When Bouchard, Duceppe and Parizeau are against a major plank of the PQ, there’s been a shift.
I remember the 2007 election where the PQ’s slogan was “Reconstruisons notre Québec” (Let’s reconstruct our Quebec") which is the kind of fluffy literary theory non-sense trend I’d associate with a certain kind of academic. It really didn’t work for them.
It must be interesting being in the strategy meetings which come up with these things.
Sarah Palin has a degree of self-marketing cunning, but she’s a stupid person who was catapulted eight levels above her level of competence by powers beyond her understanding.
Pauline Marois has no excuse. She got to the Premier’s seat through a lifetime of work. She’s an educated woman with extensive experience, and so she** chose** to embrace racism, bigotry and small-mindedness.
She could have chosen to embrace her fellow human beings and to celebrate inclusion, openness, and pluralism. She could have used her power and influence to help people. She could have invested the powers of her office in an effort to to change the balance between haves and have-nots, to increase the amount of fairness and justice in the world. Instead she used her office for exclusion, for hatred, for creating divisions and pushing people away and, most repulsively, for picking on the powerless. She’s a despicable, mendacious, repellent pile of shit, the worst politician in recent Canadian history, and that’s saying a lot.
RickJay, I completely agree with you. The frightening thing is that if she had won a majority she would have tightened up the language laws, with the intention of eventually driving out a large number of anglos, and she would have had bill 60 passed and, I’m sure, vigorously enforced. I’m sure she, as she alluded in the past few months, also vigorously pushed to have bill 60 informally enforced in the private sector and I have no problem believing that a lot of the pure laine would have enthusiastically gone along with it in the name of protecting their language and culture. It would have been absolutely sickening.
Some interesting polls coming out, analyzing the standing of the PQ in the weeks since their electoral drubbing. And the news ain’t good for the PQ. They’ve slipped even further in public opinion, and most significantly, the party that was once the party of choice for young progressive voters is running very far behind with the young voters.
The most interesting point for me is the comment that young voters now split more along traditional right-wing, left-wing positions than on the sovereignty issue. For forty years, the sovereignty issue has been the defining issue for political parties and voters in Quebec. It’s been the glue that held the PQ together. If that is no longer the defining axis of political opinions, it could mean a continuing spiral down for the PQ.
Fascinating stuff - thanks. As an American, I’m happy to see the decline of any party calling for secession and disunion in our good friend and neighbor to the north.