The major Parties go up and down. The Tories are doing well now and we are not. There's a reason for that and we better fix the problems but the Liberals will win again (as will the Tories).
Still, this is an article worth thinking on.
Are the Liberals in a death spiral?
How a once-dominant party developed the Tory Syndrome - and 12 steps to cure it
ANDREW STEELE
The Liberal Party of Canada is the most successful political party in Western democracy. It is Canada's natural governing party. A Liberal leader inevitably becomes Prime Minister.
That and four dollars will buy you a coffee at Starbucks.
History is littered with the corpses of successful political parties. The British Liberals ruled England when it was the global hegemon, and yet proved unable to bridge class divisions and fell between the cracks. The American Whigs elected two presidents and produced the "Great Triumvirate" of Senators Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun and Henry Clay.
The Italian Communist Party routinely secured the support of one-quarter to one-third of voters until it dissolved in 1991, a victim of global history.
Liberals should let go of any illusion that their party is the exception to the rule "thou art mortal." There is no guarantee it will ever be back in government. There is no protection it enjoys from the reality of low fundraising, declining membership and internal division. If Liberals do not wake up and grasp the peril of their situation, they will join the ash heap of history.
George Perlin coined the phrase "the Tory syndrome" to describe the death spiral of poor election showings, leading to internal dissention, leading to a distressed and distracted leader and his cadre, leading to lack of attention to party building, fundraising and policy development, leading to yet another poor election showing, and so on.
Since John A. MacDonald died, the Conservatives were trapped in this endless process of self-recrimination and circular firing squads. MacDonald was followed by no fewer than four leaders in five years. Periodically, the Conservatives would emerge from the wilderness to government, but every loss was followed by internal feuding even worse than before.
John Diefenbaker would not go quietly and was a constant knife in the back of Bob Stanfield. Joe Clark's brief government was followed by three years of war with Brian Mulroney. Mr. Mulroney's electoral success temporarily quelled the dissent — at least in caucus — but at the cost of dissolving the voting coalition into progressive and Reform factions.
The Liberals are now trapped in this cycle.
Since John Turner's departure from Cabinet in 1975, there has been some factionalism between ins and outs in the Liberals: Trudeau-Turner, Turner-Chretien, Chretien-Martin. But while those fights were distracting, since 2000 the Liberals have basically been consumed by internal divisions.
The success of the Martin faction in forcing Jean Chretien to set a departure date exacerbated the problem, as it left Mr. Chretien in control of the legislative machinery of government even as he lost the party. The result was fundraising rules that hobbled the corporate-donation dependent Liberals far more than the membership-heavy Conservatives, NDP or Bloc.
Full story here:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081021.WSteele21/BNStory/politics
James Morton
1100 - 5255 Yonge Street
Toronto, Ontario
M2N 6P4
2 comments:
What the Liberal party needs is another intellectual , charismatic
that can pull in money as well as give out charm, someone unknown right now.
The Liberal party is far from dead but it is not out of the realm of possiblity that it can be replace. Maybe by both the Tories and NDP moving closer to the middle ground it is unlikely but possible never the less.
Post a Comment