A couple of thoughts on the NDP this Sunday AM.

- Danielle posted a blogpiece at her site yesterday challenging Jack Layton’s premise that only he could stop Harper, by asking any NDP blogger/supporter to come up with 100 ridings they think the NDP could win, that would at least propel them to Official Opposition status. So far, responses from NDP partisans have been in short supply. Heck, I’d be even more lenient then Danielle: I’d take a list of 75 ridings the NDP thinks it can win in.

- A rhetorical question on my part: I, like others, am still rather sceptical even in the worst-case scenario for the Liberals that the NDP will manage to get enough support to get official opposition status, but let’s say for arguments sake they manage it. My question would be to the NDP supporters/partisans/bloggers if they would take an NDP official opposition if the result of the vote-splitting that occurred to get that result means a Conservative majority, which means a firm 4 year continuation of policies and ideas that are anathema to them? Or, will that not matter to them as much as knocking the Liberals into 3rd place?

My feeling is the answer for the really partisan NDP supporters, particularly the ones on the blogosphere (like Dipper Chick, who I respect as a blogger, but consider to be one of the more hyper-partisan NDP supporters out there), is that they would be willing to take that trade in a heartbeat. Their goal isn’t much different then Stephen Harper: they wish the Liberal Party to be destroyed, in order for the electorate to be polarized between the left and the right, with no party staking out the middle ground. I’m not so sure your typical centre-left wing progressive voter who leans back and forth between the 2 parties would feel the same way however.

- Just as a counterpoint to that, to show my NDP blogger acquaintances I’m a reasonable person, I wanted to comment on this coalition talk that Jack Layton was musing about a couple of weeks ago, which many of the top Liberals instantly rejected, but go at it from a different angle.

Let’s do hypotheticals and let’s say that the Conservatives only win a minority government, and lets say the NDP makes history and becomes the Official Opposition for the first time ever. The Conservatives draw up a throne speech/budget, and the NDP in their official opposition capacity decide to immediately vote against it and bring the government down, with their obvious calculation being that Governor-General Jean will not dissolve Parliament this soon after the prior election, and instead will ask the next largest party to try and form the government. The BQ decide to support the NDP move, which leaves it to the Liberals. Would they support that move?

In this scenario, I’d be one of the first to urge the LPC to go along with it. I realize there are many Liberals who are seemingly more anti-NDP then they are anti-Conservative, and I’ve been admittedly annoyed at some of the NDP statements and their blogging supporters attacks - which have at times been more concentrated on the Liberals then the Conservatives the past 2 1/2 years, but if this imaginary scenario were to occur, I’d prefer a Prime Minister Layton (which still sounds really really odd to me, even as I type it) to a repeat performance of a Prime Minister Harper. My ideological position is on the centre-left of the Liberal Party (some of my Blogging Tory friends would say far left, but whatever) and I’ve always historically had sympathy for some of the NDP positions. They certainly would have far less policies I’d disagree with then the extreme right-wing Conservative views of one Stephen Harper and the current incarnation of the Conservative Party of Canada. So, I’d have little qualms about bringing the government down, even if it helped the NDP to form the government.

Besides, it might be good strategy for the Liberals to let Jack have the big chair, because I’m not so sure he or the NDP would be able to handle it. It’s easy to make promises and such when you have traditionally had little chance at forming a government. It gets a lot harder when you actually unexpectedly get put there. With apologies to Bob Rae, see 1990 and the NDP election in Ontario as an example.

So there you have Sunday NDP chat for today.

UPDATE: So, one of my commenters has informed me one of the readers has sent in a list of 100 ridings they think the NDP can win in to Danielle (probably the same person who wrote to me wrote in to her). Fair enough, but for fairness sake, I’ll also post Danielle’s updated response:

A “reader” has provided a list, though the very list defies credibility with dozens of ridings where the NDP finished 3rd and more than 20% back and will at best finish 15% back this time. It almost seemed like it was just ridings picked out of a hat. This is exactly why all the seat projections show they never go above 45 seats.

Could the NDP win even a majority of those seats that are listed by this NDP supporter? Perhaps - with a complete collapse of the Liberal vote. But at this point, I still don’t see that.

Since Blogging a Dead Horse was crowing this morning about how Ipsos-Reid shows somehow that Canadians are sceptical about the Green Shift (a notion that Red Tory by the way refutes rather convincingly over at his blog), I thought it only appropriate to mention the Harris-Decima poll talked about in the Star which shows that Canadians want aggressive action on climate change by a wide margin (and no Mr. Harper, being aggressive doesn’t mean agreeing to non-binding targets).

I’d add that I find that its regrettable that the NDP and its partisans continue to charge at the Liberals Green Shift plan rather then go at the Conservatives, who absolutely have no plan at all to combat climate change. Yet, the NDP supporters attack the Green Shift just as hard the Conservatives do in trying to discredit it.

Apparently, the desire to gain seats at the expense of the Liberals left flank is more important to Jack Laytom and the NDP’s partisans rather then pointing out that all other parties,  despite taking different approaches, have concrete plans and committment to combat climate change, while the Cons. don’t.

So I was chatting with one of my acquaintances up on the Hill who observes the Parliamentary goings-on for a living, and I asked that person what they made of the Conservatives issuing a press release last evening on Bill C-3 (dealing with the new revised security certificates that the Supreme Court struck down last year), which more or less said the Liberals would be weak on Canadians public safety if they don’t pass the Conservatives version of that bill.  I said it seemed a rather silly move by the PMO to make going after the Liberals when Harper was supposed to be meeting Dion today to try and persuade him to follow his stance on Afghanistan and the Manley Report; I didn’t think it would exactly ease chilly relations with that type of a release.

The response I got from this person was interesting: the opinion given back was that it was that person’s belief that Harper really doesn’t want Dion to agree with him - that he wants to be able to blame Dion and the Liberals for “forcing” him to end the combat mission in Afghanistan, and thus try to neutralize it as an election issue for him.

I said I found that interesting, because of Layton’s press conference yesterday and some NDP bloggers basically now saying to everyone who would listen that Dion was moving closer to Harper’s position (and Layton was being silly I opined, because everyone has predicted, including me, that Dion and the Liberals would never agree to pulling troops out immediately, and that’s been their position for a while).

The reply to that from the observer was equally interesting:  In their opinion, Layton, like Harper  is also playing politics with this issue; the NDP is following their policy of trying to destroy the Liberals in advance of the next election than in — well, pretty much anything else. The opinion ended with the observation that Layton probably would have been horrified if Dion *had* agreed with him.

Take it for what it’s worth, but as I said, it’s from an observer on the Hill… and it means Dion and the Liberals will have to tread very carefully. If the NDP want to end the combat portion of the mission, they will have to quit playing politics (if that is indeed what they’re up to) acknowledge that they and the Liberals have differences on when the combat portion ends, and then ask the Liberals to help defeat the Cons version of wanting to stay.

As for Harper, I don’t trust him more then I can throw him. Dion has made his position clear that the combat portion of this mission will end in 2009 if the Liberals have their way, so I don’t see what Harper will offer to Dion to get him to agree to an extension. If Harper comes out of his meeting with guns ablazing about how the Liberals and Dion are being inflexible or won’t support a Liberal-led panel recommendation, I suspect my observer friend’s opinions on this will be proven right.

Well now, this is an interesting turn of events. Rather then bash the Liberals over their Afghanistan position, Jack Layton and the NDP have decided diplomacy is the better way to go, and are making overtures to Dion and appealing to him to support their opposition to not extend the Afghanistan mission:

NDP Leader Jack Layton made a personal appeal to the federal Liberals on Wednesday, urging them to accept his proposal to put an end to Canada’s military combat mission in Afghanistan. Layton spoke briefly to Liberal Leader Stephane Dion outside the Commons to convince him not to support Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s efforts to extend the mission beyond its current deadline of 2009. “Just as Mr. Harper has extended a hand to Mr. Dion for his approach, so too am I extending a hand to Mr. Dion to embrace our approach,” Layton (said) during a speech the University of Ottawa on Wednesday evening. “Mr. Dion has some decisions to make and I look forward to a continued dialogue over the coming days and weeks.” An NDP official described the meeting as a cordial exchange in which the two leaders agreed to continue their dialogue in the future.

Dion and the Liberals will probably never agree to Layton and the NDP’s position on “Canadian troops out of Afghanistan now” stance. That being said, I would assert that Dion’s views on the mission are a lot closer to Layton’s then they are to Stephen Harper (or Harper’s proxy guy John Manley). In light of what I just highlighted in my previous blogpost about Dion flatly stating there was no change in the Liberal position about removing Cdn troops from a combat role once 2009 rolls around, I believe there is room there for the 2 parties to agree that THIS extension is cause for common ground to reject both the Conservatives stance as well as the Manley report.

My kudos to Layton and the NDP for looking at what Harper was doing in trying to publicly appeal to Dion and to do the same thing. It goes without saying I am one of those who support the end of the mission as it currently stands once 2009 rolls around, and if the NDP and the Liberals can make common ground here in rejecting a Harper/Conservative extension, even though they disagree on the exact date of the troops withdrawal, I’m all for it.

(H/T to Mushroom for finding this)

Three cases of that statement that caught my eye this evening.

First, Harper’s statements on climate change and declaring that Kyoto was ” a mistake” earned him a unanimous disassociation of that statement in the Quebec legislature by all 3 parties. Regardless of what Chantal Hebert opines, I believe Dion should be hammering on that issue everywhere, but particularly in Quebec come next election.

Secondly, and on a related note, the UN issues about as unsubtle a diplomatic rebuke as you can do with regards to Harper and Canada’s position on Climate Change.

Thirdly, the decision by the NDP and Jack Layton to support the Cons. motion on prohibiting veiled voters from casting ballots has enraged traditional NDP supporting bloggers, and unaffiliated blogs on the progressive left who are normally sympathetic to the NDP today, although with the NDP’s view on blogging regarding it as  the black sheep of the family, one wonders what if any effect it will have, or if anyone in NDP HQ even notices the discomfiture this has caused amongst their normally very loyal supporters.

Liberal and Con. blogs and the netroots for those parties may have no more influence on their respective parties, but we do know they get read up on the Hill by the MP’s and staffers. I’m not sure the same can be said of the NDP MP’s and staffers for the NDP bloggers, whose party seems to treat the venue and those who use it as pariahs. Perhaps the better way to get their attention is to get the media notice their rumblings, like say, Kady O’Mally, who wrote today wondering who exactly came up with this strategy to vote for this in the NDP backroom. People like her and others in the media could make a few NDP’ers rather uncomfortable when its pointed out to them that their netroots/grassroots supporters aren’t too happy about this.

And I support their stance, by the way. How can we have a problem with MAYBE a few hundred veiled voters, when we have thousands of Canadians sending in absentee mail-in ballots who apparently are just fine and dandy and we have no problem trusting who they are? The appearance of fearmongering against Muslims is way too obvious here.

I wouldn’t put it past him to stand her up, even if it was a charity dinner that May won fair and square. He claims to be the leader of the party that stands up for working families, the common person, a party of progressive values, and the only real opposition to Harper, yet he goes out of his way to shun and attack the other parties with progressive elements in them who are also in opposition to Harper.

Why would he do this? The fact of the matter is: Jack is looking out what’s best for him and the NDP with regards to seats and in particular increasing his total, at the expense of others. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that - all parties are trying to do that. The point is, Jack and some of his NDP supporters come irritatingly across as trying to be holier-then-thou with their political piety, as if they’re the only principled party out there, when they’re really no different then the other political parties. If Harper was to get a majority government, but the NDP got more seats, that would be fine with Jack. Jack’s goal is to try to supplant the Liberal Party as the official Opposition - a goal and wish you can see the NDP bloggers also engaging in as they often spend more time attacking the Official Opposition then they are the Conservative government.

Maybe Jack will surprise us and have a good political chit-chat with Ms. May, but seeing as he’s barely acknowledged her or the Green Party’s existence (because he perceives the Greens as a threat to the NDP and doesn’t wish to confer legitimacy on her or the Green Party), I’m not hopeful.

If the NDP’s documents that they obtained through the Freedom Of Information Act are correct, it appears the Department of National Defence wrote up Afghan President Karzai’s speech to Parliament last year:

The party’s defence critic, Dawn Black, says the papers indicate Karzai’s address was an “elaborately staged political stunt.” Black held a news conference today to release access-to-information documents that suggest a team of military advisers prepared an initial draft of Karzai’s speech, delivered on Sept. 22, 2006. She quoted a situation report from Task Force Afghanistan as saying: “Team prepared initial draft of President (Karzai’s) address to Parliament 22 Sep.”

It’s one thing for the Canadian military to be asking Canadians to “support the troops”, regardless of your feelings about Afghanistan or the mission. It’s quite another to be taking swipes at political opponents of the mission through a foreign leader - not that it did anything to sway public opinion to increase the popularity of the mission, mind you. Be that as it may, it’s disturbing that the military has decided to become politicized like this - to go as far as to write pointers for the Afghanistan President to try and sway Canadian public opinion, and by extension the Conservative government’s support for it.