I saw this tweet come across the #lpc channel in Twitter the other day:
I have been noticing this kind of messaging from the NDP a lot lately. Any time there is a Liberal fundraiser, there is some desperate dipper trying to paint it as anti-democratic and elitist. I tend to ignore these tweets as the product of the uninformed leftist base that can’t see the pragmatic forest for their ideological trees.
But Ms. Housser isn’t simply a NDP wing nut who believes that political parties run on ferry dust and good wishes. No. She is the Media Officer for the National New Democratic Party. This tweet isn’t the product of an overactive ideology, it is the NDP communications strategy!
This tweet is obviously disingenuous on the part of Ms. Housser. No political party can survive in this country without fund raisers. While the NDP rely more on the $1.95 a vote than the LPC does, they still need to supplement that subsidy with fund raising dollars in order to pay their staff. In short, Ms. Housser only has a job because of political fund raisers. While I’m not surprised that the NDP communication strategy is disingenuous, I think it is worth highlighting.
I would like to be able to claim that it is also hypocritical, but I can’t. Well, I can, but I wanted to be able to provide links to similar events that Mr. Layton will be doing in the near future. I can’t do that. Why can’t I? Because there is absolutely no information on the NDP site about upcoming public appearances by Mr. Layton, or any NDP event, for that matter. None.
I can only conclude that Mr. Layton doesn’t want Canadian’s to know where an when he will be appearing, or, that the NDP really doesn’t hold fund raisers and they simply can’t afford to keep an events list up to date on their website! Either way, I think it paints a pretty unflattering picture of the NDP.
So, Ms. Housser, instead of spending your time tweeting about how fund raisers are somehow elitist, I think you should spend your time organizing more of them. After all, the NDP raised less than half the money the Liberals did last year.
