Quote:
Originally Posted by calgarygeologist
The UCP pulled it off though. Why couldn't a switch from ANDP to anything else works as well? Maybe it might be somewhat more difficult because of the province-federal relationship but I honestly don't know the inner workings of that and how painful the divorce would be.
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These situations aren't remotely analogous.
In the scenario you presented, you had a federal elected official coming under the auspice of performing the same type of rapproachment that had already happened under his mentor at the federal level of two largely aligned parties with material personal differences (the federal scenario being the combination of the alliance and the ol PCs.)
The party retained both the volunteer base and partial fund raising machinery of two already established parties, one which had ruled Alberta for 40 years. The bases weren't materially changing their policy platforms at the time, just overcoming personal differences.
Now it's interesting as I would also not be inclined to call this "pulled off." From who's perspective? IMO what happened in the medium term is that the Wildrose totally overran the PC faithful (who became disenfranchised and disinterested) and now we essentially have the Wildrose with PC level funding in power. So did the PC faithful pull it off? I would say no.
In this scenario we'd either be proposing a new party formed with totally new fundraising and volunteer architecture required. This is brutally difficult.
Alternately, you're proposing a pretty permanent and radical shift to the base of a single party- abandoning some of it's core voters and long term supporters to don a new mantle with new priorities yet retaining a large amount of volunteers and funding. This is not as difficult as the first scenario from a resource perspective, but may be much more intense and difficult from a personal / personnel perspective.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fuzz
And the voters are stupid, they put Danielle Smith in charge.
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Yes, voters are stupid. I'm stupid and a voter so there's your proof.
I am not sure why you seem to believe this is an earth shattering revelation. Maybe I missed something?
We are arguing the same point. I am not defending the notion of lying to the voters, only rationalizing that it has to be so because of your point that voters are stupid.
They are, and so they can't handle the full truth all the time.
The UCP are currently wielding this exact principle on the majority of their base, feeding them lies to pass policies that will directly harm the rural voters.
It's an uneven playing field, and by acting totally transparent all the time the NDP are effectively conceding the "high-ground" (though it's the low road) to the opposition by refusing to play on those terms.