On Libs who cried wolf

John at Dymaxion World has already thoroughly eviscerated a Lib blogger's attempt to claim that any difference from the Libs' position on every issue represents agreement with PMS. But let's take another look at an as-of-yet-undemolished portion of Lobster Thermidor's diatribe:

(C)learly Harper is more dangerous than Manning or Day, since they never came close to winning, and he has won. The danger a politician poses is not just a measurement of his views, but the chances he has of implementing them. For example, Ernst Zundel is a pretty serious ass-hole, but he poses no danger of forming a government.

Which makes for a rather fun effort in post-hockery. But shouldn't it stand to reason that if Manning and Day really were lesser threats than Harper, the Libs should have treated them as such at the time?

With that in mind, let's take a quick look at whether the Libs were any less set on demonizing Manning and Day than Harper. And the answer is "not for a second". Take for example the Globe and Mail's discussion of the 2000 campaign:

The 2000 campaign, said by many observers to be the nastiest in recent memory, saw the party leaders or their key lieutenants make accusations of racism, hidden agendas and criminal activity...

Liberal Immigration Minister Elinor Caplan said that some Alliance supporters were "racists" and "Holocaust deniers" and that Mr. Day should be judged by the support he attracts.

From Making Sense of the Vote (PDF):

When Prime Minister Chrétien called the election on October 22, he immediately launched into a forceful appeal to voters to think about their values and beliefs. The election call was framed as an opportunity for Canadians to choose between different visions and different values: “This election” Chrétien declared, “offers two very different visions of Canada, two crystal clear alternatives. The nature of that choice is clear and the right time to choose is now” (CBC, The National, October 22). And if there was ever any ambiguity about which parties spoke for each of the “two visions”, clarity on the matter was supplied by the Liberal Minister of Finance at the end of the first week of the campaign. “Never has there been an election in the history of this country” claimed Paul Martin, “where the line in the sand has been drawn as clearly as it has been between the Liberal vision and the Alliance vision” (CBC, The National, October 29). The Liberals portrayed the Alliance as a party appealing to “narrow interests” and as a party that would “Americanize Canada” (Globe and Mail, October 28, A8). Meanwhile, the Liberals presented themselves as the champions of “the values that made Canada what it is today” (Globe and Mail, October 26, A10) and they argued that it was important to “keep working on that because we never know when there will not be a force who will come and appeal to the dark side that exists in human beings”(Globe and Mail, October 31, A4).

And finally, Wikipedia highlights the Hidden Agenda ad about Day.

In sum, the Libs quite clearly used exactly the same rhetoric against Day in 2000 that they reheated as the basis for their 2004 and 2006 campaigns against Harper. And the phrasing was no less apocalyptic as to the potential consequences of voting for the then-Alliance.

But never mind what the Libs actually said and did at the time. In Lobster Thermidor's view, the Libs' 2000 campaign was in fact completely out to lunch since the Alliance didn't end up winning. And in true Lib fashion, LT figured that rather than noticing that assumed error in judgment, Canadians should simply have forgotten all about it, then accepted the same tired lines a second time (and indeed a third, since by LT's definition Harper wasn't actually a "danger" in 2004 either).

In reality, of course, the problem with reciting the same lines over and over again is that they naturally become less believable with each passing recitation - which combined with the public's justified fatigue with the Libs unfortunately served to put the Cons in power now.

But enough about what the Libs actually did. Let's look at this from another angle dealing with what they could have done to prevent a Harper government.

Surely any realistic analysis of a political system as complex and diverse as Canada's has to acknowledge that no one party can hold power indefinitely. Which means that if the Libs really wanted to keep the current Cons and their predecessors out of power in the longer term, the Libs should have taken some radically different courses in the '90s - such as, say, holding their fire from the NDP to allow it to emerge as the leading alternative, or implementing a PR system which would have ensured that the majority of Canadian voters who support parties from the Libs leftward would have that consensus reflected in Parliament.

Needless to say, the Libs weren't the least bit interested in sacrificing an iota of their immediate power to take actions which would actually have minimized the ability of Harper and his ilk to take power in the long run. Instead, they desperately clung to power by claiming that each succeeding election was closer to the end of the world than the last - and now they blame the NDP for the fact that Canadians eventually wised up.

I certainly agree with John (and indeed disagree with a good chunk of Libs) that the Harper government is an undesirable development, and that the sooner the Cons can be booted out of office the better. But that doesn't mean that Canadians need to settle for the barely-lesser of two evils either. And if the NDP can keep up its positive movement, then it may not be long before it gets the chance to put in place exactly the kind of PR-based check on right-wing power that the Libs refused to countenance.