Dear Liberal Party, wtf happened? (Part 2 of 2)

Continued from Part I

After our October 2008 election loss, Dion announced that he'd stay on as Interim Leader until the next Liberal leadership convention.  This (to me) meant that he'd be taking a step back and handing the party over to the next guy.

In the November 2008 fiscal update, Flaherty (inexplicably) included the subsidy removal provision amongst other proposals.  This led to Dion, Layton, and Duceppe teaming up to form the coalition.  This also led to me losing any respect I had left for Dion.  I'm familiar with all of the arguments we like to make when our party defends the coalition.  They're all bunk, and I think most of us know that even if we don't admit it.

The coalition claimed that this was more about about the lack of stimulus and the plan to ban public service strikes, and less about the elimination of political party subsidies.  I didn't believe them.  I think it was only about the subsidies (which I'll write about later) and the rest was just fluff.

The coalition was to be between the NDP and the Liberals, with the BQ providing votes only on confidence motions.  There was a lot of hemming and hawing about how the separatists weren't really in the coalition.  For people (like myself) who despise the Bloc, this wasn't good enough.  Even if we were to put that issue aside, why were we even teaming up with the NDP?  Memo to party leaders - A lot of grits don't like the NDP, and some of us even hate them.

I know the coalition was legal, but I didn't consider it to be legitimate.  There's a big difference.  Canadians had just unequivocally rejected Stephane Dion, but here he was trying to install himself as Prime Minister.  The pundits that ragged on the electorate for not understanding our parliamentary system were focusing their attention in the wrong place.  A lot of people that understood that this was legal still didn't support it.

For all Liberals who claimed to be taking a principled stand for parliamentary democracy, let's be honest.  If the Liberals had won more seats than the Conservatives in that election and if Harper had tried pulling the same shenanigans, you would be up in arms protesting the hijacking of democracy.  I know it, you know it, and all of Canada knows it.  Stop pretending this was kosher, it wasn't fooling anyone then and it isn't fooling anyone now.

So we've gone from Chretien's 3 consecutive majorities to Mr. Dithers' minority to the Sponsorship Scandal (our loss of power) to the Green Sh*t (our trouncing) to the Coalition (a shameful moment) to Election Iggy (worrysome) to Calm Iggy (less worrysome).   Iggy's recent shift away from 'Election Now!' mode is reassuring.  Here's hoping he lasts long enough to build the party back into fighting shape.