Hey folks! Hop on the latest trend in oppositional politics. Get your new, hip, socialist Liberal buzzword and amaze your friends with invigorating, intelligent debate! Can't come up with a rebuttal? Don't worry, "unfair" is here!
November 2006, Liberal Leadership Debate, talking to Michael Ignatieff:
"This is unfair. This is unfair. You don't know what you speak about. Do you think it's easy to make priorities?"
February 2007, Toronto Star headline on Conservative TV ads about Stephane Dion:
"Many found Tory ads unfair, poll suggests"
March 2007 pre-budget:
Opposition leader Stéphane Dion told CBC News he doesn't want an election. "I hope the budget will be everything the last budget wasn't," he said, adding that the 2006 budget was unfair for ordinary Canadians, and cut environmental programs. "We hope the next budget — the budget of tomorrow — will be good for Canadians, enough that we may support it," Dion said.
March 2007 post-budget:
He [Dion] called the Conservative budget “unfair, divisive and dishonest."
What's funny is the big spending, barely any tax reduction, barely pay off debt 2007 budget is much different than the controlled spending, lower tax, pay off debt 2006 budget. But according to Dion, BOTH are "
unfair"!
You can't find a better buzzword for a socialist. That should be their new motto, "Hey, that's unfair!"
So is this the level of vocabulary and debate we will expect further from the leader of the official opposition? I'd say so--there's certainly a trend going on.
As much as I'm not a fan of the recent budget, for me to use "unfair" to describe the fact that as a single guy, I'm not getting anything out of it, is a terrible and unconvincing argument.
If someone stated I was not a good leader, and I cried, "unfair!", that would seem to come across as whimpy, indecisive, and lacking leadership.
One thing I've always liked about Bloc Quebecois leader, Gilles Duceppe, is that he makes very good arguments, is direct, and doesn't come across as a whiny, grovelling whimp. His priority being Quebec, instead of being an antagonist and taking a separation/sovereignty-at-all-costs, he's a pragmatic person. Because of this, he's also the main reason why the Conservatives have been able to pass many bills, including the recent budget with goodies for Quebec.
Instead, with Dion, you have a supposed leader who even before he reads the budget, said the Liberals would
not vote for it! Then, just before it's released, as you can read in one of the above quotes, he says they
might vote for it if it's different. Well it is different; it's more Liberal than many Liberal budgets themselves. Obviously knowing that the Bloc was going to support it, the Liberals and NDP were free to not vote for it.
So it really wouldn't have mattered if Dion read it or not. He said he wasn't going to vote for it anyway, and whatever was in it, he could just cry "unfair" and call it another good day in opposition, which he'll experience for quite some time.
Maybe I "don't know what I speak about", but I know how badly you Liberals "want to go back to power soon" and feed at the trough. It's what you do best.
Or am I being unfair?
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