Quote:
Originally Posted by Cowboy89
My Thoughts on how some parties are getting labelled differently on the right-left spectrum in this election:
I don't really think it' unfair to label Redford as Liberal if the word 'blue' is put in front of it. She's more Liberal in the mold of Paul Martin than Stephane Dion and more 'conservative' in the mold of Joe Clark than Stephen Harper. The problem for her is that the Province seemed to have no problem voting in Stephen Harper's Conservatives last May to the tune of 60%+ support and threw Joe Clark's PC party to the dogs vs. the Canadian Alliance the last time he led the federal PCs.
As for the Liberals being called massive lefties, I actually can see how some people can honestly believe that and not suffer from delusion. Look at the policies of the Liberal Party platform and put it right up against the NDP's platform. Hell look at Taft's platform from 2008 vs. Sherman's 2012 platform. There's a whole lot more income redistribution going on in Sherman's platform! Looking at the NDP platform outside of a couple of NDP pro-union axes to grind they look very similar to the Liberals. In fact if you make $250k/year in this province, the Raj Sherman Liberals actually want to take a magnitude more of your income in taxes than Brian Mason's NDP.
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Pretty much. In my view, the NDP is still the NDP, but the Liberals are pushing right up against them, or gone further left in some ways. I suspect the Liberals are moving left because the PCs are. Wildrose was originally PCers pissed off at Stelmach, but has since become the people the PCs left behind.
Whether or not the government changes in two weeks, I think it is clear Alberta is pulling another massive shift as it is prone to do every 3-4 decades. In time, I believe there will be a couple of mergers on the left, and we will be back to a three party system with Wildrose as the right wing, the PCs in the centre and NDP/Liberals on the left under a new banner that escapes the negative connotations both names carry in this province (likely a usurpation of the Alberta party name)