Liberals Going Left?

"elite marinating"?  Gee...I thought that was just his aftershave.

Good idea -=+=-, but um, can't use that private health care one, remember the Shouldice Clinic. 

NR, using the Shouldice Clinic is perfectly fine.  It pre-existed the introduction of public healthcare in Canada, and is grandfathered into the system.  People are referred their by the public system doctors, pay with their healthcare cards, and pay no extra user fees.  The Conservatives try to tar Jack Layton with that one erroneously, and we don't need to help them.

Child care again?  Seriously.  Seriously?

My child, who the Liberals promised to provide universal child care for, is now babysitting regularly another generation of kids who would be similarly let down by the Liberals. 

Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me,  try to fool me a hundred times with the same broken promises - shame on the Liberals.

Exactly BA, but I expect a good portion of Ontarians to suck into it....not so much the RoC.

and  good catch on that skewing OO. ;)

However, the real icky part of Ignatieff's words and Liberal party actions is that they are expropriating women in dire need of all life necessities in other countries to try and get themselves elected. Say nothing of the optics of saying to a country to whom one is giving aid..."hey we will fund and provide abortions too."

Not content to exploit women in foreign countries to make themselves "appear" left, they get a double bang on the exploitation buck as they are doing it here at home. The Liberals again exploit children and families with their lies of day care, which we know will not happen, Harper has emptied tax payer coffers on his war machine for generations to come.

The Liberal's sense of privilege, as evidenced by their lack of conscience in the exploitation realm is pretty damn sociopathic.

Moreover, it seems pretty damn strange of Ignatieff to speak about abortions in respect to Harper acting on it, let alone state that he believes Harper should be using our tax dollars to fund them in other countries.

I mean really beyond the obvious exploitation of others, what in the hell would make Ignatieff and his advisors think these type of actions would float with Canadians even, let alone be an attack on Harper? Are they trying to knock themselves back down  in the polls?

This whole thing is freaking mind boggling in may directions....

If you're going to be in a shootout with the Liberals, here's the scouting report on them: They always fake left and then move to the right.

Here's Chantal Hebert on the recycled child care promises.

Ignatieff should be careful about taking a pro-abortion stance.  Many Canadians support restricting abortion and do not believe in unrestricted access to it or that the public should have to pay for someone else's contraception.

He may turn off conservative Liberals with this position.

No, the majoriity of Canadians support it, it's loser right wingers that throw this shit and hope it sticks.

Didn't Jean Chretien promise to end child poverty almost twenty years ago? The Liberals are beholden to the same moneyed elites(created by regressive tax 'reforms') as the Conservatives, so why should anyone take them seriously? 

TGIF ... means the Conservative Resource Group will be off duty for the weekend, thank goodness.

Hate to rain on your parade but I've heard very few suggest Dion was a "rightwing Liberal" (I don't mean within the context of Canadian politics per se, but within the Liberal Party spectrum - where he was considered to be on the left).  It's true he didn't really take away votes from the NDP, but the bulk of the collapsing Liberal vote (that didn't stay home) went Tory.

Nope, Dion was a right-wing Liberal.

Why was he labelled left-wing by the media and Tories?  Almost exclusively on environmental issues.  What was his big "left-wing" policy idea in this area?  Essentially a green GST.  This is a right-wing, Green, eco-capitalist position.

On bread and butter left wing positions he was largely silent.  (And, in fact, on labour issues usually took the right-wing position eg:  opposing federal anti-scab legislation).

Now you can argue that Liberal's talk left, govern right.  But Dion didn't even do that (though this might have been sheer incompetence).  Ignatieff, under the influence of new advisers, appears to be going back to talking left.

[Slight drift] Mod intervention time.

Hi Augustus. You've used a few what I would call "red flag" terms in this brief statement of yours.  

"pro abortion"  

"do not believe in unrestricted access to it"  

"pay for someone else's contraception"

Please know that on babble a woman's right to make a choice regarding any pregnancy that she has is her choice. Any other position infringes on that right. Given that there is no abortion law in Canada, the choice is a woman's to make. Privately. What others do or do not believe is irrelevant.

Referring to abortion as contraception is offensive, deliberately baiting and is, in fact, incorrect. It's a classic sound bite from the anti-woman so-called "pro-lifers" though.

Stop it. If necessary, refrain from posting on this topic. This is a warning.

[End of thread drift.] 

That is the whole point of this thread.  The Liberals may be going back to courting NDP voters instead of Tories.

You forget that when faced by the Canadian Alliance, Jean Chretien publicly supported "a woman's right to choose" for the first time.  And as I recall, things turned out pretty good for him (multiple majorities and NDP vote suppressed to < 10%).

Unlike "cap and trade" of course, which really scares the living daylights out of the corporate elite.

But it registered as "left" enough to a certain hitherto-faithful constituency that (mildly contrary to Lord P.'s claim) did show signs of shifting Gritward: the "Peggy Atwood" Annex-type culturati.  That is, unless you want to write them off as Bob Rae-type fairweather leftists or disenfranchised "Crombie Tories" all along...

Margaret Atwood has always described herself as a Red Tory.  And Dion's green GST approach seems to have been the kind of thing that appeals to them.

Is this why the media called him left-wing?  Perhaps.  It always struck me as strange and kind of lazy.  But then there is such confusion over environmental issues.

No kidding, like these leftists in Canada who believe that cap and trade is somehow more radical and less "market-based" than a carbon tax.

But then again, toss such voters away and you just might wind up tossing away seats like Trinity-Spadina.

Which is why discussions like this wind up seeming like an opposite number to the Thatcherite marginalization of Tory "wets"...

Precisely - it's the old Chrétien hacks like Donolo doing the classic 1993 Red Book move of promising left-wing sounding policies to siphon off NDP votes and then going hard right when in power.  It shows 2 things, IMHO: a) the Martin Blue Liberal message is now defunct in the Iggy brain trust - they are saying that creating jobs trumps the deficit, gotta do child care no matter what, i.e. the exact opposite of Iggy's previous message until he fired his entire senior staff in November; b) they view the NDP as a serious threat to their electoral strategy and are taking steps to neutralize it.

Now, we all know these Iggy promises are as fake as Harper's hair, but it doesn't mean they won't be effective in drawing off NDP support.  The Libs have been out front with policy announcements over the last few weeks and the NDP has been relatively quiet except on the prorogation legislation - Jack and co need to start making some positive proposals for the upcoming budgets on key issues like jobs, climate change, green energy, etc.  If we want to be the alternative to Harper, we have to start talking about the alternative NDP agenda to the Conservative government, IMHO.

http://www.allangould.com/magazines/interviews/margaretatwood/magazines_interviews_margaretatwood.html

Child care?

The Harper child care record is actually to the left of the Liberal record

Harper's is merely inadequate.

The Liberals' is non-existent.

 So Iggy is trying to out left the left.  well Iggy your party had time to implement a polcy. now you want to great. I am totally for it. you say who cares about the cost because it needs to be done. great i can't wait to see it.

then again iggy's prov cousins promised action on poverty reduction in ontario and then forgot to write a cheque, they promised universal daycare for all children who happen to live in select areas etc

so Iggy i will believe it when you do it. until you actually do something you are no better then the right you want to replace.  no wait you are identical to the right you want to replace

lib tory same old story

Problem is, a whole host of "progressives" will now demand the NDP stand aside to give the Lying Liberals a free pass because they are pretending to be to the left of Harper.

That's also the big problem with the "tactical voting" proposals:

There has been little in those proposals that asks anything of the Liberals, and a lot is asked of the other opposition parties.

Thus, tactical voting tends to sound like it's code for "know your place-vote Liberal".

Ignatieff's recent comments were offensive to a lot of people.  The Archbishop spoke out against them last week.

Funny I did not know they ever stopped in their myriad of ways, that they do so in....

that is just  a classic liberal ploy - and personally it is getting tired. Maybe they could come up with something new - not going to happen and not with Iggy as there leader. Everybody knows it's bull. Been around the block too many times with them and the public knows it.