[octothorp]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

I don't know if I agree with this, once the Liberal's were tossed out of power in the last election, public opinion pretty much stabalized in the middle. I think that the day and age of the dominant political party in Canada is pretty much at an end. Your going to see a lot of minority governments being in power for a very short time. Your also going to see a back and forth between the Conservatives and the Liberals. One thing that has killed the Liberals, expecially since Chretien retired is that the Liberals don't appear to have a strong leader or leadership candidate in their bull pen that can capture the nations imagination or make you over look the Liberals gaffs. Stephen Harper for all of his faults, and his lack of personality looks like a strong controlling leader. As long as the Conservatives keep thier more extreme members under control or away from the media they should win this election. Meanwhile Dion has trouble controlling his party, probably because a great deal of the Liberal's probably want this election loss so that they can toss Dion aside and start rebuilding their party.

I agree with you on the minority governments, I think we're close in make-up to the Diefenbaker / Pearson years, which beyond Diefenbaker's 1958 government, was very back and forth. In Canada, there are ridings that will always vote Conservative, (or another right wing party), and there are ridings that will always vote Liberal. But the number of ridings that always vote Liberal are greater in number. Similarly, there's a greater number of ridings who would never vote Liberal, while there are few that would never vote Conservative. Since 1935, the Liberals have received less than 95 seats only three times, and never surpassed 180 seats. They have a fairly stable base here. The Conservatives are much more volatile, sometimes looking like they're going to disappear off the political map, other times achieving heights that the Liberals could never dream of. But any time the Conservatives have made a significant push into power, it's always been at least in part thanks to Liberal corruption: that St. Laurent's Liberals were in the back pocket of big business, that Turner's Liberals had done nothing about the generous appointments Trudeau handed out at the end of his campaign, and of course all of the corruption allegations around Martin's Liberals, or the allegations he had inherited from his predecessor's years. The Liberal voting powerbase in Ontario and Quebec will punish the Liberals if they feel that they've gone to far (and occasionally they'll embrace a charismatic Conservative leader), but they will swing back to voting Liberal, it's just a matter of how quickly.

I think your really wrong on this, I think Dion was screwed whichever way he went. Frankly he was hoping that his retreat strategy would keep the government in power longer so that he could rebuild his party coffers, prepare better for election and have a big scandal or two or an economic collapse to fall back on. This hasen't happened, and Dion must be crapping himself going into the debates because I think he's going to get hammered on, especially considering his main party platform is the Green Shift which is confusing, and to me badly conceived and a thinly disguised economic transfer system. And because its really his only policy, Harper is going to focus on picking it apart over two nights of debates. I almost expect to see a Brian Mulroney/John Turner style knockout punch from Harper at the debates.

Well I agree with everything there except the first sentence. The debates are going to be a disaster for Dion; he's entirely on the defensive. If he had come out and run a more critical campaign that the Conservatives are hypocrites and can't be trusted, he'd be on much better footing right now. Not necessarily in a position to win, but certainly not facing the prospect of a Conservative majority.

And you don't think the Liberals don't run on chriticism, come on, they've already alluded to secret agendas if the Conservatives get a majority and they've used the term neocon several times and bought up the Bush boogey man statement. Sure Dion is running on the Green Shift, but he comes across as not believing in it himself as he's making changes on the fly depending who he talks to (farm exceptions, etc). And is he really passionate about the environment, he certainly didn't show it as the environment minister as he sat on his hands and did nothing. He's passionate about it because its the only platform point that he has thats maybe different and unique, and his one main platform is probably going to cost him the election and more importantly the leadership of his party.

No, it's not that the Liberals don't run on criticism. Certainly they try to, and they should as it's the only way they're going to make any inroads. But they end up spending so much time defending the Green Shift that they can't effectively put together any coherent message about the shortcomings of the Conservative party.