The oft-missed point
Why is it that every time the Conservatives bend to accommodate the Liberal position, it is portrayed by bloggers and the media as Dion folding?
Dion won on Afghanistan. Dion won on the budget. But in spite of this, people don't see it for what it is: a man of principle forcing his opponent's hand. I don't know if it is caused by too many latent leadership ambitions, or simply by people who think politics should be about adversity and about power rather than about policy or principle.
The Conservative party put forward a motion calling for an indefinite Iraqesque war in Afghanistan and asserted that the motion would be a confidence vote. The Liberals responded with an alternative motion and, after some deliberation, the Conservatives met them in the middle. How is the Conservative government backing down from its position and an assertion of a confidence vote based on that position anything but a win for the Liberals under Dion?
Similarly, in yesterday's budget, Flaherty offered nothing of substance to anyone other than one more gift to the well-off with the Registered Tax-Free Savings Account, only useful to those who don't need it. It is full of pitifully small short term investments, but it introduces little of any substance. If the Conservatives were confident that the Liberals were going to support the budget no matter what, it would have been a full-on, big spending, tax cutting, deficit-generating Conservative budget like their last two. The reality is that they did not have that confidence, and they were forced to provide a largely meaningless budget. How is it a loss for the Liberals when the Conservatives have to, yet again, bend to the Liberals?
I agree with the assertion that Canadians don't want an election, however people are largely misinterpreting this statement. It isn't that people don't want to go to the polls. Quite the contrary, I would argue. Many people are itching to give their party a majority. The problem is nearly everyone acknowledges that if we go into an election right now, the parliament we will get at the other end will be remarkably similar to the one we have, barring unforeseen RCMP investigation announcements, and so the question becomes: what's the point? There won't be a general appetite for an election until Canadians come to the conclusion that it will actually change the status quo in parliament.
In short, I think Canadians are tired of minority governments, but have not decided who to give the reins of power to. As long as Liberals continue to fail to recognise Dion's leadership for what it is -- true leadership, rather than dictatorship, a concept Canadians are so unfamiliar with that they no longer recognise it -- we will continue to be in this national political limbo.
Posted at 09:04 on February 27, 2008