Dean MacDonald, the undeclared leader of the provincial Liberal Party spoke to a crowd in Port de Grave district on Saturday night. There’s an account of his speech in the Telegram’s Monday edition.
Dean crapped on the provincial Conservatives for all sorts of things. Most of all, he seemed to think they lack what George Bush used to call the vision thing:
“I don’t think we have a vision, I don’t think we have a plan for the province. I don’t feel that we’re all on a team who all know where we’re headed,” MacDonald said. “The party that’s been in power too long believes their own bullshit, and the party that will sweep into power doesn’t, and that’s us.”
Contrary to what the Telegram reported, MacDonald didn’t seem to offer much of a vision himself during the speech. Well, certainly the Telly didn’t report any vision-like utterances and no one who attended the session seems to talk much about Dean’s vision. The Telly just included a few quotes confirming that the handful of people in the province who still support the Liberal Party see MacDonald as the Saviour.
This is not news.
Nor is it any sort of vision.
MacDonald reportedly spoke for 30 minutes. He shat on Kathy Dunderdale. He has done that before. And just as surely as he has criticised Dunderdale before, we should all remember that Kathy Dunderdale is doing nothing except continuing the plan of her predecessor, complete with his vision and using all the same people that her predecessor picked for their jobs. Kathy Dunderdale is following the agenda of Dannyism, right down to the hydro-electric project Danny Williams used as an excuse to retire.
In January 2008, Dean told the world - via The Independent - that what the province needed was 20 more years of Dannyism. There’s no sign Dean has changed his mind at all about that. In fact, after Dean criticised Dunderdale’s unsustainable spending in 2011, he quickly sucked it all back again.
Go back and take another look at Dean’s interview with David Cochrane last fall. You won’t be disappointed, which is more than you can say for some of the people who attended the fundraiser on Saturday night. Those would be the people who didn’t leap to their feet in applause at the end of Dean’s speech. That would even include the people who did stand and applaud but who did so slowly, after others had started. Rumours of wild enthusiasm were - like the depth of MacDonald’s insights – greatly exaggerated. You see lots of people – not just parties in power too long – believe their own bullshit.
-srbp-
