Take a look at this:
Someone should tell these malcontents that the one thing the Liberals absolutely cannot afford is a divisive, faction-ridden convention in January. Either the third-place party unites, or it dies.
The malcontents, Ibbitson refers to, are those who dare to question the prudence of certain reforms being proposed by the National Board. And the unity he demands, is for the purpose of supporting these reforms.
This is a classic example of the shock doctrine in action. Take a group of people who have been traumatized, like the members of the Liberal Party, and use them as blank slate on which some elite know-it-all can write his preferred policies. Add the spectre of imminent death and the hope is the grassroots of the Liberal Party will embrace these proposals the way lemmings embrace a cliff.
Ibbitson takes particular exception to anonymous LIberal MPs who doubt the usefulness of open nominations at the riding level. May I suggest that he take a quick glance South of the border to see what this type of process has wrought over the past 20 years. Thanks to open nominations and the Club for Growth, the moderate wing of Republican Party no longer exists. And the ongoing failure of American politicians to address the debt crisis is directly related to the manipulation of an open nominating process by special interests.
I'm not saying Liberals shouldn't adopt open nominations, maybe they should. But to label anyone who raises concerns as malcontents, divisive and promoting factionalism is as brazen as it is intellectually dishonest, which is to say very.
Many of these proposals have a rather specious quality to them and lose their lustre on closer inspection. Not to mention that they haven't even been finalized yet.
So I'm afraid John Ibbitson will just have to learn to tolerate a little dissent as Liberals work out the details of his pet project for themselves.
2 comments:
I would take John Ibbitson with a grain of salt. This is the same columnist who was ga ga giddy for Harper to release "wild Steve" and do his worst shortly after the last election. He had written other columns related to that. Clearly, it is not within Ibbitson, or those like him, for the Liberals or the NDP to succeed. They would like to see Harper in power indefinitely.
I take him with many grains of salt and he's still unpalatable.
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