A Few Thoughts About the 2012 Liberal Party Convention

Over at SDA I've been covering #LPC12 pretty heavily with posts here & here & here.  Indeed, I was pretty scathing with my mockery of them, but every bit of it was well deserved.  However, allow me to move forward in a more positive light:

The National Post's John Ivison has a pretty balanced summary of the Liberal Party Convention this past weekend. In it was this interesting snippet:

“A party that’s serious about forming the government understands that polls can impede our view of the future. We learned the most important question is not ‘what do people want today?’ but rather ‘what will people need tomorrow?’. The first question speaks to ‘followership’. The second to leadership and people want leadership,” [Dalton McGuinty] said.

A healthy democracy has at least two strong political parties. The NDP seizing power would be far worse for Canada than the Liberals regaining power one day. In that light, if you were a senior Liberal policy advisor sitting around a table and asked to provide one highly important question that the party needed to ask itself to get back in the ring as a serious contender, what would that question be?


I thought about the aforementioned challenge a long time and reflected back on something that SDA commenter 'Sammy' said here. A little research showed that the actual quote he referenced came from PostMedia's reporter, Jason Fekete:

That question, from the unnamed PEI delegate, is actually quite brilliant. So my question for the Liberals to ask themselves is this:

What do we need to do to win rural ridings in Canada?

Right now, the perception of Liberals is one of arrogant, elitist urbanites who look down upon hardworking rural folks. Entirely justified IMO. Can they have an awakening of sorts and change themselves & their demeanor to be somewhat more humble and accepting of others who have different views than their own? Odds are, they can't. But if they want to change their political fortunes anytime in the near future, they're going to have to.