Tough words, gotta back it up.
I backed it up last time you challenged the assertion. I think your words speak for themselves.
This would be much more effective if he hadn't mocked Trudeau for being pro-legalization right in the middle of a debate.
Ah well. I just love the poetic justice in the fact he started the campaign refusing to even call Trudeau and the Liberals by name, and now he's aping their policies and complaining that Trudeau won't return his calls.
It won't matter how long it takes.
I predict the new Conservative leader will be hammered with constant calls of "He/She is Just Not Ready" by Liberal supporters.
This would be a really bad way to try and brand a new CPC leader, because it wouldn't come off as very original. If the Liberals do win and the Conservatives are forced to pick a new leader (and, even more importantly, if the Liberals then go back on their pledge to restrict partisan advertising between elections), they'd aim to make that new leader unelectable on his own terms, rather than just mimicking what the Conservatives tried saying about Trudeau. The Conservatives' attacks on Dion and Iggy worked because they had a sliver of truth to them; likewise, the Liberals made Stockwell Day unelectable leading up to the 2000 election by seizing on the fact he was an extremist dunce. You want to go after something the person can't change -- i.e. if it were Peter Mackay (as someone I was talking to today insisted it would be), you'd go after him for being an empty, untrustworthy suit, or if it were Kenney you'd go after him for being an inept cabinet minister prone to saying inflammatory, extremist stuff.
Unless there's something dreadfully off about that Manitoba sample, man, the Selinger government must be sucking balls to have driven the federal NDP's numbers that low.
Lowest approval ratings in the country, and even NDPers out there aren't too fond of him. I don't know what he's doing wrong, but whatever it is, he's making that whole party's brand toxic out there.
From what I understand, new estimates need to be tabled by March 31st at the latest, after that the government runs out of money.
I don't think Harper would ever do that, anyway, as already stated above. It would devastate the party's long-term prospects for no real gain. And I'm pretty sure that Johnston would feel compelled to force the issue before then, anyway.
Even if we don't have a budget, as far as I'm aware funding continues at the previous level until there's a new budget. It's one of the many advantages our system has over the American one! That said, Parliament has to be recalled before June 19th, since the legislature has to sit at least once during a 12-month period. There's no way the GG -- no matter how much of a lapdog the position may be -- would allow the House to remain empty for eight months after an election.
Yeah, I think Outrement is a case where the accounting for past performance in the riding doesn't sufficiently consider the stature of the incumbent.
Don't forget Ignatieff lost in 2011, in a relatively safe Toronto-area seat. If there is a mad rush away from the NDP -- and considering even their most favourable pollster, Forum, is saying their vote is extremely soft at the moment, there may well be -- he could easily get caught up in the stampede.
We really need to institute a two term limit like the U.S.
Others have already explained why this is an awful idea, but I just want to reiterate: it's an awful idea. Term limits mean there's no time for institutional memory to get built up, and it means legislators have to be thinking about their post-political careers from the moment they assume office. I'd rather have people who understand how Parliament works involved in the process than seeing MPs get the boot just because of some law that doesn't even work in the Canadian context.
I know it looks bad now with Emperor Harper but the lack of a two term limit can be good too. I think Trudeau had like four terms and that was because he was getting shit done. If I were an American, I would probably rather keep Obama on as President than take a chance on someone like Hillary.
I think Yugoslavia had one guy (Tito) for like 40 years and he was damn good from what I've read.
Uhhhh....
In the years following the dissolution of Yugoslavia, a number of historians have stated that human rights were suppressed in Yugoslavia under Tito, particularly in the first decade up until the Tito-Stalin split. On 4 October 2011, the Slovenian Constitutional Court found a 2009 naming of a street in Ljubljana after Tito to be unconstitutional.While several public areas in Slovenia (named during the Yugoslav period) do already bear Tito's name, on the issue of renaming an additional street the court ruled that:
"The name "Tito" does not only symbolise the liberation of the territory of present-day Slovenia from fascist occupation in World War II, as claimed by the other party in the case, but also grave violations of human rights and basic freedoms, especially in the decade following World War II."
The court, however, explicitly made it clear that the purpose of the review was "not a verdict on Tito as a figure or on his concrete actions, as well as not a historical weighing of facts and circumstances". Slovenia has several streets and squares named after Tito, notably Tito Square in Velenje, incorporating a 10-meter statue.
Tito has also been named as responsible for systematic eradication of the ethnic German (Danube Swabian) population in Vojvodina by expulsions and mass executions following the collapse of the German occupation of Yugoslavia at the end of World War II, in contrast to his inclusive attitude towards other Yugoslav nationalities.
Benevolent dictatorship or not, I don't think Tito is the example to which our democracy should be aspiring...
My current theory of why the NDP campaign is off the rails is basically a combination of losing some of their strategist talent from Topp running in the leadership convention and the Alberta win making them think that a campaign-from-the-right-govern-from-the-left approach would work better than it did Federally. With better strategists I think they could have come up with a different approach that would have worked better. Combine that with probably thinking that Trudeau's support for C-51 and pre-election pledges to balance the budget meant they wouldn't be doing a campaign-from-the-left approach and they ended up being forced to the right to avoid the label of far-left that always comes to the NDP when they talk big about left-wing ideas, in ways that don't happen when the Liberals talk about the same thing. When the Liberals talk about running deficits it's prudent Keynsianism. When the NDP do it's left-wingnut overspending. Already have that dichotomy playing out in Alberta where they pretty much had to run a deficit.
From what I've heard from people who've spoken extensively with senior NDPers, I don't think your analysis is too far off. Apparently, their general attitude seemed to be that they could rely on the same forces that propelled Notley to victory provincially -- that they could just ride a wave of anti-Conservative feeling to victory -- and, consequently, they figured a safe, quiet frontrunner campaign was the best way to do that. In a two-person race, that may have worked, but I think they also made the serious error of buying into the Conservative attack ads against Trudeau, and thought that he wouldn't be able to recover from that for the simple reason that it worked so well on Dion and Iggy.
With that in mind, I think this column from a month before the election looks awfully prescient:
the midst of the NDP phenomenon, only the stupid aren't terrified. I know the NDP jump in the polls mostly coincided with C-51, so a lot of people thought the two were intertwined, but...I don't know. I think it made them a possibility, and a lot of people were willing to park their theoretical voters there pre-election, but actually keeping those votes was another matter entirely, and by running such a laidback (or lazy, depending on how you look at it) campaign, the NDP killed their chances of winning those voters for good.
