Their Own Worst Enemies

I had been looking for an opportunity to do a post on how Liberals are the authors of their own misfortune, and that opportunity has arrived in a big way in the Globe and Mail, wherein Gerald Caplan goes completely Biblical on Conservatives at all levels:

It's a trifecta, folks. Harper the asbestos killer in Ottawa, Ford the city-wrecker in Toronto, and, come October 6, very likely Hudak the math-challenged in Ontario. Won’t we be in a pretty pickle then? What have ordinary people done to deserve this plague of right-wing Conservatives? Equally mysterious, why have so many ordinary folks supported them?

Mr. Caplan is confused. He doesn't understand why Conservatives have been doing so well lately. He doesn't see how people could vote for them. He thinks it's because we're fronts for big business who trick people into voting for us, since no sane person ever would otherwise. He doesn't stop to consider that maybe we are doing well because the other guys are doing really, really, badly.

Caplan is an NDPer who makes no secret of his man-crush on Jack Layton and organized labour. He's not the best spokesperson for Dalton and his Liberals. But then again, Liberals do like to condescend to NDPers by telling them that they are just "Liberals in a hurry", so I guess they're not that different. And what Dalton, Caplan, and every progressive everywhere has in common is the idea that they are in the right because they have good intentions. Whether they end up following through on those intentions is another matter.

What are Dalton McGuinty's signature achievements? What will he be known for when, inevitably, he has to stop being Premier? Sure, I know the Liberals have a laundry list of "achievements" they can pull out at any moment. But when we say that Dalton McGuinty is the Tax Man, people believe us. When we say you're paying more and getting less with Dalton McGuinty, people believe us.

People believe us not because we are a front for big corporations, but because Dalton and his group constantly tell us that they're moving Ontario forward, and when they don't actually do that, people stop believing Dalton and start believing us. They start thinking that maybe Dalton's taking them for granted.

Then you look at progressives at all levels of government, and progressives in other countries. What do they do? What are they known for? Well, right now lots of them are telling us, like Caplan is, that free market economics wrecked the planet and we need controlled economies and that will fix everything. But is controlling the economy fixing everything? Nope. Things are still tough. People are still having problems making ends meet. But instead of taking responsibility for the situation today, the progressives say that the conservatives screwed up so badly that things need to be controlled even more. Example: Whenever someone asks Dalton why the deficit is so high, he says it's because of Ernie Eves. He acts like he had nothing to do with the deficit.

Caplan has a problem with big corporations being too powerful. Who, then, has tried to bring the corporations under control?  Not the progressives. Not Dalton, who's doing a huge deal with the Samsung corporation. Why isn't Caplan yelling about that?

Caplan again:

These circumstances should logically have led to demands for more social democratic values to reduce the chances of further bankers’ follies and to attack the problem of growing inequality.

Caplan's "logic" here is basically, "If not p, then q." If bankers screw up, we need to embrace social democratic values. Notwithstanding that this is not in any way logical, the idea that people would do something like completely lose faith in the system instead of demanding more social democratic values doesn't occur to Caplan.

We conservatives are willing to consider the possibility that the system doesn't work. We are willing to listen to and agree with people who feel like the system doesn't work. Liberals are not. Dalton McGuinty certainly isn't willing to consider the possibility that his vaunted list of achievements aren't actually helping people. If you tell Dalton the system isn't working in his Ontario, he'll attack you like he attacked Andre Marin or John Tory or pharmacists or the Toronto Star a few days ago.

So what do Liberals do instead of acknowledging their role in the system falling apart? Well, they try to distract people by talking about how bad the Conservatives are. They compile lists of awful things Conservatives said or did. They pull out stuffed toys on talk shows to mock beliefs held by some Conservatives. They write columns, like Caplan did, saying that what Conservatives believe in is totally false, makes no sense, and that all right thinking people should shun them. Then they act surprised when people get mad at them for doing that, or vote Conservative in spite of their little stunts.

I believe that these actions are performed by Liberals not to convince voters of anything, but to calm the Liberals' own doubts about their inability to give people everything they want. So: if Liberals don't believe their own propaganda, why should the voters?