, long-term governing majority — a new natural governing party.

How will the NDP adjust to the scrutiny and spotlight of being the official opposition, particularly with a caucus of inexperienced, accidental MPs? While they ironically have less power now as official opposition to a Harper majority than they did as a third-party in a minority, they have excelled in the past in a role that requires righteous opposition with no hope of meaningful change. They’re going to face a whole new level of scrutiny they haven’t before though. They’re now the government in waiting. The days of not needing to ground your proposals in fiscal reality are over. We’ll watch to see if they can make the transition, and become a permanent major player and not an ADQ-like flash in the pan.

The BQ seems down and out, and if that’s so the NDP’s orange surge (its troubling pandering to nationalistic elements notwithstanding) is a good thing. But I wouldn’t be too quick to write off the BQ; their death has been prematurely declared many times before. They’ve lost a key asset in Gilles Duceppe, but I’m not writing them off yet.

As for my Liberals, that is a story for another posts, and I suspect many posts to come. Suffice to say the road is long and the challenges hard, but I’m ready and eager to fight for work for change.

National Post

 

[Edward Campbell]

Some further thoughts on the future of the Liberal Party of Canada, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/margaret-wente/lets-face-it-the-liberals-are-out-of-gas/article2299341/

Let’s face it, the Liberals are out of gas

MARGARET WENTE

From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, Jan. 12, 2012

Here’s one thing on which we can all agree. The Liberal Party of Canada is right when it says it needs “radical change.” Today’s Liberals are essentially the party of Toronto’s Annex class, and not much else. Unless they can resuscitate themselves, the Conservatives will run Canada until the seas run dry. (The NDP will never run Canada. Trust me on this.)

Sadly, radical change is not in sight – not this weekend, as the party’s tattered remnants gather in Ottawa to map out their Road to Renewal – and not any time soon. No party that’s ready to elect Sheila Copps as president is sincerely interested in renewal.

Then there’s the matter of what they stand for. “The Liberals have shown they’re only capable of coming up with old ideas, tired ideas and bad ideas,” says a cynical friend, and on the evidence, he’s right. As the Western world is buffeted by economic storms, rising inequality and unsustainable entitlements, the Liberals are preparing to debate such urgent matters as legalizing marijuana, bringing back the Wheat Board, expanding hate-propaganda laws to include gender hatred, and abolishing the monarchy (a task that’s almost constitutionally impossible).

These ideas – so slight, so silly and so distracting – are a sign of intellectual exhaustion. Even Liberals know that, if they want to reconnect with the “soul” of Canada, as one party stalwart put it, they’ll have to come up with something better.

But maybe you can’t blame them too much. The progressive left is floundering everywhere. Their best ideas are used up. The postwar institutions they worked so successfully to build are in big trouble. And they have no idea what to do about it.

As Francis Fukuyama writes in a powerful new essay, The Future of History, “it has been several decades since anyone on the left has been able to articulate, first, a coherent analysis of what happens to the structure of advanced societies as they undergo economic change and, second, a realistic agenda that has any hope of protecting a middle-class society.”

The liberal democracies are at the end of the welfare-state road, and all of them are looking for a map. Their aging demographics mean that entitlement spending is exploding just as economic growth has slowed dramatically. Raising taxes on the rich won’t solve this problem.

Meantime, our barnacle-encrusted public institutions have shown they are too expensive, too unresponsive, too inflexible and too captive to their own interest groups to deliver services in effective and efficient ways. Both health care and public education are weighed down by excessive bureaucracy, lack of competition and rule-bound work practices that belong to the age of the medieval guilds.

Fixing the public sector will be among the top priorities of governments for the next generation. But as Mr. Fukuyama points out, the mainstream left remains obsessed with defending the status quo. “Thus, when existing social democratic parties come to power, they no longer aspire to be more than custodians of a welfare state that was created decades ago.” The Liberals also need to stop assuming that most Canadians trust and respect the wisdom of government as much as they do. Hint: They don’t.

The trouble with the Liberals is, they know what they’re against (anything attached to Stephen Harper) but have no idea what they’re for. Although the age of ever-expanding entitlements is at an end, they can’t help themselves from thinking up some more. The worst part is that, despite their accusations that Mr. Harper is a dangerous right-wing radical, on most substantive matters (such as fiscal policy, immigration policy and free trade), they basically agree.

The deeper question posed by Mr. Fukuyama is whether liberal democracy can survive the decline of the middle class. Hardly anyone predicted that technology and globalization would have such dramatically disparate effects – enriching some people, while dislocating so many others. It’s these factors, rather than greedy Wall Street robber-bankers, that are driving the growth in inequality.

How might society mitigate these flaws in capitalism in ways that are politically acceptable? Perhaps the Liberals could get around to thinking about this one of these days. I’d like them to prove my cynical friend wrong. I’d like the Tories not to be the only game in town.

I agree with Peggy Wente that the Liberal Party of Canada, as currently organized and led, is "out of gas."

But so, given the challenges posed by Francis Fukuyama, is the Conservative Party of Canada - and the Democrats and Republicans in the USA, and the Tories and Labour in Britain and so on.

To paraphrase Wente: "How might society mitigate these flaws in capitalism in ways that are politically acceptable? Perhaps the Liberals Canadian leaders could get around to thinking about this one of these days."

I agree 100% with her last sentence, and I am a loyal, card carrying, major contributing donor type Tory.

 

[a_majoor]

Post progressive society will see radical changes as people discover work arounds to the slow, barnacle encrusted bureaucracies (both public and private), and learn to live very "lean" lifestyes due to the destruction of wealth through government indebtedness and inflation.

Tying together observations from various threads:

Education will be incresingly self directed as internet based learning (like the Khan acadamy and MIT's free online courses) proliferate. STEM disciplines that require specialized equipment and lab work will likley be the sole remaining bastions of brick and mortar education. Low cost education and merit based testing will eclipse credentialism as students avoid high costs and debt, and employers look for lower cost, skilled workers (lower cost since their salary expectations are not driven by debt payments).

Many new technologies are close to fruition that will free people from the need to tie into the "grid". Local energy production, high efficiency devices that require less energy and small scale manufacturing using "3D Printers" (some which could be small and cheap enough to use in your home) wil obliviate the need to tap into large centralized systems. Even food can be divorced from the grid to some extent, using high intensity garden technologies.

Some things do need economies of scale, but this might not need a physical presence. Look at shoppers who use Amazon.com to buy everything from books to groceries on line to take advantage of economies of scale for low prices and wide selection.

Information will not need to go through gatekeepers either. The Bogosphere has damaged the legacy media's ability to craft and support "narratives". Cheap, studio quality recording and video equipment can be had that gives most people the potential to set themselves up as studios and content producers in their own right.

People are also discovering how counterproductive the progressive model of governance really is beyond the vast debts they have racked up. Shortages of drugs caused by regulatory agencies (as is increasingly happening in the United States) or the realization the reason we can't exploit vast reservours of cheap hydrocarbons because bureaucrats are blocking exploitation (to name two examples) will drive futher opposition to such overreach of bureaucratic power, and demands that these bureaucracies be dismantled.

With citizens fully empowered and quite able to live well on their own, what political philosophies would appeal to them? Classical Liberalism, embodying defense of individual freedoms of speech and assembly, property rights and unfettered use of your own property and the Rule of Law woud seem to be the best fit in this environment. In todays terms, these philosophies are expressed by Conservative (and small "c" conservative), Libertarian and Objectivist parties. The only palces left for Liberals and Socialists would be for the people unwilling or unable to be empowered (although the unable would have the alternatives of local charities to look after them). Based on real world experience the political battles will be mostly between the large and small "c" conservatives, with the Libertarians and Objectiveists as minor parties in the wings.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I don't think that most Libertarians or any Objectivists would qualify as classical liberals - none of the latter have enough sense of a society and its needs.

That being said, I agree that classical liberalism, with its emphasis on the individual versus the collective, is the best socio-political model for the 21st century.

 

[Edward Campbell]

The Good Grey Globe's Jeffrey Simpson, a died in the wool pink Trudeau Liberal - almost indistinguishable from a Layton Dipper, is dreaming in technicolour in this column, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, but we must all hope he is right:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/jeffrey-simpson/dont-write-off-the-liberals-quite-yet/article2300564/

Don’t write off the Liberals quite yet

JEFFREY SIMPSON

From Friday's Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Jan. 13, 2012

Throughout the long salad days of the Liberal Party of Canada, it stood for many important things. It still stands for these things, but they’re either less important now or have been adopted by other parties, leaving the Liberals as only one voice among many.

From the time of Clifford Sifton in Wilfrid Laurier’s government, Liberals were the immigrants’ party. They backed a more open immigration policy than the Conservatives, who tended to be the party of white Protestants with a few Irish Catholics. Now there’s an all-party consensus on immigration, and the Conservatives, having starting driving up immigration levels under Brian Mulroney, fight for immigrant votes even more forcefully than Liberals.

Liberals were the bridging party between Quebec and the rest of Canada, and between francophones and anglophones. Quebec has now faded from the consciousness of other Canadians, and vice versa. The relationship is so distant as to have become more mutually tolerable, so there’s neither a crisis nor much interest in bridges, which means not much interest in a party that usually stood for a strong central government.

The Liberals were the classic middle-class party, although they had plenty of wealthy supporters and used to win more trade union votes than the NDP. The middle class, however, has been under tremendous financial squeeze. Its numbers are shrinking as income inequalities widen. The pressures on middle-class families make them want to keep more of what they earn, precisely the pitch Conservatives have successfully made to them.

Liberals were always the party of Canadian nationalism, but Conservatives are busy creating their own identification with historic, national symbols: the military, the monarchy, old wars and former Conservative prime ministers. And Canadian nationalism, which seemed to need nurturing for so long, has become ubiquitous, boisterous and self-confident, the property of no party any more.

All these, and other, trends have been eating at the Liberal Party for a long time. Think of the chunks that have fallen away from the once-formidable Liberal coalition: francophones outside Quebec, many multicultural Canadians, blue-collar workers in the industrial cities of Ontario, federalist francophones in Quebec, Jews, Atlantic Canadians in cities such as St. John’s, Halifax, Moncton and Saint John, the “business” Liberals from Toronto. It was an impressive coalition, malleable when necessary, mobilized around the broad ideas for which Liberals stood.

It’s early days since the shellacking of the last election for the remains of the party to gather in convention, as will happen this weekend in Ottawa. Everything remains temporary about the Liberals: its “interim” leader, Bob Rae; its sense of policy direction; its building up (if possible) of a better fundraising machine; its national executive.

It’s easy to be critical of this state of suspended uncertainty, but what else would one reasonably expect from a party trying to pick itself up from the mat? The country is four years from an election, and all speculation about the political future is futile.

A pessimist would say that the country has passed the Liberals by; that the West is ascendant and the Liberals have not spoken to that region for several generations; that Quebec no longer cares; that the lower middle class is largely lost; that the Liberals have become, as the British Liberals once were, a collection of intellectuals and individualists who get elected here and there and raise intriguing ideas but have neither the cohesion nor rootedness in any one place to contend for power.

And all this might be true, save for the possibilities of hope to which Liberals might cling – that the NDP leadership candidates are deeply traditionalist in their thinking, with none offering a broadening of the party’s appeal; that the Harper government, despite its huge advantages, can’t break above 40 per cent in the polls and seems determined to govern in the most polarizing ways possible; that Canada remains a fundamentally pragmatic, non-ideological kind of political entity; that the Liberals have served up two less-than-inspiring leaders in succession and can’t do worse the next time; and that, at the next election, the Conservatives will have been in office for roughly 10 years, when the democratic instincts for change can imperil any party’s grip on power.

Simpson, like so many Liberals, cannot get past the 1970s ~ but most Canadians can and have moved on. Trudeau only matters as a model of what we must not do, ever again. The country we had circa 1970 was, already, headed down a long, slippery slope to strategic irrelevance, our 1970 White Paper, "A Foreign Policy for Canadians" was an piece of isolationist policy vandalism, written and approved by strategic nincompoops. We were, in 1970, already spending ourselves into deep trouble because the government would not, perhaps could not listen to its own economists. The civil service was also on a long, slow descent from which it has not yet recovered.

But: we need the Liberal Party of canada; the Conservatives will grow lazy, tired, out of touch and corrupt; we will want, need to "throw the rascals out" of power and we must NOT ever consider replacing them with the NDP - not unless we want a repeat, here, of Britain in the '50s, '60s and '70s.

 

[a_majoor]

From my own experience with Libertarians (the large "L" variety anyway) and Objectivists (the Freedom Party), I don't expect them to suddenly rise up and become the natural governing party any time soon...

That said, the reason I include them is their philosophical roots are very clearly based on Classical Liberalism, so we can expect to see our share of Ron Pauls as time progresses. The will be shouting pretty loudly against a mass chorus of small "c" parties like the Wild Rose Alliance and the Saskatchewan Party, I note numerous movements like "Reform Ontario" in the start up stage here, so there is reason to believe these movements will grow and spread in time (although in fairness I can also see these parties growing and thriving in "New Canada, but not doing very well in "Old Canada").

Where does that leave the Liberal Party? They have moved decisively Left (no one in the media ever talks about Blue Liberals or the possibility that Liberal voters could move en mass to the CPC) and fight in the same voting pool for Socialist and Green voters. I have really heard nothing from their convention that suggests "renewal" or even a clear outlining of what the Liberal Party actually stands for (unless it is the flexibility to make Bob Rae the permanent leader of the party). While an NDP government would be an absolute disaster, at least there is a clear choice before voters in a stand up CPC/NDP election.

I'm not sure what they can do to change, and if they are unwilling to take the steps needed to change, then they will morph into a rump party like the British Liberals, if they don't vanish altogether like the Whigs.

 

[Edward Campbell]

'Tit Jean Chrétien can, apparently, sees the future "through a glass darkly," and it does not look good, according to this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

Liberal-NDP merger would create ‘political stability,’ Chrétien argues

JOAN BRYDEN

OTTAWA— The Canadian Press
Published Monday, Apr. 16, 2012

Jean Chrétien is still promoting the idea of Liberals and New Democrats merging into one federal party, despite strong objections to the NDP’s approach to Quebec independence.

In an interview Monday, the former Liberal prime minister dismissed suggestions that a merger now – when the Liberals have been reduced to a third-party rump and New Democrats are on the rise – would amount to an NDP takeover of his once-mighty party.

Mr. Chrétien said the shape of a new political entity would not be determined by the number of seats each party holds but by the respective strength of their ideas.

“In a new party, this [numbers game] does not matter any more. It's intellectual capacity that will make the difference,” he told The Canadian Press.

On that score, Mr. Chrétien expressed confidence the Liberals would hold their own in any merger negotiations and that their predominantly centrist viewpoint would prevail.

“I'm sure,” he said categorically. “The result of a situation like that is you would have a new party that would be a centrist party.”

The historical references of the new party would be iconic Liberals like Sir Wilfrid Laurier, in much the same way that Sir John A. Macdonald is a touchstone for the current Conservative Party, formed in 2003 from a merger of the Progressive Conservatives and Canadian Alliance, Mr. Chrétien said.

“The minority group in the merger was the party of John A. Macdonald,” he pointed out.

Mr. Chrétien allowed that “the harsh left-wingers of the NDP might not be very comfortable and the very conservative Liberals might not be very comfortable” with a new centrist party.

But noting that Canada has had three minority governments since 2004 and describing the current Conservative majority as “very narrow,” he predicted a merger would “create a lot of political stability in the land.”

Mr. Chrétien vehemently disagrees with the NDP's position that a bare majority referendum vote would be sufficient to kick start negotiations on Quebec secession.

As prime minister he introduced the Clarity Act, which stipulates that the federal government would only enter into such negotiations following a “clear majority” vote on a clear question.

He noted Monday that most countries, corporations, private clubs and political parties – including the NDP – require qualified majorities to change their own constitutions or structures.

“You need two-thirds of the vote in the NDP to change anything in the constitution of the NDP but with one vote you will break Canada?”

Mr. Chrétien said the NDP position would mean one person who accidentally checked the wrong box on a referendum ballot could decide the fate of the entire country.

“You don't lose a vote because somebody does not have his glasses, you do not lose a country because of that. ... I find it's flawed logic,” he said.

Still, Mr. Chrétien shrugged off suggestions that such a fundamental disagreement on such a crucial question could be an insurmountable obstacle to a merger. He predicted the NDP would abandon its position should it ever form government.

“If you come with promises in your program that make no sense, you will not implement them. Common sense has to prevail in public life.”

IF M. Chrétien's dream came true then the big winners would be the Conservatives because the Laurier Liberals, the St Laurent Liberals, the Manley Liberals would abandon ship and move, en masse, to the Tories,  intending to reform that party.

There is hope for the Liberals and it lies on reclaiming the political centre, and that can be done only by abandoning the left to the NDP.

This country will be governed by centrists, that's why Harper and Mulcair want to move there.

 

[vonGarvin]

IF M. Chrétien's dream came true then the big winners would be the Conservatives because the Laurier Liberals, the St Laurent Liberals, the Manley Liberals would abandon ship and move, en masse, to the Tories,  intending to reform that party.

If that is the case, then I hope it happens.

 

[GAP]

Just remember.....this is all coming from a jail cell....

 

[Sythen]

If that is the case, then I hope it happens.

But you're missing the key part of his quote..

intending to reform that party.

So should this happen, how long til the CPC is the LPC of the 90's?

 

[a_majoor]

Just remember.....this is all coming from a jail cell....

So did the Letter from Birmingham Jail. Many writers have been incarcerated for reasons good or ill, I'd rather focus on the character of their writing than the colour of their overalls...

As for the move of "Blue Liberals" to the CPC, that would be an interesting exercise, especially since the "Junior A" team of conservatives from out West (with roots in the Wild Rose Alliance and Saskatchewan Party) would also be moving into the Federal level as the years go by, and they will have a solid political, economic and demographic base to build on. I'd be betting on the West to prevail...

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the National Post, is an analysis of the Liberal Party's dilemma:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/04/18/andrew-coyne-liberals-fail-to-grasp-direness-of-their-situation-nearly-a-year-after-collapse/

Liberals fail to grasp direness of their situation, nearly a year after collapse

Andrew Coyne

Apr 18, 2012

So that’s settled, then: Mark Carney will not be leaving the Bank of Canada, but will remain at his post, at the least to the end of his term. This will disappoint those who were hoping to lure him away to the Bank of England, but not half so much as it will disappoint those Liberals who were hoping he would come lead their party.

Nothing better illustrates the present Chekhovian state of the party than the Carney fantasy. I cannot tell you how many conversations I have had with Liberals where his name comes up. No evidence is offered that he has ever once indicated a flicker of interest in the job: it’s more floated as a what-if, a wouldn’t-it-be-great, an “if you could choose anybody” kind of thing. A fantasy, in other words. As governor of the Bank, and as chairman of the group of global banking regulators known as the Financial Stability Board, Carney is currently engaged in running the world. The idea that he would give this up to run for leader of a party that is now at barely 20% in the polls — well, as I say, this tells you something about the Liberals’ grasp on reality.

Once upon a time the party might have attracted that sort of talent, but the Liberals are no longer that party. There is no saviour out there, waiting to carry the Grits back to power, and the longer the party continues in this delusion, the longer it will be consigned to the margins — if it survives at all.

We are approaching the first anniversary of the election that nearly destroyed the party, and there is still no indication the party really understands the dimensions of the task in front of it. It knows, I think, what has happened to it — the worst defeat in its history, a near total organizational collapse over large parts of the country, anemic fundraising, the works — but it seems only dimly aware of how much worse things can get. It shows no sign of grasping how radically it must reinvent itself if it is to escape from its current fix, or of being prepared to act on such a plan if it exists.

So let’s state things plainly. If the Liberals are hoping to occupy the centre ground of Canadian politics, more or less on the basis of squatter’s rights, they are fooling themselves. The Tories and most especially the NDP, under its new leader, have clear designs on the same ground, and are resolved to leave very little room between them. It is entirely possible that the Liberal Party could be squeezed out altogether — not by any means a certainly, or even yet a probability, but a possibility, and one that grows by the day.

The party no longer has the institutional strength to withstand such an assault. If it continues to define itself as a traditional centrist party it will, slowly but surely, collapse, as support bleeds over time to the more compelling alternatives to its left and right. If, worse, it gives up the centre, styling itself as a party of the left, it will hasten its demise: for then there really would be nothing to distinguish it from the NDP, and no reason to persist in a separate existence.

So there is no more immediate task for the party than to tackle the existential questions head on: Does Canada need a third party? What does, or can, it offer that the other parties don’t? If it can’t answer these, none of the rest matters: organization, money, not even the choice of leader. Without a clear and cogent raison d’etre, it will have a hard time persuading voters to give it a look — and an even harder time mobilizing its own troops.

Everything, then, must be invested in hardening up the party’s brand, even at the expense of short-term electoral prospects. The threat to the party is not that it might lose the next election, but that it might disappear altogether. It can survive at 20% in the polls, so long as it is a passionate, determined 20% — after all, the NDP did for decades. What it cannot survive is apathy and indifference.

Well, what about it: Is there such a raison d’etre? I said the question was whether there was anything it could offer that the other parties don’t. And the answer is, of course there is: not only can it do things the other parties won’t, it can do the things those other parties’ natural supporters would like them to do, but which for one reason or another — electoral caution, interest group capture, whatever — they refuse.

In short, the way for Liberals to break out of the box they are in is to redefine the centre: to be more Conservative than the Conservatives on some issues, more NDP than the NDP on others, and so attract support from both. A party that went where the free-market Tories would not — on supply management for instance, or deregulation of broadcasting — without their autocratic impulses; a party that was willing to advocate for sensible environmental policy — which means making consumers pay the full environmental cost for things — unencumbered by the NDP’s ties to the unions: such a party would have every chance of surviving, and what is more, of mattering.

But that requires a boldness — of vision, and of action — that so far seems in short supply.

Postmedia News
acoyne@postmedia.com

I think that the Liberals' problem is deeper than Coyne suggests: the Party needs to rebuold its philosophy, its very raison d'être.

The political centre in Canada is HUGE and there is room for two parties, maybe three there: a right of centre/centre right party, a true centrist party and a centre left/left of centre party. Stephen Harper is staking a claim to the right of centre/centre right/centre and Thomas Mulcair wants to occupy the centre/centre left/left of centre but there is room in the centre right/centre/centre left area for the Liberals. But, first, they have to repudiate 60+ years of policies going all the way back to Tom Kent and the Kingston "thinkers conference" of 1960; it means admitting, at least in private, that Pierre Trudeau was wrong in almost everything he said and did.

It seems to me that the Liberals need to do two things:

1. Embrace the NDP's social agenda; and

2. Embrace and expand the Conservative's economic agenda.

The Liberals should aim to be the most fiscally prudent of the three parties but they should distance themselves from the Conservatives on one fundamental issue: the nature of government. The Conservatives, Harper's Conservatives, believe in very limited government, they accept, grudgingly, that government is necessary and that it must involve itself in a few 'businesses' like the national defence and foreign affairs. But they, the Conservatives, are of a fundamental view: government is not 'good.' The Liberals can say that while they want to keep government as small as Harper will make it, they believe that government can be 'good' and that it can lead.

My guesstimate is that:

1. The Liberals will elect the wrong leader in 2013: Bob Rae. He is 'wrong' because he is very much "yesterday's man" - he is too old and he comes with too much baggage;

2. Harper will balance the budget in 2014 and he will campaign in 2015 on a promise of "more of the same:" that he will keep trimming government, not slashing, not burning, just careful, gradual trimming. He will promise to balance the budget again and again and to lower the employer's share of EI premiums to encourage Canadian companies to hire more workers and to lower corporate taxes to encourage more companies to do business in Canada and to trim individual taxes, too. (He might even be boldly conservative and buy up $1 Billion of the debt of Canada's most indebted province (which is either ON or QC, depending on how you measure) and, symbolically, liquidate it.) Harper's Conservatives will win the 2015 election;

3. Mulcair's NDP will finish second and will remain the official opposition, but they will be much reduced in numbers, having lost seats to both the Liberals and one or more Québec parties;

4. The Liberals will replace Rae with a younger man: maybe Scott Brison, maybe Dominic LeBlanc, maybe someone we haven't heard about yet - but it will be a "Manley Liberal," not Justin Trudeau; and

5. Harper's 2016 budget will redefine government - despite his election promises of just trimming it will be like taking Harry the Happy Hippie and giving him short back and sides. Harper will retire in 2017 allowing his replacement to have a full year and a bit to redefine the Conservatives in his or her image. That's when the Liberals will need to be ready to topple the NDP and the Conservatives and retake the government: in 2019 when the party should have rid itself of embarrassments like Denis Coderre, Stéphane Dion, Wayne Easter, Hedy Fry and so on.


Edit: spelling  :-[

 

[Journeyman]

The Liberals will replace Rae with a younger man: maybe Scott Brison, maybe Dominic LeBlanc, maybe someone we haven't heard about yet - but it will be a "Manley Liberal," not Justin Trudeau;

Given that the scenario places the decision fresh on the heels of the "natural governing party's" second third-place finish, I suspect the thinking may be coloured by some clutching-at-straws. While it may be best for them to select a "Manley Liberal," I wouldn't rule out the Young Liberals pushing through the Dauphin......to the further detriment of the party's future.

 

[Old Sweat]

I think the party is still looking for another "Trudeau" to mesmerize the nation and restore them to their rightful place at the top. Some thought Paul Martin would do it; remember the line that once the Canadian people saw him in action, he would be returned with the largest majority in history. Ignatieff was really selected in the same vein, but the people were unable to recognize what was good for them. And now we get Mr Carney being touted as the choice. I guess the brain trust could not grasp that he might not seize the mantel, or might not even be a Liberal.

Note that their past and perhaps choices are all Eastern Canadians. Can anyone think of a Western Canadian who might be willing to take a turn?

 

[exabedtech]

They should really try to get Conrad Black to lead the Liberal Party.  He's the embodiment of everything they believe in!  Criminal meglomaniac.... yup, perfect!