Monday, June 7, 2010

Iggy: A Coalition Only When I Know We've Lost

The leader of the Liberal Party Mike Ignatieff has decided that there will be no coalition agreement until after he has confirmed that he has lost an election. Forget strategically selecting candidates not to run against a coalition seats (theoretically maximizing seat counts for coalition partners) Iggy wants to be sure that he’s lost before he negotiates any treaty. One of the major justifications for the righteousness of a coalition of losers is that the sum of Liberal votes + NDP votes is greater than Conservative votes. Jack Layton will tell you that the majority of Canadians voted “against” the Tories, thus the losers should be allowed to form government.

But here’s the tricky part, if Liberal voters and NDP voters were truly loyal and interchangeable to anybody but Conservatives, then it would make perfect sense to pull candidates in each other’s ridings to maximize the probability of victory. If they are all voting against Conservatives, then they should vote for the coalition partners en masse. However, if the prospect of a left wing coalition is truly not palatable to Canadians in the center and might actually scare voters away, then that negates their entire basis of legitimacy. As Iggy says, all Liberals should vote Liberal even if it elects a Tory, and if there is a Tory minority then and only then will Iggy form a coalition of losers.

Don't worry leftards, you can have your coalition, but only after the Tories win the next election.

2 comments:

  1. By their same logic, a vote for the NDP is a vote against the Liberals, and a vote for the Liberals is a vote against the NDP. So far more voters vote against the coalition than vote against the Conservatives.

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  2. If Liberals had a leader worthy of being Prime Minister and were a party worthy of governing our country,
    they wouldn't need to play this numbers game, essentially rigging an election.

    Liberals and Dippers are telling Canadians
    'if you are too stupid to vote us into government, we will take it anyways, because we can'

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