If it's irresponsible to say that you'll oppose a budget before you've even seen it, then how is it responsible to suggest that you should support a budget before you've even seen it?
Newly-minted Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff should not defeat the Harper government on the budget vote next month, but he should try to buy some time to rebuild the party, fundraise, and define his leadership before the Conservatives define him as they did to former leader Stéphane Dion, say some top Liberals.
I guess it depends on your priorities.
In interviews last week, Grit sources said that, strategically, Liberals will be better off by not being in government as it is widely expected the economy will continue to worsen and massive job layoffs will occur.
Liberals will be better off. There was no comment on whether they thought the rest of us would be better off now that they've tipped their hand and let the Conservatives know they don't have to compromise quite as much as they might otherwise have done.
What are you -- some kind of socialist or separatist? You don't know the difference yet between first-class MPs and second-class MPs? Or first-class citizens and second-class citizens?
You dare to question the wise men of one of the two legitimate political parties? (What was it Harper just recently called them -- the big parties?)
Uppity, aren't you. /s
I think "newly -minted leader" should take a trout that has been dead for a week and a half and start slapping "senior liberals" in the face with it until they "shut the hell up".
the two legitimate political parties
It's funny you should say that. I was keeping an eye on the coverage of today's pre-budget meetings at both CBC and CTV. The former mentioned that Flaherty would also be meeting at some point with NDP finance critic Thomas Mulcair. But if you relied solely on CTV, you'd never know that anyone besides Conservatives and Liberals even existed. The other parties, and the coalition, seem to have been disappeared.
Does the media have no responsibility whatsoever to not write article after article about what "Grit sources" say?
The party has been slow-roasted for the past 4 years or so by "senior Liberals." It's a huge party with a huge (bicameral) caucus and a zillion hangers on ranging from legit people to Stephen frigging Le Drew, and it's organs like the National Post who decide who's "senior," without telling anyone.
Noone - not Stephen Harper - could shut up that many people if the media were passionately in love with the anonymous source based hit and run story; like "divided Democrats," "divided, talkative Liberals" is a beloved media meme. Which they don't get called on, because we have no Daily Kos or, to a lesser extent, Huffpost. (Huffpost is bigger I know, but they're almost as bad as the media often.)
Without names there is 0 excuse for batting practice on anyone but the media.
It is certainly true that it would be most convenient for the Liberals to let the Conservatives fail, and then pick up the pieces.
But what about urgency? What about the fact that peoples' lives are deteriorating rapidly while Ignatieff hems and haws?
Of course, his indecisiveness just gives Harper more room to craft a marginally-palatable budget, and dare Ignatieff to fight an election under such inconvenient circumstances.
The other parties, and the coalition, seem to have been disappeared.
Perhaps they are hoping for another coalition.
Without names there is 0 excuse for batting practice on anyone but the media.
I'm going to disagree. I've asked before why journalists agree to protect the identities of sources in circumstances like these. It often amounts to gossip masquerading as journalism.
But these stories have popped up in too many different places to support any claim that someone is making this stuff up. And what these Liberals are saying follows too easily from the way Ignatieff walked back from the position in the immediate aftermath of Flaherty's Folly — the disastrous economic statement — that not only was it insufficient as a response to the economic crisis but it proved that Harper simply had no interest in governing like a prime minister with a minority and no longer deserved the confidence of the House of Commons.
I don't believe these quotes represent all Liberals. And I've said before that I'm not surprised to see some Liberals feel this way. But I'm a little surprised to see that they're too stupid to realize that they negate any leverage the threat of the coalition may provide when they shoot their mouths off and tip their hand this early in the pre-budget process.
I guess "0%" was putting it a too strongly. But we have no factual basis with which to evaluate these stories.
I've said - any Liberal has said - "Well, shucks, it sure would be great for the Liberal Party if Harper won a majority." That's shop talk. It's true, in the same sense that recessions make for a cheap HD tv and California falling into the ocean would get Lex Luthor a lot of beachfront property.
But because there's this culture of printing this gossip as news - and because there's a pre-existing Canadian media dramedy called the Disunited Off Message Liberal Show (see also, Divided Democrats Meme) - if John Ivison was sitting behind me at the Swiss Chalet when I said that, he could scribble away "Senior Liberal said..." if I had some party office. And I'm sorry, but that's meaningless "journalism" and we're flooded with it.
I think one really has to look to the way the US traditional media printed exactly this sort of stuff - absolutely to the last, dying gasp - during the period in which the Democrats were in the dumps. Yeah, sure, the Democrats were dumb, divided, leaky, shot themselves in the foot with the press all the time - but did that excuse the way the media handled it? No. They loved their story and they kept covering it; the Republicans could be shooting each other in the streets, but if Hillary or Obama glanced askance at each other, the headline was "Disunited Democrats," just copy and paste the old article from the template and change the right words. Even now, with the Republican Party in the most calamitous position in years, if you based your idea of politics on the media you'd think in the last few weeks "the left" has been "angry" at Obama (as Kos prints survey after survey showing the 90+% Obama approval figures among Democrats, with ever increasing head-desk banging)
This is the same thing. If we manage to keel over and die in the next few years this same BS narrative will be transplanted to the "divided, leaky, undisciplined" NDP. I promise not to point and laugh.
if John Ivison was sitting behind me at the Swiss Chalet when I said that, he could scribble away "Senior Liberal said..."
At which point I'm betting "senior Liberals" would become very familiar with John Ivison's face and stop talking shop when he's in earshot if they continued to talk to him at all. I think that's stretching things. I'd be extremely surprised if any of the Liberals quoted in that article didn't want their opinions in circulation.
I very often get the feeling the "tips" fit the agendas of the pundits far too perfectly (and continuously.) And again, look at the US analogy.
The only "journalistic scruple" the likes of Ivison, Martin et al have is that some Liberal said something, sometime, that more or less corroborates the often paraphrased punchline which the pundit wants to make.
The fact that these quotes "happen" all the time is as credible evidence of my viewpoint as it is of the notion that the Liberals are to blame for the continual journalistic kamikaze they've undergone for the 4 worst years of their history in the last century or so.
I can remember when the meme for the Progressive Conservatives was along those lines. That was before most of the papers were owned by Conservatives.
Way to go!
As one commentator said,re Ignatieff's coronation: "time to open a Harper-Lite!"
Last winter/early spring, a member from the BLOC brought forth a private member's bill to require labelling of GE/GMO food. The NDP and Bloc voted for it. Cons and`many Libs opposed. Who opposed it,Ignatieff. Why, when he is supposedly on the side of the enlightened: just to not let it pass.
How many more well intentioned bills will be defeated for the sake of the Liberal party's readiness or not readiness for an election.?
I am getting FED UP. Unite or be defeated. This includes the Greens,the CAP and anybody else who has any concern for the welfare of the people as opposed to the welfare of a few.This is another Revolution that won't be broadcast or ruined by broadcasters.
PLG:
It's hard to tell sometimes if there's a super-tidy intentionality to all of it: some papers are just plain yellow as all get out, and that's been a relatively recent and intensifying phenomena.
I think the Globe and Star aspire to professionalism, with the Star doing a considerably better job but with a fraction of the influence. The Globe would be far less of an embarrassment if it weren't for their pundits, some of whom sometimes rise to Dick Morrisian heights of partisan twaddle.
One significant point may be the role of the CTV, and that it, more than any of the above sources, really is the stereotypical "stenographer to power." Obviously I'm extra-conscious of the various Duffy-esque biases, but I think they really like access and are the sort of refs it would be easiest to work. And when the right is the side most used to ruthlessly working the refs, that's a very useful profile for the country's dominant media source to have.