Maybe it's because the Liberals are moving to the right that you feel to imitate the WRP loons who think everything to the left of them are communists; but having worked with actual communists in Europe, I can assure you that the NDP are not communist in the slightest. They're having a hard time even laying claim to the label "socialist" right now. They are probably where the Libs were around 15 years ago, except for in Alberta where they resemble the Loughheed PCs. The Overton window has shifted massively to the right these days that even Red Tories like the LPC try and pretend that they are centrist.
Mulcair: "There are certain things that work and others that don't, and it's not surprising that I'm in favour of the things that work," seems like a good approach. Why, we might even call it sensible.
This is just the opposite of the true believers like the leader of the Cons whose “lower taxes' mantra has failed for 10 years but he still believes[1]. It's a bit like the US Republicans and Cuba. Sanctions did work for the first 50+ years but just wait ...
Private enterprise is outstandingly good at some things. Say building cars or providing a good choice of groceries in my local supermarket. Private industry is outstandingly bad at some things. Private prisons anyone?
1. Of course, he also believes that the Second Coming is due somewhere around next Tuesday. :(
I moved from the NDP to the LPC because, starting with Layton, the NDP has moved so far to the right. I believe Trudeau's liberals are more progressive than Mulcair's NDP.
However, I agree this won't hurt him, even though it should. The more extreme lefties still believe he's the only game in town, kind of like the way the more extreme righties feel about Harper. Both Harper and Mulcair can move their parties to the centre when there is no one to take the extreme right or left votes away from them.
Which underscores how they are so similar in nature even though their goals are so different, and why Mulcair is not a good choice to follow in Harper's wake. What I will never understand is what happened to all those old school NDP partisans and true believers I knew for decades who would never have stood for this sort of thing, and not just Mulcair's choices but many of Layton's as well. I know it drove you away, it made my wife, a hardcore Dipper all her life until Layton's choices into a hardcore Trudeau Lib, but where is the more widespread revulsion and chastisement from those that truly want to claim the NDP as a party of values and principles first, instead of lust for power and expediency before all else first, as it has become? My problem isn't so much about where their ideology has gone to, but rather HOW it got there, THAT is what really troubles me about the modern NDP. How it talks out both sides of its mouth on things they always denounced in PCP and Libs in the past, yet embrace now that they are the second seat to power.
Take the way Mulcair is on the debates, and this idiotic notion that it is fine because Mulcair is after Harper's job, he doesn't need to debate others. If ANY prior Lib/PCPC/CPC leader had done that in any prior election shutting out the NDP the NDP would have risen as one in indignation about the fundamental anti-democratic nature of such treatment, and they would have been right to do so, because it is! For a party that dined out so much on being the defenders of democracy on the C51 vote where their votes, and indeed the Libs votes, had no real world impact on whether that bill passed in the form it was or not, when it comes to decisions that have a direct real world impact, Mulcair waffles, lets Harper call the shots, and then decides that Harper has it right and follows suit! I was infuriated in May when Mulcair failed to hold Harper to account for the Consortium debate given it is by far and away the widest exposure any/all leaders can and will get, especially at the same time together in the entire election. Seeing his choices this month have only furthered confirm my contempt for Mulcair and his so called care and protection of our democracy, because when the heat was on, when his decisions had immediate and powerful impact on it and the electoral process itself, he caved, and caved HARD.
Dark reflections of each other the two men are more and more appearing, and it is Mulcair that moves closer to Harper in this, not the other way around.
4 comments:
Maybe it's because the Liberals are moving to the right that you feel to imitate the WRP loons who think everything to the left of them are communists; but having worked with actual communists in Europe, I can assure you that the NDP are not communist in the slightest.
They're having a hard time even laying claim to the label "socialist" right now. They are probably where the Libs were around 15 years ago, except for in Alberta where they resemble the Loughheed PCs.
The Overton window has shifted massively to the right these days that even Red Tories like the LPC try and pretend that they are centrist.
Mulcair: "There are certain things that work and others that don't, and it's not surprising that I'm in favour of the things that work," seems like a good approach. Why, we might even call it sensible.
This is just the opposite of the true believers like the leader of the Cons whose “lower taxes' mantra has failed for 10 years but he still believes[1]. It's a bit like the US Republicans and Cuba. Sanctions did work for the first 50+ years but just wait ...
Private enterprise is outstandingly good at some things. Say building cars or providing a good choice of groceries in my local supermarket. Private industry is outstandingly bad at some things. Private prisons anyone?
1. Of course, he also believes that the Second Coming is due somewhere around next Tuesday. :(
@ harebell
+1
I moved from the NDP to the LPC because, starting with Layton, the NDP has moved so far to the right. I believe Trudeau's liberals are more progressive than Mulcair's NDP.
However, I agree this won't hurt him, even though it should. The more extreme lefties still believe he's the only game in town, kind of like the way the more extreme righties feel about Harper. Both Harper and Mulcair can move their parties to the centre when there is no one to take the extreme right or left votes away from them.
Gayle:
Which underscores how they are so similar in nature even though their goals are so different, and why Mulcair is not a good choice to follow in Harper's wake. What I will never understand is what happened to all those old school NDP partisans and true believers I knew for decades who would never have stood for this sort of thing, and not just Mulcair's choices but many of Layton's as well. I know it drove you away, it made my wife, a hardcore Dipper all her life until Layton's choices into a hardcore Trudeau Lib, but where is the more widespread revulsion and chastisement from those that truly want to claim the NDP as a party of values and principles first, instead of lust for power and expediency before all else first, as it has become? My problem isn't so much about where their ideology has gone to, but rather HOW it got there, THAT is what really troubles me about the modern NDP. How it talks out both sides of its mouth on things they always denounced in PCP and Libs in the past, yet embrace now that they are the second seat to power.
Take the way Mulcair is on the debates, and this idiotic notion that it is fine because Mulcair is after Harper's job, he doesn't need to debate others. If ANY prior Lib/PCPC/CPC leader had done that in any prior election shutting out the NDP the NDP would have risen as one in indignation about the fundamental anti-democratic nature of such treatment, and they would have been right to do so, because it is! For a party that dined out so much on being the defenders of democracy on the C51 vote where their votes, and indeed the Libs votes, had no real world impact on whether that bill passed in the form it was or not, when it comes to decisions that have a direct real world impact, Mulcair waffles, lets Harper call the shots, and then decides that Harper has it right and follows suit! I was infuriated in May when Mulcair failed to hold Harper to account for the Consortium debate given it is by far and away the widest exposure any/all leaders can and will get, especially at the same time together in the entire election. Seeing his choices this month have only furthered confirm my contempt for Mulcair and his so called care and protection of our democracy, because when the heat was on, when his decisions had immediate and powerful impact on it and the electoral process itself, he caved, and caved HARD.
Dark reflections of each other the two men are more and more appearing, and it is Mulcair that moves closer to Harper in this, not the other way around.
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