Gimme Shelter

When the truth is found to be lies, and all the joy within you dies......what then?

Well, if you're Dalton McGuinty, and you're the last line of defence for Liberal-ism in Ontario, you throw yourself into the arms of the unions, hatching a secret plan to hike public sector wages while publicly campaigning for a wage freeze.

This is not the action of a man who commands a broad base of support within a province that, as Monday's election proved, values stability above all else. Unions are little more than mercenaries, working hard on behalf those who pay them but willing to desert at a moment's notice. Bob Rae and David Miller also fed the union crocodile, hoping it would eat them last. Now Dalton has been reduced to the same level.

How does a Premier with a majority get into a situation like this? It's because he tries ever so hard to be liked. To govern in everyone's interest.

The Liberals like to bash us for being "divisive" and for "pitting Canadians against each other." But we know the truth, don't we? We understand that if you give people everything they want, they're not going to love you for it in return. They'll just ask for more. Giving people only what they need is harder. And the Liberals don't want things to be hard. They want a world where money is not an object and love is all that matters. When we try to point out that their dream world isn't likely to happen, they get angry.

At the federal level, the Liberals are showing no signs of realizing that their inability to take off their rose coloured glasses is what led to their defeat. What the federal Liberals need is a totally new message, one that doesn't aim to please everyone or fix every problem at once. But instead, all I hear is, "We just need to pick the right leader" or "The NDP split the vote and we just have to wait for them to fall apart." Getting back to fundamentals is out of the question. Never mind that Harper is where he is today because he and his people looked hard at the fundamentals and absolutely committed themselves to winning, whatever the cost, even if it meant that people loved them less for doing it.

Dalton tries to get everyone to love him. That's why he's trying to cut public sector jobs on the one hand while raising wages on the other. But, just like the song says, his friends are treating him like a guest. A guest that will soon be shown the door, because he doesn't own the house.