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Monday Oct. 8, 2005 |
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don't kick the kangaroo
by Angelo Persichilli
THE HILL TIMES
Canadians want a
change. But that change implies two steps.
Step One:
you must be convinced that what you have, in this case, a Liberal
government, is not good, and I believe you will find more than enough
support for that notion among voters.
Step two:
choosing a replacement, in this case the Conservatives. And this is where,
at the present time Canadians are stuck. While voters might be willing to
look for an alternative, the Conservatives refuse to give them one.
Conservatives are still convinced they can win the support of Canadians
voters saying ‘the Liberals are bad’. They should know that Canadians make
up their minds on their own about governments, they do not need the
opposition. In fact, very few, if any, governments have been defeated by
opposition parties: governments tend to defeat themselves.
They say
that success is the collision between preparation and opportunity. The role
of the opposition is to be ready at the proper time to take over the
country. It had been 4 years since 2000 and Canadians had been looking for
an alternative. They did not get one. A year later, little has changed.
So, what do
Conservatives have to do? Stop badmouthing the Liberals on stupid issues,
like the use of government jets or launching childish jokes about how much a
pizza dinner costs. The Liberals have much more serious deficiencies in
their government and the failure of the Conservatives to identify them
speaks volumes about the reasons why they’re still in the opposition.
The
Liberals are very good with gimmicks and grassroots politics, but recently
they’ve been having problems with ideas and vision for this country.
The
Conservatives, on the other hand, have a good leader who is eager to present
ideas and a vision. But he leads a party that sticks to bad political
gimmicks.
So what are
the Conservatives doing? Instead of challenging the Liberals on their real
weaknesses, things like public policy issues, they engaged in a game of
crass politics and gimmicks and fighting against the Liberals who’s would
seem to specialize crass politics and gimmicks. The Conservatives are
amateurs on this.
Case in
point was last week’s daily 45- minute Question Period, or The Daily Show,
where the main issue was, for some Conservative MPs, the cost of the
government Challenger jet and, for other rocket scientists in the federal
Conservative caucus, the cost of a pizza dinner.
I know that
those issues will really grab some rookie MPs. And if they’re lucky, they’ll
even get their picture in the newspaper. The newspapers may even sell more
copies. But this strategy won’t get the Conservatives one single vote more
when come election time
Conservatives believe that the Liberals won their three back-to-back
elections because they were good at throwing mud at them. It is true, but
they fail to understand that that was then, and the belligerent
Conservatives should stop trying to provide raw material.
If Conservatives really want to stop it, they should just stop
giving the Liberals mud to throw at them. If the Conservatives believe they
can win a kicking match with a kangaroo, then they are heading for a fourth
straight historic defeat whenever the election might come |
