Bull-shit.

The Liberal party is dead and the “natural governing party” title now belongs to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, author Peter C. Newman has proclaimed in his new book.

Really?  With 36% support of voters, roughly, I’d hardly call harper’s CONs the ruling party.  Considering the massive world-wide economic and social upheavals, I expect that support will drop before the next election.  Harper is constantly shifting his platform, sometimes running contradictory ones at the same time in an attempt to please Westerners and Easterners.  His core base hasn’t increased, and there is even some dissent there as they grow impatient that he is not giving them extremist right wing paradise now that he has a majority.

Harper is unable to realistically consider or predict how the rest of the world affects Canada, and he is not skilled at international politics resulting in our country losing credibility on several fronts.
Our own economy is not terribly healthy and things are going to get worse.  So far, harper has failed to improve our situation and his planning on economic issues is short sighted and insular.

“If you had the chance to relaunch the Liberal party today, would you? The answer has to be a resounding ‘No!’ because there no longer seems to be a need for one.”

Oh?  Do the Liberals know this?  Maybe Newman can interrupt them as they re-launch to let them know that they would never think of it.

Perhaps Newman should have waited a little longer and widened his research before writing the final draft of his book -

His new book, When the Gods Changed, charts the decline — largely as it occurred in the past few years under Ignatieff’s leadership. Ignatieff resigned in May, immediately after the party was reduced to 34 seats in the federal election.
Ignatieff was a bad choice for leader.  The Liberal party was torn and hadn’t yet accepted the reality that it needed to really examine itself and change to meet the new realities of our world and our country.  Being knocked to third place for the first time ever has shaken them up and they know that whatever shape they take next has to be radically different, offering something the other two parties don’t.  There is still the need for a centrist party that recognizes there needs to be compromise in a country as diverse as Canada.  As Rae said - the Conservatives and the NDP are guilty of populist pandering to their core constituencies.  “The trouble with the populist narrative, whether of the left or the right, is its essential dishonesty,” Mr. Rae maintains, “as if a simple bumper sticker ‘tax the rich’ or ‘tough on crime’ is really going to provide answers to the real issues we face as a country.”  

And talk not from the Liberals of protecting the power of the middle class, a change in how they deal with harper’s contempt of Parliamentary procedure, more pro-active moves rather than reactive.  And within the party, a real determination to shape itself according to what’s best for Canadians rather than attempt to shape Canadians into what they think we should be – like harper is trying to do by re-writing history, changing national symbols, and endless sloganeering.

I really hope Newman lives long enough to see the Liberal party after it is launched and well under way.