[Caelon]

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20 ... ew-111228/

Quote:

In his latest book, "When The Gods Changed," Canadian journalism giant Peter C. Newman all but declares the Liberal Party dead and buried. It's been a mere 10 years since people earnestly called the Grits the "Natural Governing Party" and it seemed a reasonable observation.

When Newman started his book it was intended to chronicle the rise of Ignatieff to the Prime Minister's Office. Instead, he concluded there is no country for the old Liberal Party anymore.

"There are no natural leaders in the party. That's the problem: No leader, no money, no power base, and a track record of losing 30 seats each in the last four elections," Newman said in an email interview. "At that rate, after the next campaign in 2015, they will have four seats, just enough for a game of bridge before they turn off the lights and go home."

The article goes on to cover the mistakes going back to Trudeau. While I would have to agree that writing off the West and concentrating on Ontario and Quebec left them in a position of one province away from losing power it was also a succesful strategy for decades. I also disagree with the party being dead. There are and abundance of Liberal supporters in Canada and they are one leader away from making a comeback.

I just do no see 'that leader' in the ranks. Bob Rae is a write off and Justin Trudeau would lose more votes than they have already. It will take some one in their 40's so they are not deemed old guard, with passion for the message and the ability to deliver the message successfully to Canadians.

[Gunnair]

Yeah, also disagree. The LPC has a lot of political street cred left and frankly, the sins of the father will look less sinful as the CPC totters along producing its own series of political shennanigans. Frankly, the LPC has been idealogically adrift with no steady hand of leadershp at the tiller. Find a leader with the charisma of Jack Layton and lay out a platform that resonates with the people (like the CPC did) and I think their fortunes would change quite quickly.

[bootlegga]

The Liberals can comeback, they just need someone as nasty and vicious as Chretien/Harper. The last couple of guys have been way too nice to survive in Canadian politics of late.

But, most of all, the Liberals also need to ditch the left leaning platform they adopted under Dion and shift back to the centre. I thought Iggy would have been the right guy to do that, but he was beholden to the power-brokers behind the scenes and couldn't change much.

BTW, this should probably be in the politics sub-forum...

[Caelon]

bootlegga wrote:

The Liberals can comeback, they just need someone as nasty and vicious as Chretien/Harper. The last couple of guys have been way too nice to survive in Canadian politics of late.

But, most of all, the Liberals also need to ditch the left leaning platform they adopted under Dion and shift back to the centre. I thought Iggy would have been the right guy to do that, but he was beholden to the power-brokers behind the scenes and couldn't change much.

Traditionally the Liberals have always been a party of the centre and as such they were able to diminish support for the Conservatives and the NDP by relegating them to more extreme positions with less support.

A revived Liberal Party needs to be less regional in focus and appeal to more Canadians coast to coast. They had support in the West in the past, but not since Trudeau was leader. Acknowledging the mistake of the NEP and instituting policies that appeal to the West would go a long way to reviving their fortunes. It would not happen over night as in many areas a lawyer is held in higher regard than a Liberal. Still the message would resonate and I believe then number of seats obtained in the next election would be higher.

bootlegga wrote:

BTW, this should probably be in the politics sub-forum...

You are right. Perhaps one of the mods would move it.

[peck420]

I would leave the NEP where it belongs, in the past.

Move on, move back to the centre and regain the power base that is Canada.

The further right the CPC goes and the further left the NDP goes the easier it will be for the Libs to regain the spotlight.

[OnTheIce]

The Liberals have to join the CPC in the middle. Harper has steered the CPC to the middle, despite annoying some of the base and it's turned into a majority. He's going to stay in the centre for his term.

The Liberals need a new leader with new ideas. Bob Rae was a TERRIBLE choice as interim leader....they haven't turned the page.

Stop re-hashing old promises that you've broken 5 times. IE: National Daycare.

[xerxes]

The Liberal Party will be back...eventually. They had a good run in the 90's under Chretien and now it's their time out of the spotlight. Eventually, people will tire of Harper and the Tories and maybe, the Liberal will even find a good leader for a change.

[raydan]

Yup, the Cons got all of 2 seats in 1993.
There must have been plenty of people talking about their death back then.

[andyt]

In BC, it looks like we will become a two party province. The Liberals (a coalition of liberals and conservatives) is sinking in the polls, and they are now even with the newly revived Conservatives under John Cummins. The NDP is well ahead of both at the moment. If this trend continues, the "Liberals" will collapse and we'll have left and right parties. (The Liberals were pretty far right under Campbell anyway.)

I don't know if this has any bearing on the federal scene, but maybe we'll move to a two party system there too.

[Gunnair]

andyt wrote:

In BC, it looks like we will become a two party province. The Liberals (a coalition of liberals and conservatives) is sinking in the polls, and they are now even with the newly revived Conservatives under John Cummins. The NDP is well ahead of both at the moment. If this trend continues, the "Liberals" will collapse and we'll have left and right parties. (The Liberals were pretty far right under Campbell anyway.)

I don't know if this has any bearing on the federal scene, but maybe we'll move to a two party system there too.

Have to disagree at the provincial level - the Liberals here are in trouble with an NDP majority (barely) in the books for 2013 (long way off I know to make a prediction) The BC Cons might make some headway, but Cummins is not proving to be much of a personality (not that Dix is either) and he has baggage. So far, I've been somewhat unimpressed with the BC Cons, but I'm hoping things will change throughout the year as they find their place.

At the federal level, I can't see us going to a two party system unless the NDP moves closer to the centre. They are in many ways a centre left, but the swerve left a bit too much I think to be a truly federal party as opposed to what they are now, which is more regional in nature. That being said, all parties are suffering from having regional bastions that they fall back into when threatened. It makes the political landscape resemble a feudal kingdom with little centres of power in a wider much wilder political wasteland of voter apathy, disdain of the political system, and outright cynicism.

[Thanos]

The Liberals will rebound. The NDP is totally inadequate on all levels in terms of being both the major opposition party and as the alleged "alternative" to form a government. The huge majority of Canadians are no more hard-core leftists than they are hard-core rightists, and the NDP is far more beholden to the fringe leftism than most people want to believe. As memories of Jack Layton begin to fade and it becomes more and more clear to Canadians outside of Quebec that the NDP is now the major refuge of the long-ago discreditted Marxism and hard socialism favoured by Quebec sovereignists, it'll make it that much easier for the Liberals to resurrect themselves. Canada is not a radicalist entity and, outside of the Toronto-Montreal corridor and Vancouver, the sort or economic and social re-engineering that the NDP wants to have happen has always been (and always will be) incredibly poisonous and unpopular.

The Liberals need to be patient and, above all, stop listening to old obsolete Trudeau-era dinosaurs like Peter C. Newman. It took them a long time to collapse and it'll take them a long time to rebuild.

[saturn_656]

raydan wrote:

Yup, the Cons got all of 2 seats in 1993.
There must have been plenty of people talking about their death back then.

Technically speaking, they did die. The federal PC party no longer exists. Died in the Canadian Alliance/PC merger.

The resulting Conservative Party is considered a new entity, and is currently the "youngest" party in Parliament, having been founded in 2003.

[Caelon]

saturn_656 wrote:

raydan wrote:

Yup, the Cons got all of 2 seats in 1993.
There must have been plenty of people talking about their death back then.

Technically speaking, they did die. The federal PC party no longer exists. Died in the Canadian Alliance/PC merger.

The resulting Conservative Party is considered a new entity, and is currently the "youngest" party in Parliament, having been founded in 2003.

Although your statement is technically true it is also philosophically wrong. The old PC party was disconnecting from their roots, which allowed for the rise of Reform. While the Reform party did provide a home for some it was not truly representative of the traditional conservative values either. In some cases it was too far to the right plus it carried the religouous baggage. The Alliance/PC merger brough all the coservative elements back into a single party again. In a sense it became the old conservative party once more. It also move closer to the centre and was able to appear as not just a western Canada party. This is important for any party as without appeal in central Canada there is no hop in holding the reins of power.

The Liberals understood the importance of taking a majority of seats in central Canada as a root to power, but also successfully isolated themselves from a large region of the country. A revived Liberal Party would be wise to move away from the old strategy of pitting regions against each other and become a more inclusive party as a path to regain power. Our political history of late has been parties with a regional power base gaining enough seats to become the government. A more wide spread power base would leave a party less vunerable to regional politics.

[saturn_656]

Quote:

Although your statement is technically true it is also philosophically wrong.

Which is why I began with "technically speaking."

I don't disagree with any of your post, the CPC has inherited the Tory legacy of the Progressive Conservatives and the original Conservative Party of Canada.

[Newsbot]

Title: Is the Liberal Party dead and buried?
Category: Political
Posted By: westmanguy
Date: 2011-12-28 13:23:01
Canadian