An Open Letter to the Liberal Party
Dear Liberals,
What worries me the most is that you won’t win this upcoming, yet-to-be-announced election. Not that I have ever actually voted for a candidate of your persuasion (I generally give my vote to the NDP), but I’d prefer you guys in power to the C.R.A.P. party, barring a miracle for the leftists. Though I should say, if Bob Rae were running in my riding, I’d cast my first vote for your party, and his presence might even sway me this time, I’m not sure. But that aside: I worry about you guys not winning. I’m pretty tired of mr. Hidden Agenda, mr. smarm, mr. “straight up guy” (yeah right). I’m tired of the months and months and months of negative campaigning he’s been doing, the awful ads, the secrecy, all of it. I’d rather go back to Liberal scandal.
It’s like the days when the Reform party were around to compete with the Conservatives, ensuring years of centrist rule. There are too many competing parties on your side this time.
So you know what I wish you’d done? You want to go green, right? (On that note: I keep mis-hearing “Green Shift” for something minus the f.) I wish you’d negotiated with Elizabeth May. How about you guys run as a coalition party on this one. Let them control the environmental stuff; they’re supposedly the experts. Everyone respects the Greens, it’s just that not enough really want to vote for them. We like their ideas on the environment, but we want you guys to do your magic on the budget and whatnot. I know Jack will never go for the kind of deal I’m proposing, so I’m not even going to bother suggesting it, and I have no idea if Elizabeth May would be amenable. Just take in the Greens and let them be the environmental arm of the Liberals for this term. Give it a try. Pick a significant handful of ridings where the liberals will pull their candidates and back the Green candidates instead. I bet the Greens would never agree to pull the rest of their own candidates, but I wonder: even with 10 or so, they’d be an official party. And they can be a part of the government, even while being from a different party. An official partnership. And you can stop splitting the damn vote.
Think of the PR pitch: partnership for moving forward; real change; real challenge within the government itself. All the benefits of a minority government without the petty bickering and random election calls for no apparent reason. You could even do a reality show about it at the same time, “Inside the Coalition”, with video of the real and important arguments behind the scenes! The political junkies would love it! I’m sure it would get picked up in the US!
Just an idea,
Rochelle