Jack Layton says he’s not interested in discussing the prospect of a merger between the NDP and the Liberals, contending the election result shows his party is now the "true alternative" to the Conservatives.How can he be so blind?
Then again, there's five years to go and a lot can happen, one way or the other. First of all, the Liberal Party of Canada could go bankrupt, shrivel-up and die. That would be sweet. And no vote-splitting! As well, immediately entering into talks with the party of John Manley is inviting all sorts of mental and moral corruption. Layton's got a lot on his plate nowadays and the last thing the NDP needs is to be negotiating with shit-heads stammering and drooling:
"Uh, dahhhh! We got's to commit to 'the mission' in Afghanistan!"
"Duhhh, ... public health care is EX-burp!-PENSIVE!!"
"Centrism." "Centrism." "Centrism!" "Don't forget the centre!" "Duh, ... what does 'centrism' mean?"
"You don't want to penalize success by taxing the banksters!"
"The 'Tar Sands' are awesome!!!!"
And etc., etc., et-fucking-cetera. I honestly don't know what the best course of action is. But having recently been on the receiving end of the crazy bullshit at "Eugene Forsey Liberal"* I'm pretty certain that there's all sorts of good reasons to maybe wait and see if the Liberals implode into complete irrelevance before tainting oneself with their stupid beliefs.
*(Supposedly the NDP has the blood of Canadian Forces' soldiers on its hands. Why? How? Well, you see, in 2007, the Liberals [who put the CF there in the first place] proposed a non-binding resolution that the Canada leave Afghanistan in 2009. The NDP refused and insisted on immediate withdrawal. 2009 came and went and harper kept us there until 2011. Every soldier who died after 2009 died because of the NDP, and not the Liberals, who, even though they put them there, aren't responsible for anything because of their non-binding resolution. Of course, if "Eugene Forsey Liberal" didn't have shit for brains, he'd figure out that if the Liberals had joined with the NDP to propose an immediate withdrawal, there'd be even less blood on anyone's hands. Except for the fact that non-binding resolutions wouldn't have accomplished anything. And the fact that the now Liberal Bob Rae acted like such a "statesman" and made sure that harper's extension of "the mission" would go even beyond 2011 without even a debate in Parliament should have prevented the psychotic hack from even mentioning the blood on the Liberals' hands.)**
**(Stupid, self-righteous, hateful drivel really gets my dander up.)
5 comments:
Never mind the Libs' beliefs (such as they are), I'd think the best argument against worrying about a merger is the regular stream of infighting among the party insiders who seem to be the largest group of people dedicated to preserving the Libs as a separate entity.
In a merger, those voices would have to somehow come to a temporary agreement with each other and the NDP (which needless to say seems unlikely) - and even if that works, they'll then will bring their melodrama inside the merged tent. In contrast, an effort to merely win over soft supporters without trying to combine the two party structures leaves them to fight over the Libs' party apparatus.
Jurist,
From the headlines on prog-blogs, it isn't looking all that pretty.
People who vote Liberal are different from the activists and the die-hards.
Those were the people harper was appealing to after all his insults of the Liberal Party.
Some of them will never work with us (they're blinded by class interests or ignorance to prefer harper's snake-oil to sanity) and there are others who would vote for us given the choice between harper's hard-right extremism and an honest look at the record of provincial NDP governments.
The reason my post was so angry was my frustration with a couple of Liberal bloggers for whom only monsters can vote against their party, and only terrible monsters vote NDP.
One can read some recent posts of mine to see that I acknowledged people could have decent reasons for voting Liberal.
I've asked before and at the rate things are going I may ask again:
So, would a merged party accept corporate donations?
Seems like a small question, doesn't it? But it's fundamental both in its own right and as a shorthand reference to the differences between the two parties.
I can't see the Liberals merging with a party so "naive" and "socialist" that it doesn't accept corporate donations. But if the new party did accept them, I'd be so gone and I suspect (and hope) lots of other people would be too. When you take their money, they own you. That is ultimately the difference between the Liberals and the NDP; a party that accepted corporate donations wouldn't be the NDP, it would be the Blair Wolf project in sheep's clothing.
PLG: That should be an easy one, since corporate donations are prohibited by the Canada Elections Act:
404. (1) No person or entity other than an individual who is a citizen or permanent resident as defined in subsection 2(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act shall make a contribution to a registered party, a registered association, a candidate, a leadership contestant or a nomination contestant.
But the theme behind it is another major question about how a merged party could come about.
Yeah, and Chretien did that. After he no longer needed them.
That was the thing about Chretien; you could tell he was at least capable of knowing what the right thing was, even if he willingly chose the opposite on many occasions. (Entertaining genocidal, kleptocratic despot Suharto at APEC Vancouver and crushing his fellow Canadians' rights at the same time for instance.)
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