Back in the olden days political parties used to mean something. The parties had visionsplans about how to make Canada a better country by implementing policies that the parties thought would achieve that objective. People joined political parties because they shared the party's visions and policies and worked hard to attempt to achieve those particular ends. Unfortunately those days are long gone.
The Liberals have been visionless for some time. They have been in power for so of the last 100 years that they feel that they are entitled to govern Canada. Sometimes referred to, with good reason, as the Natural Governing Party, the Liberals try to be all things to all people and will say anything and do anything to stay in or regain power. after Stephen Harper's poor start, just wait for all those top Liberal contenders who announced that they would not seek the leadership to reconsider now that the party has visions of governing dancing in their heads. For many of the top Liberals it's prime minister or nothing.
Now it seems that the lack of vision or principles is spreading to other parties. after the new Conservative Party came into being after purporting to have united "the right", one of their first pronouncements was that the party was creating "a big tent". In other words, like the mighty Liberals, the Conservatives welcomed everyone into the party regardless of what their actual beliefs were. Having conservative beliefs in order to be a member of the Conservative Party was not a requirement. This big tent principle made the view that was held by many Canadians--the party was nothing more than the old Reform Party under a different name that would seek power in order to jail abortion doctors and put gays and lesbians into concentration camps-- laughable. Belinda Stronach was the poster girl for Stevie Harper's big tent. What was shocking about Stronach was not that she crossed the floor to the Liberals but that she and her liberal ideas were so welcomed in the Conservative Party in the first place. Stronach hid neither her liberal views nor her quest for power.
and then, of course there was David Emerson who, after being re-elected as a Liberal MP, crossed over to the Tories before many Canadians changed their underwear. Emerson's response to the Liberals in his riding who voted to re-elect him was, in a word, tough. It seems now that members of political parties are totally interchangeable.
Even the idealistic socialists are getting into the act. Canadian auto Workers president, Buzz Hargrove has been a member of the NDP for the past 41 years. The Ontario party suspended his membership for advocating that people in certain ridings vote for the Liberals or even the separatist Bloc Quebecois if that was the easiest way to defeat the dreaded Conservatives. His urging some Canadians to vote for a party other than the one that he was a long time member of didn't seem to upset party leader Jack Layton. Layton doesn't seem to think Hargrove should lose his membership. But the grassroots of the party was livid at the union leader's actions and for good reason. While Hargrove did in fact suggest "strategic voting" the optics painted a different story. Hargrove walked onstage and had what Rush Limbaugh would call a "Brokeback moment" with then-Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin. Nothing could have signaled that Buzz Hargrove was now a true Grit more than hugging Martin and giving him presents.
Big tents, strategic voting and changing parties right after being elected illustrate that where once political parties had core beliefs, they are now totally unprincipled and devoid of any vision. Doing what seems to be expedient at the moment is what it's all about. and there is now a growing disconnect between the party elites and the grassroots who work hard for no money because they hold certain beliefs about the way the country should be run.
Power is everything--and it's not just for Liberals anymore.
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