The Political Game of Stupidity #nlpoli

Last week,  the provincial Liberals came out of the candidate protection program to talk about the Dunphy shooting.  Liberal justice critic Andrew Parsons told Newfoundlanders and Labradorians that his party thought it was too soon to talk about any type of further inquiry into the tragic shooting death of Don Dunphy beyond what is going on at the moment.

And besides, as Parsons’ put it, “I think to just jump out and (call for an inquiry) right now is just playing politics.”

Liberal candidate Paul Antle echoed Parsons’ sentiments on Twitter.  “ For the love of God let's do what's right by the family and keep politics out of it, wrote Antle.  “Let the process and not politics determine the course and see where it leads.”

Too bad for the Liberals, then, that Erin Breen, the lawyer for the Dunphy family, made it plain last week that the family wants a public inquiry into Don Dunphy’s death.  They just want it after the preliminary investigations are out of the way.

The result was that the Liberal comments last week were monumentally stupid whether as politics or policy..

The Latest Candidate Who Never Was #nlpoli

CBC news reported last week that Scott Simms won;t be pursuing the provincial Liberal leadership.

That’s no surprise because the federal member of parliament was never really thinking about becoming a candidate.

If you look at the story in late January and now you cans ee something else.

Gerry, Scott, and a Player to Be Named Later #nlpoli

If you believe what you hear on the news, federal members of parliament Gerry Byrne and Scott Simms are both thinking about running to be leader of the provincial Liberal Party.

Byrne’s named had been kicked around before.  In fact, in an earlier version of it, Gerry planned to announce his intentions by the end of January.  Now he has put off his decision until March.

Simms was a new entrant to the speculation race, largely because he hasn’t been in Ottawa very long and is pretty tight with Justin Trudeau and his leadership team.  If Trudeau takes the top federal party job, Simms would stand to play a more important role there than he currently has.

He’s not that into you, either #nlpoli

Some reporter decided to ask Paul Antle if he was interested in the Liberal leadership now that Dean MacDonald has decided he had better things to do that try and become Premier of the province.

Sure, says Paul. Love to. But gee, the timing on this whole voting thing is not good for me.  Could we postpone this whole politics deal until like say a couple of years from now when it’s a tad more convenient for me?

That’s a paraphrase, but it pretty much captures the essence of Antle’s remarks.

The Great Liberal PIFO Roadshow #nlpoli

On the front page of Tuesday’s Telegram was a story on the provincial Liberal Party’s renewal process. it isn’t available online unless you have a subscription to the paper.

this renewal thing has been going on for a while.  Dean MacDonald, Siobhan Coady, and Kevin Aylward are travelling around the province meeting with people and talking about the future of the provincial Liberals.

The Bullshit Vision Thing #nlpoli

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-

Word of the Day: gormless #nlpoli

Russell Wangersky:

At this point, the Official Opposition is floundering around looking for an issue, and they can't see that they are trampling around so heavily that they've pounded their moral high ground right down into the bottom of the barrel.

My advice to the clearly gormless opposition, whose members, without a doubt, are unable to hear the sound of their own voices?

Point out simply that the provincial government should do the right thing. Advance the argument. Or move on.

You're not standing up for the little guy any more.

You're just standing up to further your own ends.

The word applies not only in this particular case of Yvonne Jones and the Winters tragedy, it’s been the word to describe the entire caucus for quite some time.

- srbp -

The excitement is obvious #nlpoli

That’s a screen capture of the CBC online story about something srbp told you about last December.

It speaks for itself.

- srbp -

A fundamental lack of competence #nlpoli

One crowd can’t even successfully rig a process they set out to rig from the start.   So now the Premier wants to have a debate she earlier rejected as unnecessary in a legislature she once called dysfunctional.

Meanwhile, another crowd of politicians decides to frig off to Ottawa to support one individual’s personal campaign to be the next Labrador member of parliament when they should have been home working on a much bigger issue for the whole province.

Both speak to a fundamental lack of competence.

- srbp -

They’re baaaack #nlpoli

Last December, your humble e-scribbler told you about the Liberal party’s renewal committee.

Well, it’s back, or it will be back according to an anonymous source quoted by the Telegram on Monday.

The thing was going to involve Dean Macdonald, Siobhan Coady and Kevin Aylward.  They would travel around the province listening to people and then report back at some point in the future to the party’s executive board. And then at some point after that all that listening and reporting would produce something called “renewal”.

Now the idea is still alive but, according to the Telly’s source, …

sources in the party indicate since then the project has grown, and when the announcement happens, it will likely include more prominent party members, and representation from different regions of the province.

There’s no talk of a deadline or a timeline according to the source.  The committee will just go on a do whatever it is they will do.

Two things stand out. 

First – what your humble e-scribbler said before Christmas still stands:

If the Liberals knew what to do or had a general idea of where to go, they’d do it.  Instead, they have adopted – in essence -  the fisheries MOU process.  That was a committee by another name and look at how successfully that worked out.

Adding more people to the committee or putting different people on the committee doesn’t change the fact it is still a committee that apparently lacks a focus, direction or purpose. 

So while they are off listening, lots of things are happening while the Liberals reach around in the dark trying to find themselves. 

Telegram editor Russell Wangersky described the party’s performance in the legislature in stark but honest and accurate terms.

Truly effective oppositions not only know the questions they’re asking, but they often have some knowledge of the answers, too.

Then, when governments prevaricate or trot out a handful of off-point bluster, the opposition members go outside the House and give the media the answers the government has been avoiding.

It’s a pretty simple formula, really. The goal is to establish credibility so that voters will see the opposition as a viable alternative in the next election.  The problem for the Liberals is that – very obviously – they just aren’t interested in getting back into power.

Government backbencher or opposition member, the gig is pretty sweet.  No heavy lifting and you are in out of the weather.  And these days you don’t have to show up very often.  You aren’t expected to know much of anything about anything.  There’s plenty of patronage to hand out if you are a government member and that’s what helps to put the votes in the box these days. Wangersky notes the speeches about money for the district. Patronage is why. 

There’s a good reason why the Tories went along with the House allowances scheme the Liberals proposed in the late 1990s. And there’s a reason they not only kept it going after 2003 but didn’t slack off until the Auditor General’s boys tripped over it.

Leave aside the criminals and look at the rest of the members.  The House allowances scheme was all about patronage, about handing out goodies in the district, about bringing back the spoils.  Chief Justice Green nailed it in his report.  The Telegram did, too, even if the truth went up Kathy Dunderdale’s nose sideways.

And on the opposition benches, the motivation is basically the same.  You could be assured that the government boys would look after you, too, even if the amount was less than what the government boys got. They’d toss road work and other stuff your way as long as you stood up and thanked them loudly in the House.

Then you can turn around and issue a news release about the wonderful pork you’ve been able to bring back for your peeps from the big treasure pile in Sin Jawns. 

The same sort of co-operation among the incumbents explains a lot of things, including the special ballots scheme from 2007.  Anything that helps incumbents stay in office is good, regardless of what party the incumbent represents. 

That community self-interest among the insiders is why the people who have been fighting hardest against the anti-democratic trends of the past decade aren’t Liberals or Tories. The only politicians fighting about sitting days or special ballots are New Democrats.  In Newfoundland and Labrador politics, Dippers are the ultimate outsiders.

That might wind up working for them, but that’s all something for another time.  For now, just understand that the Liberals are in no danger of suddenly catching fire politically.  The party apparatus is going to have a committee jerking off across the province.  meanwhile, the caucus is impressing no one in the House.

Second - consider that all this news for the Telly came from an unnamed source.  Someone disgruntled or someone who fancies himself an insider bent on proving it?  Either way, this sort of anonymous leaking is the sign of an amateur act.  it’s a big clue that the Liberals lack the internal cohesion and internal discipline needed to form a viable political party. 

Without the kind of professionalism successful political parties display, the Liberals are destined to stay exactly where they are, even if by some miracle the “renewal” committee manages to do something useful.

- srbp -

Rebirth for one, and for the other? #nlpoli #cdnpoli

The federal Liberal convention this weekend shows just exactly how out to lunch the overwrought media commentary about the devastated Liberal party has been. 

Around 3,000 delegates.  Some said there were more than that;  others said there were fewer.

Lots of interested and interesting discussion.

And a new president.

Keeping party membership is a good thing.  One of the reasons political parties in Newfoundland and Labrador are in an abysmal state is the absence of a working membership system in any of them. Basically a party without membership becomes easy prey for the backroom types who thrive on secrecy.  They can manipulate the whole thing, one way or another and they do.

Memberless parties also create a world in which voters have no particular attachment to the party and its principles.  Again, the parties in Newfoundland and Labrador are classic examples of this sort of thing.  Voters shift back and forth among the parties with ease largely because there is nothing to distinguish one from the other.

The elected types are no different.  They all – basically – support exactly the same sorts of things.  If it is popular, they will back it.  That’s one of the big reasons why the NDP and Liberals have been basically just red and orange chapters of the Danny Fan Club since 2006 or so.

They haven’t opposed anything, except for show.

They still don’t.

So while the federal Liberals are already well on the way to change, the provincial Liberals are, well, not.

Talk of their demise is anything but exaggerated.

- srbp -

For the record… #nlpoli

Liberal leader Dwight Ball’s remarks on taking on the leadership:

The Liberal Party has a rich history in Newfoundland and Labrador and I’m proud to be a part of it.

That being said, we have much work ahead. I consider myself a team builder, and I believe teambuilding is what we need right now.

We need to reach out to Newfoundlanders and Labradorians and listen to their hopes and dreams.

I plan on spending a lot of time on the road engaging with the grassroots of our party and encouraging new interest in what we have to offer.

Additionally, we need a debt reduction plan to help rebuild the party  As a businessmen, I know the burden that debt can have on an organization and my first priority as Liberal leader will be to get our debt to a manageable level.

I like to call it the common sense approach – reach out, listen and manage debt.

These will be my priorities as I assume the Liberal leadership and help create a credible alternative to the current government. 

There will be challenges ahead, no doubt. But it is through these challenges that we will realize a better, brighter future for the next generation of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians 

- srbp -

Ball takes over as Liberal leader #nlpoli

The first sign of substantive and positive change in quite a while:  Dwight Ball takes the job of leading the Liberal Party of Newfoundland and Labrador.

The fact he is also interested in leading the party beyond the next leadership convention is also a good sign.

- srbp -

The Crowd in the Dark #nlpoli

Dwight Ball will become the new leader of the Liberal Party of Newfoundland and Labrador this week.  Expect an announcement on Thursday.

There’ll be no “interim” about it.

Ball is the leader until the party’s executive board decides on whether or not to find someone else to fill the job.  They won’t do that until some time early next year.

There’s no real news in any of that, by the way.  Variations on that theme have been in the news for a couple of weeks.  The only new information is when the announcement takes place.

What will be news on Thursday will be the announcement of a reform committee comprising Kevin Aylward, Siobhan Coady and Dean MacDonald.  They will do something  - it hasn’t been nailed down, apparently - at their own expense and bring back a report or recommendations or something – that too is apparently up in the air – on how to get the Liberal Party back in fighting trim.

Word of this committee sends a clear message. Party president Judy Morrow can talk all she wants on CBC’s On Point about how the Liberal Party just went through “a horrific time“ of an election campaign.  Such talk would suggest that people running the party know they can’t keep going on as they have been going. This committee is all about avoiding change.

The executive board picked Kevin Aylward to replace Yvonne Jones last August because he promised very little change. Kevin fit right in, touting an archaic fisheries policy as the centrepiece of the campaign. He started out wanting to endorse Muskrat Falls and only came around to opposing it once he realised that it might get some votes here or there. 

Some have tried to claim Kevin added two seats to the Liberal roster.  He didn’t.   What the party actually did was lose two seats it already held – not Kevin’s fault – and failed utterly to capitalise on possibilities in several others.

Kevin didn’t bring anyone along who might have changed the party’s direction. Nor was he, himself, inclined to do so.  And that is the bony nub of the problem with Kevin Aylward on a committee about renewal, reform or rebuilding. a fellow selected because he represented no threat of change cannot be an agent for change.

As for the other two members of the committee, their selection suggests the same thing. In her brief political career, Siobhan Coady has shown herself to be mind-numbingly conventional.  She seldom offers an observation on anything that has not already been offered in a thousand other places. Take her recent remarks on the provincial fisheries mess as a classic example of that.

Ditto Dean MacDonald.  A smart guy, without question.  Personable and enthusiastic for sure. A go-getter, definitely.  But Dean comes across as someone who is unfocused politically and generally unaware of the inner workings of the Liberal Party.  As such there’s no sign he has any inclination for substantive change.

If the committee travels around and meets with people, individually or in groups, odds are they will hear all sorts of things.

Lots of people will talk about district organizations, for example.  Former candidates will talk about the need to get nominations done earlier so they can organize themselves.  Others will talk about the need to have “grass roots”.

The problem with those ideas is that none of it means that people are actually attracted to the party and will do the ground-work any party needs to fight and win an election. The party can get names on paper,  just like it has been able to find token candidates for the past three elections.  Getting people to do anything is another matter.

The problem with those ideas is that the party runs itself as though every district belonged to every candidate.  There is no continuity.  There is no party organization.  There is – in truth – no party in the sense of people who all belong to a group built around a shared set of ideas or values.

The Liberals Party does not speak to anyone about anything any more. Until someone from the party can offer a compelling reason why someone should get involved with the Liberals, nothing else matters.

The problem with those ideas is that – ultimately - there isn’t much chance that three people not known for their interest in change are likely to find secrets no one else found.  And if, by some miracle, these people do trip over the odd good idea, odds are better the idea will get buried under a pile of other stuff that is all about staying the same, not change.

After all the same people responsible for deciding are themselves a committee.  Committees, you see, are what people set up when they want to make it look like something is happening when it really isn’t.  Or they set up a committee in order to delay making a decision because they don’t know what to do. 

While the committee is out looking, stuff happens that sets the course.  The stuff that happens could be accident or it could be a petty intrigue here or there.  But incrementally things happen while the committee is meeting such that whatever the committee decides, their work is irrelevant anyway.

If the Liberals knew what to do or had a general idea of where to go, they’d do it.  Instead, they have adopted – in essence -  the fisheries MOU process.  That was a committee by another name and look at how successfully that worked out. 

In the meantime, the Liberals are like a crowd in the dark.  No one can see beyond the end of his or her fingers.  They wander around groping for something. Some of them stumble off and run into other people and don’t come back.

None of the rest will stray too far from where he started or than he can see.  As a result, they all wind up no more than a few feet away from each other shuffling around the ground they all know intimately from having trod on it over and over again for years.

None of them know where they are going.  They all keep asking each other what to do next.  And around and around in circles they go. None of them really knows where the rest of the community is, either.  They  still cling to the memory of a time when they were part of a huge group.  In truth, everyone else in the community has gone off in other directions.  The Liberals just can’t see that.  The room is dark, after all. 

And while the Liberals can hear noises in the distance, the crowd of them won’t – not can’t, they will not  - move toward the noises.   Instead, they stagger around in the dark, their numbers dwindling, waiting for someone to show up with a flashlight.

They have formed a committee of three, we shall learn on Thursday,  to check to see if anyone among them found a flashlight or maybe a few old batteries with some juice left in them.

What are the odds that will work?

- srbp -

The problem with the Liberal Party #nlpoli

Guest post by Craig Westcott, from his editorial in this week’s Business Post.

If, as its president Judy Morrow has proposed, the Liberal Party puts off holding a leadership convention for two years, it will be making a serious, possibly ruinous mistake.

Like that one lonely turbot once described by then Fisheries Minister Brian Tobin as clinging to the Grand Banks by its fingernails, the Liberals are on the verge of extinction, despite its retention of Opposition status in the House of Assembly.

Tuesday’s CRA poll results confirm that.

For three consecutive quarters the NDP has marched upwards, standing solidly now in second place, its lack of Opposition status only temporary perhaps until the first by-election.

The bald truth is that nothing will get done to rebuild the Liberal Party without a real leader to push it. An interim leader won’t cut it, unless it’s someone of the ability of Bob Rae who is rebuilding the federal party while maintaining interim leader status. But Rae is an exception to the rule. There are no Bob Raes in the Liberal Party of Newfoundland, at least none that are obvious.

At the risk of telling tales out of school, I was shocked when I took the job as communications director for the Official Opposition last fall to learn there was no party apparatus backing the caucus. The fabled Big Red Machine no longer existed in this province. And even if it had existed, with a $700,000 to $800,000 deficit at the banks, there was no money to put gas in to run it.

There was no party membership list, there weren’t even district associations in most districts. Only for the work of long time MHA Roland Butler, who has perhaps the best organizational smarts in the party, there would have been no district associations in place to fight this past fall’s provincial election.

The sad truth was that little to no grassroots rebuilding had been done since the Liberals lost the disastrous campaign of 2007.

For most of the four years between elections, the leader retained interim status. For part of the time, until Morrow was elected party president, the executive headed by Danny Dumeresque was said by some in the party to be more determined to undermine interim leader Yvonne Jones than support her.

It was a mess. The view throughout the party was that as long as Danny Williams was leading the PCs, the Liberals didn’t have a chance of regaining government anyway, a mistaken view to those with knowledge of history. Joey eventually lost the confidence of the people and I believe Williams would have too, only much sooner than the 23 years it took Joey to crash. A more contemporary example, is Vladimir Putin, like Williams a wildly popular, dictatorial egomaniac while in office, who is now losing the confidence of the Russian people. Time brings down all dictators eventually, if death doesn’t get them first.

But I digress.

The problem with the Liberals is both a failure of leadership – on the party executive side as well as within the caucus - and also a matter of unfortunate circumstance.

During the year I spent with the Liberal caucus, it had only four members. The leader, Yvonne Jones, was off for much of that time, taking cancer treatment, though still involved with the running of the Opposition office. Another member, Butler, had his own health issue to face and was unable to participate in as much of the daily hurly burly as he wished. The other two members, Kelvin Parsons and Marshall Dean, had districts at the exact opposite ends of the island from St. John’s: One centred in Port aux Basques, 900 kilometres away, the other on the Great Northern Peninsula, situated even farther. When the House wasn’t sitting, which was often, they had to be in their districts tending to constituency matters. That meant they were unavailable to the television media in St. John’s (though full marks to Kelvin Parsons for beating it back and forth across the TransCanada every week to fill in for Jones and still take care of his constituents. If there was a prize for the hardest working man in politics last year, Parsons would have earned it).

Down the hall, the sole NDP member - the intelligent, earnest and hardworking Lorraine Michael - was in Confederation Building every day to take media calls. No sweat for her in that regard: Her seat was located in the city.

While a number of PC friends of mine have blamed the NDP surge in St. John’s on Danny Williams’ federal ABC campaign, which drove thousands of long time Tories into the Dippers’ camp, Michael deserves as much credit for also showing up for the media every day, especially when nobody from the Liberal office was available.

The situation for the current Liberal caucus is no better, despite the fact it has two more seats than last year. That’s because not one of the Liberal MHAs are from St. John’s or even the Avalon Peninsula. Two are from Labrador and the four others all have seats west of Deer Lake. The NDP, meanwhile, has five members, every one of them in St. John’s. Who do you think is going to win the war for media attention between now and the next general election in 2015?

And yet, the Liberal Party’s problems are not that hard to fix. It could probably write off all that debt by making a simple offer of 10 cents on the dollar to the banks. The debt is getting so old now it has probably been written off by the lenders on their own books already.

The party needs a full time organizer to rebuild and maintain the district associations, the basic battle units in any election.

It needs to take its head out of the water on the fishery and adopt a strategy that makes sense, resisting its outdated, overplayed, knee jerk habit of barking at the processors and shouting out support, but no real answers, for the plant workers and harvesters at all costs. Here’s a news flash gang: The fishery doesn’t decide elections anymore. There are so few people left working in the industry now, their votes can’t sway a campaign. And almost everyone in the industry is sick of being poor. They want change. Offer it to them. The PC government isn’t. That’s how you will win fishery votes.

And realize this: You can’t win the next election without winning St. John’s. So drop this rural/urban divide malarkey and devise some policies that will benefit the Avalon.

Finally, the Liberals have to regain some pride. The Grits have a good story to tell, if only they would tell it. Newfoundland’s current prosperity is due in large part to Liberal Premiers Clyde Wells and Roger Grimes, the guys who negotiated the three energy deals - as well as Voisey’s Bay – that are filling the government’s coffers. The crowd running the show now had nothing to do with any of it. And if Kathy Dunderdale implements this disastrous Muskrat Falls deal, the PC’s will destroy their chances of winning re-election next time around.

So there’s a lot to build for. But nothing will happen without a real leader to drive it. Waiting until 2013 will be too late. Find a leader now and have him or her ready to win a seat in the first by-election that comes up in 2012. Because if you lose that one to the NDP, the Liberal Party is finished.

If you stop writing yourselves off, maybe the rest of the province will too.

- srbp -

More of the same #nlpoli

The whole thing is easy to figure out if you just look at it.

October 13, 2011:

Tuesday night proved to be a “holy f***, that was close” moment for the people running the Liberal Party and for people, like John Efford, who want to run the party.

Now that the danger has passed they want to get right back to the old ways of doing business that put the party in his current sorry state.

November 22, 2011:

Of course, the real message in this job competition is even more stark:  the Liberals have told the universe that they are not thinking for a second about rebuilding or the future or anything so grand.  They just want to flesh out the staff chart or hire on a defeated candidate who needs a job.

So what did the party do with the chief of staff job?

Well, he didn’t get defeated but the new chief of staff in the Liberal opposition office is an ex-candidate in need of a job. From VOCM:

VOCM News has learned that Kelvin Parsons is the new Liberal chief of staff.

The Liberals placed a job ad with close of applications at 5:00 PM on Friday.  Yvonne Jones made the decision by Monday evening.  There’s no way anyone can run a proper competition, weigh the candidates and make a sensible, fair decision that fast even if the process itself was the wrong one in the first place.

The fix was in from the start. 

The job ad was just window dressing.

- srbp -

A chance. A choice. #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Original idea comparing a Canadian political party to a hockey team, but Andrew Coyne’s metaphor for the problems confronting the federal Liberal Party works.

The Liberals think of themselves like a hockey team:

It has won several Stanley Cups in a row, but by the last of those cups, it was relying on a clutch of 43-year-old veterans. With their retirement, the team has no option but to spend a few seasons in the basement, rebuilding. If it learns patience, while the draft picks mature and the losses mount, the team may in time become a winner again. If it does not, it becomes the Leafs

The current state of the federal party mirrors that of the provincial one in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Not surprisingly on any level Coyne states more simply and eloquently what your humble e-scribbler observed about the provincial Liberal crowd back in October.

Your humble e-scribbler:

To get at the Liberal problem, you’ve got to get even more basic.  When people say the Liberal Party doesn’t speak to people any more what that means is that the party no longer gives people a reason to support it.

If they want their party to survive in the future, Liberals have to figure out why anyone should care about the Liberal Party.  It's a simple enough thing to state. The answer isn't implicit in it.  And it goes to the heart of what any political party is about:

Why should anyone care?

Coyne:

If it is no longer the party of power, then it will have to spend some time redefining itself. In ideological terms, this means sharpening the definition. The vagueness that sufficed so long as power was in view will no longer. So the first question Liberals will have to ask is: why? Why be a Liberal, and not a member of some other party?

Coyne’s advice is that the federal Liberals should be “the party that tells it like it is”:

The Liberals, …, can instead be the bold party, the party that takes the principled stands that other parties won’t. On occasion this will take them to the left; on others, to the right.

Coyne offers sound advice.  Having a political party that speaks plainly about any subject would be such a radical departure from the pre-packaged pablum of present day politics that the Liberals would instantly stand out. 

In Newfoundland and Labrador, the same thing could work.  All three political parties say the same thing.  Just take a look at the political panels on CBC’s On Point.  Really listen to the comments.  Get beyond the superficial jabs and pokes and you will be amazed at how often the New Democrats and Conservatives say the same thing or the Liberals agree with one or the other party or sometimes both. 

Refreshing is not a word anyone would associate with any political party in Canada at the moment. Coyne is suggesting the federal Liberals give it a try.

The provincial Liberals could do that as well.  But the situation here is far worse.  The provincial Liberals not only do not seem to grasp the implications of their situation, they don’t even seem to realise they are in a situation at all.

- srbp -

Free advice #nlpoli

Free advice, they say, is worth exactly what you paid for it.

And when it comes to free advice on the provincial Liberal Party leadership, Dean MacDonald is more full of it than usual.  CBC’s David Cochrane gave MacDonald free airtime this past weekend to share his insights into what the party needs to do.

Cochrane describes MacDonald as having “long Liberal ties” but that really isn’t an accurate description of MacDonald’s limited association with the Liberal Party.  Sure the guy spent some time as Brian Tobin’s bagman for Tobin’s abortive federal leadership run.  But other than that and raising some cash recently, MacDonald’s most significant act while associated with the Liberal Party was blading Roger Grimes as MacDonald’s old business buddy  - Danny Williams – strode toward the Premier’s Office.

And that, dear reader, is the extent of MacDonald’s association with provincial Liberals.  If that’s all that it takes to have not only ties, but long ones by some estimations, then perhaps that speaks more to the sorry state of the provincial Liberal Party at this point in history than anything else.

The guy, after all, hasn’t held any positions within the party, has an incredibly limited record of his own of making financial contributions to the provincial Liberals and, as far as it appears has absolutely no political experience whatsoever.

MacDonald acknowledges this point, by the way, when he talks about the need for establishing some street cred within the party. 

And aside from suggesting he could “help out” by fundraising or doing some other odd jobs, MacDonald doesn’t offer much else. 

What he does do is spout a phenomenal load of pure shit throughout the entire interview.  One of the choice moments is when Cochrane asks MacDonald about Dean’s criticism about Kathy Dunderdale’s “unsustainable” spending.  MacDonald quickly disavows any suggestion he was criticising the Conservatives. 

When Cochrane notes – quite rightly  - that Danny is the guy who started the unsustainable spending, MacDonald launches into an extensive Conservative apologia for Danny Williams’ unsustainable public spending.  It’s vintage Williams bullshit from a charter member of the Fan Club.

Beyond that, Dean doesn’t have anything to offer on the Liberal Party beyond the need to “rebuild”, bring in "new people and fresh blood.

And that’s it.

To describe this as amateur and superficial would be generous.  His own experience in fundraising is, by his own characterization, nothing beyond “arm-twisting” and organizing big dinners with high profile speakers.

On Muskrat Falls, MacDonald doesn’t do much better.  he exaggerates his own involvement with the provincial government’s hydro corporation.  His observations about the project and the issues involved are best described – again to be very generous – as superficial.  MacDonald does not even have substantive talking points on the subject. The best he can do to try and counter David Vardy’s critique is suggest Vardy is recycled from the 1970s. 

And that – you can see where this is going - is all there was.

If you want to talk about Liberal leadership politics, you’d be far better off looking at the federal party.  There, at least, you can find people with ideas and energy.  You can find people who have done a few things, taken a few for the team they were actually on, and who remain ready to do more.

The federal Liberals are talking about having a wide-open leadership race that lasts several months and involves a series of votes.  Some are likening it to the American primaries.  As the Toronto Star reported:

“This is not tinkering at the edges. This fundamentally changes how power in a political organization is exercised,” Liberal party president Alfred Apps told reporters on Thursday as the revival plan was released.

Some of the problems the federal Liberals have experienced are mirrored at the provincial Liberals:

• An “out-of-date” party structure, with “an approach to campaigning from a bygone era.”
• An “aging establishment elite” holding too much power at the party centre.

For the provincial crowd, you can add a third one:  a tendency to accept players from another team into their midst.  Some of them even wind up being touted as potential leadership material spouting tons of free advice.

- srbp -

The rewards of planning an organization #nlpoli

While the Liberals in this province shuffle aimlessly toward the political gloom, their Nova Scotia brothers and sisters actually have enough cash in the bank that they can take $2.3 million and put it into a new thin-tank.

Nova Scotia’s Liberals have long been dogged by their controversial trust fund. 

But the Grits finally put the decades-old issue to bed at their annual general meeting in Halifax on Saturday. 

Liberal Party president John Gillis said the party is divesting itself of $2.3 million in the fund to help establish a think-tank, the Allan J. MacEachen Institute for Public Policy and Government. 

Gillis told the meeting the new institute will honour a distinguished Nova Scotian who has dedicated his life to public service. A retired senator, MacEachen was a long-time federal Liberal cabinet minister and is an Order of Canada recipient.

Just think about that.

Meanwhile, the local Liberals are the better part of a million bucks in the hole with not much chance of paying it off in the near future.

- srbp -

The Best Case/Worst Case Scenario #nlpoli

So there you have it.

The Liberal caucus, less a vacationing Jim Bennett,  met last week.

They decided Kevin can keep the job of Liberal Party leader and all the glory that involves these days.

He can keep it some time next year, as VOCM reported it. 

Fact is, Aylward could be there longer.

What Aylward will do as party leader is unclear. 

Why he was away from the caucus meeting that secured his future is equally unclear.  The unspecified party business excuse is a bit like “to spend more time with my family”.  It is a stock political excuse to be trotted out, when needed, even though everyone knows it is complete bullshit.

You can tell the caucus is enthusiastic about the future.  You can see it in the looks on their faces in the scrum afterward when they told reporters about their momentous decision.

As for Yvonne Jones,  the local media are reporting that she doesn’t want the leader’s job.  What they all missed is that Jones has the de facto leader’s job she supposedly doesn’t want and the hefty extra salary to go with it.  She has the plum spot in the opposition benches in the House of Assembly.  She makes staffing decisions.  Jones controls the budget.  She gets to ask the first questions in the  daily Question Period – when the House is sitting – and she’s the one the media will go to for comment.

Jones just announced to the world on behalf of the party leader what the party leader will do.

Yvonne Jones is the party leader for anyone who is paying attention.

From Yvonne’s standpoint, this is a best-case scenario.

So now what?

Well, that’s the political worst case scenario if you are one of the handful of people left in Newfoundland and Labrador still supporting the provincial Liberals.  While there will be lots of talk about stuff that needs to happen on the glorious march back to power, recent history will tell you that none of it will happen.

The party simply doesn’t speak to anyone anymore and outside of the 10 or 11% of the electorate who voted for them, they don’t speak for much either.

With the leadership set up of Jones-Aylward, there’s obviously no cohesion or shared sense of direction.  What the Liberals are left with is to keep going in circles for a while.

And that may be a long while, given that Saviour Messiah Dean the Magical Wonder Pony may not really want the job in the future just like he hasn’t really wanted it in the past.

In the meantime, you can count the number of minutes before the jokes start flowing from the Tories or Dippers about whether the Grit leadership creature is straight from Dr. Doolittle – with two heads – or the Pushmi - Pullyu’s other bits stuck together.

News of the Liberal leadership arrangement is met with both dancing for joy and chin-pulling scepticism, right, at a rally of all 11 Liberal Party supporters left in the province.

(Not exactly as illustrated.)

Indecision and inactivity over the course of four years are what led to the recent fiasco capped off by one of the most spectacularly inept and incompetent campaigns in recent political history.

More indecision and inactivity  - guaranteed under the current leadership arrangement - won’t make anything better.  Well, not if the goal was to challenge the Tories for the government in 2015, it isn’t.  At this rate the Liberals will be fighting for the life and struggling to hold onto the opposition in 2015 as the Tories and Dippers duke it out for power. 

As it stands today, the Liberal Party faced a near death experience a couple of weeks ago, a real “holy f***, that was close” moment.

Now that the danger has passed, they want to get right back to the old ways of doing business that put the party in his current sorry state.

The party needs to change.

A credible political party cannot afford to have a repeat of recent history including the way Jones left the job a few weeks ago and the board picked her replacement.

Change means things have to be different.  More of the same is not an option.  Change also means that so many people within the party will have to give up the traditional Liberal Party delusion that some saviour, some messiah will appear and make all the problems go away.

The party also can’t afford to try and recycle someone – whether Aylward, Efford or Jones – even on a temporary basis.  Temporary has a tendency to become permanent, especially when the shock of a near death experience wears off.

That was the SRBP call on October 13, in what turned out to be a truly Kreskin-like moment.  And then the caucus decided to follow right on with an ad for a new Messiah. 

No matter what the Liberals do next,  they’ve pretty much sealed their political fate.

-srbp -