Another election, another Conservative minority government. It’s not very surprising that we ended up with what we already had, especially as not much has changed since the last election. Voter turnout was at an all time low, again indicating that people were bored with this election and felt like it didn’t really matter what they did. Still, as the left-wing continue to split the votes, while the right-wing elect another government, I must admit that the US election is much more interesting (if not, insanely and unnecessarily long). This got me thinking, is our Conservative Party very different from the American Republicans? Being very liberal, I find them both a bit scary, but are our Conservatives so scary in the grand scheme of things? It appears not really.
I remember seeing Rachel Marsden (a Canadian Conservative and a real piece of work; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Marsden) on The O’Reilly Factor (another real piece of work) discussing how liberal the Canadian Conservative Party is compared to the Republican Party. She was in favour of a more conservative Conservative Party in Canada and pretty much calling the Canadians weak sauce.
This political spectrum was brought to my attention from another blog and seems to illustrate that our Conservative Party is at par with Obama.
Obama isn’t so bad. I actually really like Obama. So, I guess our political situation could be a lot worse – we could be stuck with George W. or McCain. Although, I think I’d prefer Obama to Harper, even if they have essentially equal views. Harper is such a dweeb!
Here’s another question for you: what’s happening right now that people are looking to the PC party as a legitimate choice? We were under Liberal leadership for many years, and then opinion shifted.
And when are we going to get electoral reform, dammit!
Well, if you ask people from “back home”, it’s because the Liberals started the gun registry. But on a national level, it seems to be a shift toward keeping taxes low and cutting social spending. It may be due to the economy’s downturn.
People need to let the gun registry thing go. Ok, it was an administrative f**k up, but really, is it so bad knowing where our implements of death are kept?
I think Shook has it partially correct about the taxes and spending. Unfortunately this has been a big pull of the wool over the eyes. I know I’m not really benefiting from the whooping 2% in GST (if you don’t buy big item stuff you really don’t save that much from it). I would have preferred the income tax cut that the liberals put into play before they got boot (Paul Martin’s Liberals). The Conservatives really haven’t been saving us all that much money despite the cut. They’ve squandered the surplus that the Liberals built up over their 12+ years in power.
I think one reason why the Conservatives did well was because there was nobody to vote for. Dion really isn’t leader material and with the way the system is people feel they are throwing away their vote by voting NDP or Green since they often aren’t in contention … although the NDP did very well in this election.
I’m with Fang. We need electoral reform. And we need it now. Unfortunately it’s never going to happen with either the Liberals or the Conservatives in power. Also, people (the collective panic bunch, not individuals) are too afraid of change. I also don’t think that electoral reform should be left up to a referendum. The government in power just makes a poorly worded question giving the impression that it gives a dingleberry, but words the question so poorly that lawyers can’t even figure it out and so they (the gov’t) gets to keep the status quo.
It’s funny that in Ontario the majority of the panel, which had one average Joe or Jill from every riding, responsible for studying MPP were favour of it. Some how that message didn’t get out to the electorate. Nor was there any campaign to push for MPP.