I imagine the liberal-friendly media firms in Quebec and Ontario have been working overtime (and being paid barrels full of cash!) to replace “hidden agenda” and “Harper is scary” and “free taxpayer-funded abortions without any limits are a Canadian ‘Value’!” —with an updated, ready-for-’05 election slogan or buzz-word.
The state-run CBC division of the Liberal Party got the memo from Liberal HQ about the new buzz-word —before most of course, as I pointed out yesterday. They even had the time to create graphics, and to start the morph from what is officially called the “Economic Update” into “The Prosperity Mini-Budget”. Who says governments act slowly?
Speaking of liberals, I don’t often quote a Toronto Star writer in a positive light, because they’re normally devoted to standing up for all that is far left, and negating to the best of their limited ability all that is virtuous, common sensible, capitalist, and right in any other way. At election time, the extent of their liberal-leftism sometimes becomes more apparent than usual, as they fight anything right of them including even the Liberal Party. This tells us as much as we need to know about the extent of their leftism, but it helps us in other ways too!
Jim Travers is the National Affairs Columnist for the red Star, and his column today is called Prosperity is PM’s new buzzword. (Well whatdayaknow! Maybe the memo leaked to him too!)
OTTAWA—Lightly disguised as Ralph Goodale’s economic update, Paul Martin’s election platform is more convincing as a confession of past Liberal failures than as a bold plan for future national success.
After 12 years in power and a record eight consecutive budget surpluses, Liberals are suddenly confronting today what was obvious to more objective observers a decade ago. There’s hard work ahead if this country is to be internationally competitive, socially advanced and environmentally responsible.
So a government that usually confuses bulging federal surpluses with a gold star strategy has a new buzzword and that word is prosperity. If voters are as gullible as Liberals hope, the p-word will soon be as memorable an election rallying cry as the Great Depression promise of a chicken in every pot.
Facing the suddenly hot prospect of a cold winter campaign, a party that hasn’t done much with power is now urgently trying to sell the idea that it can do oh so much more. Give Martin another chance, Finance Minister Ralph Goodale pleads, and all the good times a benevolent Prime Minister can buy with $54.5 billion in future surpluses will begin to roll.
No surprise then that Goodale is shoving everything in the shop window. Personal and corporate tax cuts, investment in job skills, research, higher education and more spending to settle new Canadians are all on display.
Apart from confirming the consensus that this Prime Minister suffers from attention deficit disorder, offering this and that for almost everyone has political appeal.
Knowing both the NDP and Conservatives will squeeze them in the coming campaign, Liberals are opening some space at the political centre by wooing the broadest possible spectrum.
Stuffed into a bulging pre-election piÃ
Writer and Executive Editor for ProudToBeCanadian.ca.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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