So I just read this article by Brian Topp in the Globe and Mail. And I have to say, it is obvious to me that either Topp is being willfully ignorant about the definition of strategic voting, or he is an idiot.
Reposted from my post on the Liberal.ca forums: http://www.liberal.ca/
activity/p/9180/
Brian Topp (Pawel Dwulit/The Canadian Press)
Michael Ignatieff never once, in all the time I heard the man speak, advocated for strategic voting. He asked people who had previously voted for
the NDP, and people who used to vote Progressive Conservative, to join the Liberal ranks vote for us. This isn’t called strategic voting. It is called campaigning.
Strategic voting is when someone who normally votes Liberal in a riding where the NDP candidate has the best chance to beat a CPC candidate votes NDP, and when a voter naturally inclined to vote NDP in a riding where the LPC candidate has the best chance to win votes for the LPC. This is strategic voting, and it was most widely advocated for in the last campaign by – you guessed it – the NDP.
Topp shows a level of arrogance that rivals that which he accuses the Liberals of having in assuming that the NDP “own” certain voters. He seems to think that the Liberals are trying to do something underhanded or wrong in asking people who normally vote for one party or another to vote for us. Painting the NDP as a party that could not win may have been inaccurate, but it was hardly underhanded. Topp is engaging in the exact kind of campaigning tactic in the article he has written decrying this type of campaigning.
It is obvious that the NDP see their path to victory as passing straight through the heart of the Liberal Party of Canada. They know that they aren’t going to convert Conservative voters to the NDP, so they are aiming squarely at people who traditionally vote Liberal. Just like Stephen Harper and the CPC, the NDP are seeking nothing less than the extinction of the Liberal Party of Canada. Despite their reputation as the “good guys” of Canadians politics, they are proving themselves to be just as ruthless and underhanded as the Conservatives in their quest for power.
If you don’t believe me, look how Topp manages to through in a comment trying to link Paul Martin to sponsorship. It had no relevance to the article, Topp just wanted to make sure that everyone remembers it. Behold the party that doesn’t believe in attack politics.
The Liberal Party is in a fight for its very existence, and we are flanked on either side by opponents that not only wish to defeat us, they want to destroy us. We have to stop pretending that this is politics as usual and that we are going to regain our former glory simply by being nice, electing a good leader, and coming up with the magic winning policy. If we hope to win more seats in the next election, we must all get involved in our local ridings, help sign up new members, help sign up new donors, and starting Wednesday, start signing up as many people as we can as supporters for this party. This isn’t about whether or not we win or lose the next election anymore. This is about whether or not there is a centrist party left in Canada to fight for what we believe in.