Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Barber Wants the NDP to Go Away

John Barber's latest thoughts on the NDP

It's a long article, but there's no need to read the whole thing (not that I'm stopping you or anything). The crux of it is this.

NDP perversity revealed itself nakedly in the last election, which brought an enormous tranche of Tories to power as a result of ruinous left-wing vote splits.

Yep. Those damn third parties! Why don't they understand that the world needs a two-party system just like in the United States! All these extra parties are only distracting us from picking the lesser of two evils.

I don't care for Harper. I think a Harper majority would be a disaster for Canadians - and I don't even have any daughters. But I've looked at the Liberal history and you know what? I'm not proud of how they handled Arar. I'm not happy with the giant surpluses the federal government had while people wait six months for MRIs. I'm not happy with our lack of action in the Liberal years on the automobile mileage and pollution limits. I'm not happy with the minimum wage or the way we handled drug abuse, homelessness or the cost of education.

We can't permit the Liberal Party to hold us hostage simply because the Conservatives would be worse. The NDP should exist and should be there, hopping around on its left leg. If Dion and the rest of his bunch want to knock the NDP down, then look at the NDP platform. If the Liberals really give a damn about keeping the Conservatives out of power, then they should kick the left leg out from under Jack Layton and declare proper left-leaning planks in their platform.

But don't go blaming the NDP for existing and offering what the voters want. The voters know exactly what they're doing. They're voting their consciences. They're voting NDP even though they know that it might let a Conservative in. You know why? Because they don't believe that the Liberal Party will do them any better than the Conservatives. There is no guarantee that, denied a way to cast an NDP vote, an NDP voter will vote Liberal. It's just not that simple.

The voters are consistently teaching the Liberals a lesson. That lesson is: do what we want or we won't vote for you; we will vote for the candidate and the party that represents what we want; learn what we want and offer us that.

Until the Liberal party learns that lesson, they deserve everything they get - or don't get.

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