The Liberal Party: Rejecting their own advice after 3 years

Picture it- August, 2006:  A growing number of Liberal party members "sense something isn't working, but mostly cannot put their finger on what that 'something' is," so they put together a Red Ribbon task force (don't confuse it with supporting our troops) and apparently spent "countless hours determining exactly what that 'something" is." The result of this task force was a 30 page document titled: Red Ribbon Task Force- A Party Built for Everyone, A Party Built to Win.  Honestly, I'm not making this title up.  Check it out for yourself here.

Having a little too much spare time on my hands, I poked around the Liberal party's website and discovered this lovely document, which is ironic to say the least and whether anyone realizes or not, accurately describes why the Liberal party has gone nowhere over the past 3 years.

Overall, their task force examined the party and its functioning within its own parameters and did not address its relationship with the rest of the Canadian public.  However, the gist of the central message can quite easily be transfered to the party's relationship (a deteriorating one at that) with other Canadians.  What do I mean by this? Here is one central message of theirs in a nutshell, page 30:

"We have, in building a great national institution, failed to reinforce the linkages back to where it all begins – in the hearts and minds of our members and the communities where they live. This report proposes to reconnect them."  Translation:  We have forgotten that our crap stinks just as much as anyone else's.  Average Canadians do matter.

What is really comical is that in the paragraph before they make this statement:

"We think that part of what defines us as Liberals are the lengths to which we go to ensure representation of society’s’underrepresented, and of provinces and territories who form the federation of our country."

Hmm, do you think that maybe that's part of your problem?  They have difficulty attracting and retaining new members in their party, want to reach out to the "grassroots" and yet state that they are willing to go to ANY lengths to secure the votes of the "underrepresented."  While there is nothing wrong with giving a voice to those who get pushed aside, it seems they push aside the interests of average Canadians and therefore have lost all ability to connect with them.

The reason I am writing about this in my post if you are wondering, is because as  a Conservative, I know that my party listens to those average Canadians.  These days, I don't think it's the minorities that are not being heard, I think the regular law-abiding, tax-paying, hard working citizen is being forgotten.  I think the Conservative party has done a pretty good job so far in making sure our needs are addressed in their legislation and their party's policies.  Maybe it's also because our leader was one of us average folk before becoming Prime Minister and still likes weiners cut up in his Kraft dinner. 

"I warn you I am no Paul Martin Michael Ignatieff... I wasn't born into a family with a seat at the cabinet table. I grew up playing in the streets of Toronto, not playing in the corridors of power ... I'll never be able to give my kids a billion-dollar company ... When my family goes on vacation, it isn't on a corporate executive jet, I pay for the ticket, and we stand in line to get a seat with everyone else. We don't have a company pension, I can't raid the pension of my employees; Laureen and I save and count on the same Canada Pension Plan that everyone else gets."

- Stephen Harper's leadership speech, January 12, 2004

The Demise of the Canadian Citizen

Listening to CFRA here in Ottawa this morning, I began to see just how far our freedom as Canadian citzens has eroded over time.  These deceptive and not-so deceptive infringements mainly stem from our provincial and municipal governments.  For example, this morning I learned that here in Ontario and the city of Ottawa tax payers money is going towards the funding of garbage police, antique car police (it is illegal to have certain car parts on your antique car), pie police (illegal to sell home-baked goodies), meat police (illegal to butcher your own food), sawdust police (illegal for saw mills to have piles of sawdust lying around), property police (illegal to pretty much do anything on your own property without a permit or license), the list goes on unfortunately.

On our lovely CBC radio programs we hear talking heads that rave about putting in a greenbelt that streches from Toronto northward, cutting through many farmer's fields and yet not once was there any discussion of compensation for these farmers or anyone for that matter, no discussion about how property owners in Ontario feel about this greenbelt brainwave...it's as if the oxygen in the air is slowly being sucked out and it's getting harder and harder to breathe.  We can also add the oh-so popular (add sarcasatic tone) Dalton McGuinty and his unwillingness to hold public discussions with the taxpayers that are supposed to support the new HST.  It's as if what Canadians think, in reality, does not matter anymore.

It's as though each time the government puts forward some new regulation designed for our well being (it always is) one more string is attached to our bodies until we have so many of them we become puppets of the government, unable to move or do anything without the government saying its ok.  I find this incredibly disturbing on many levels.

What does this kind of environment do to Canadian citizens?  For starters, it stifles our ability to be creative, it stifles our innovation and our motivation.  Wonder why our GDP is dropping off? Wonder why our standard of living is decreasing?  You can thank our wonderful government for most of that, and in the end we must also point the finger at ourselves.  In our hastiness to have government look after all our little problems we have in turn relinquished our freedoms with them.  Thats the price of having any kind of large, welfare/nanny/mother-knows-best style of government.  By ridding ourselves of personal responsibilty to ourselves, our neighbors, our communities and our country, we are forced to inevitably accept the consequences which we are seeing today. 

It is my hope that it's not too late to change the direction we are heading in.

Why the Liberal Party will continue to decline

From comics.com

There was member of my family who was an alcoholic and just like the Liberal Party, he refused to admit that he had a problem, only the problem with the Liberal Party has nothing to do with alcohol addiction, it has more to do with power addiction. 

What clarified this issue for me is a famous saying by Dr. Phil, and that is, "You can't change what you don't acknowledge."  Clearly, the Liberal Party has yet to come to this realization.  They are still in denial about a whole range of things, the most important being the purpose of their party's existence and what it is that Canadians-all Canadians want for their country.  It's as if they wrapped themselves in a cocoon spun by various interest groups and somehow managed to block out the outside world and what has been happening in the country for the last 10 years.  They have neglected their core principles and replaced them with a needy-partner complex with their supporters.  Their focus became on how to maintain power and because of this the party has lost all sight of its core prinicples and the needs of everyday Canadians.

This explains the "idealist" mentality that Steve Janke in his blog ascribes to the party, and the sentiment that they are somehow above the average Canadian.  They refuse to take a good look at themselves in the mirror to find the reason for their decline in popularity and instead utilize the "fire-the-coach" mentality.  They've lost the last 2 Stanley Cups of politics (Federal elections) and felt it was the leader's fault for losing, not their own.  This is why they continue to point the finger at anyone but themselves, whether it's Steven Harper, the media, Canadians, their own staff members and their own leaders.

One has to ask, what will it take for the Liberal Party to wake-up and see reality?  As a Conservative, I somewhat enjoy watching the Liberals die a slow and rather hideous death, but thats the partisan side of me.  The other side of me watches with fascination, like a by-stander watches the scene of a bad accident.  My guess is that the Liberal Party is going to have to hit rock bottom before they will be able to make the changes they need to become relevant once again.  What rock bottom is for them, is up for speculation, but most people I have talked to believe it will be a significantly reduced amount of seats in the next Federal Election and running third in many ridings across the country.  Feel free to add your opinions to this discussion.

Bottom line is this, just as Dr. Phil put it, the Liberal Party will continue to decline until they finally acknowledge that they have a problem with wanting and desperately clinging to power.

The Blonde Conservative: New name, new blog, new start

It's been a few years since I fired up the ol' blog and posted my thoughts.  Since my last post on my former blog, The Blonde Conservative (I am no longer blonde) I'd like to think I have grown in both experience and wisdom.  My father passed away in June, a week before Father's Day.  He had spent the last 11 + years living with Hepititis C and went through a second liver transplant, but he wasn't strong enough to make it.  He was only 55 when he passsed away.  Looking back I can see just how much my father has influenced me in my life and helped make me who I am today. 

I never was a girly girl, I was a tomboy to say the least.  Even though I did play with my dolls, I enjoyed playing marbles with the guys outside, or wresting, and later, target practice with my dad's .22 bolt action rifle.  I was only one of 2 girls in highschool that signed up for the hunter safety course (you can probably guess what my feelings are regarding the long gun registry) and I never subscribed to the belief that you should ignore bullies, hence I ended up punching one rather hard in the head (all lessons learned from my dad).

Ultimately, I've never done things because everybody else is doing it.  I question everything.  I don't believe that there are people on this earth who are better than anyone else, no matter what their title may be.  My sources of inspiration are God, my dad,  John Diefenbaker and Margaret Thatcher (in that order).  It is John Diefenbaker that is my main inspiration for this blog, and I felt it was time to once again be a voice of reason in this political wilderness.  So here I am once again.

Thanks for visiting, I hope to hear from you soon!

"Politics is a game requiring great coolness and an utter abnegation of prejudice and personal feeling." - Sir John A Macdonald, letter to Sidney Smith, October 13, 1860