The Backward-Looking Liberals

The Liberals' red Kool-Aid fest this weekend in Richmond Hill went just as planned:       

-They boasted about their plan which does not exist.
-They had closed door sessions talking about the challenges of how to win a third consecutive Liberal majority in this province, which they have never accomplished so I don't know how they would have come up with a list of challenges.
-They did some salsa dancing and tweeted about how cool they were.
-Dalton made a funny joke about flip flops as if he didn't write the book on flip flops and everybody laughed because they probably would have been executed if they didn't.
-The Liberal leadership soap opera continued when Dwight Duncan got the verbal equivalent of cement overshoes from Greg Sorbara.
-They launched a useless new website which nobody will go to and which the Liberals themselves will bury this week under an avalanche of press releases and talking points about Tim Hudak hating women because he doesn't support the long gun registry.

Oh....and yes, they told people that they were going to Move Ontario Forward Together. Except that isn't what they're doing at all. The Liberals are actually a pretty backward looking bunch of people.

You can see it in the way the Liberals obsess about a government that took power in 1995 and about a Premier who hasn't been Premier since 2002. Or take a look at their ultra-clever attack ads that are ripped off from a U.S. election from 1988. Dwight Duncan invoked the spectre of a vast right wing conspiracy, which hasn't been seen since 1998.

The Liberals picked a fight with pharmacists a few years ago, which was quite similar to how another Liberal government picked a fight with doctors in 1986. The Liberals tried to make abortion an election issue, and then justified it by saying it worked on Stockwell Day in 2000. Some people (OK, one Liberal blogger) think McGuinty is going to pull a Chretien, even though Chretien has been retired from active duty since 2003 and he has little role in the Liberal Party of the present.

The Liberals brought John Podesta, Bill Clinton's ex chief of staff to Ontario to promote McGuinty's green "plan". Using the environment to justify waste has been a staple of Liberal policy since the Stephane Dion days. The green energy plan in question was authored by George Smitherman, who lost the mayoral election last year despite considerable aid from Dalton, so now the Liberals apparently want a do-over. Smitherman would have been a favourite to replace Dalton, but Dalton now says he will stay on for four more years if he wins, which is similar to something another former Liberal leader said in the past.

The Liberals have a lot of political history, for sure. But because they can't get past it, they're going to control much less political geography in October.