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Raos
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Joined: 8/7/2006
Msg: 26 | |
| Political Tags - What Do You Think?
Posted: 8/22/2006 5:31:03 PM | The number of large elected parties does tend to remain fairly stable, as far as I know, although it was up for a while with rightwing parties after the . In many ways, Canada and the US are relatively similar. There has historically been only 2 major parties, one liberal and one conservative that have gone through quite a confusing game of juggling names, and often combining both Liberal and Conservative in the name for one party.
As far as national media coverage, the Conservatives and the Liberals get the most, while the Bloc and the NDP do get a considerable amount. I'm sure in Quebec the Bloc gets a rather signficant amount of coverage, but I definitely don't live in Quebec. During election time, the Greens do occasionally get mentioned, generally for being excluded from the debates, but other than that, no other parties get any real national coverage.
I think the simplest reason, in both Canada, the US and the UK, for the largely 2 party systems that exist, is the voting structure that exists. First past the post encourages mass conglomerate parties, where more numerous smaller parties are likely to do no more than split the vote. | |
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| Political Tags - What Do You Think?
Posted: 8/24/2006 4:31:40 PM | It's really not surprising that things like public healthcare, and other progressive measures can never be brought forward in the USA, because the cost to the aristocracy is too great. They will convince you that the others, the majority of democracies in the world, are wrong - and only you are right. In the mean time, the top one percent get richer.
Three hundred billion ( and rapidly rising) for a war in a foreign country ? No problem.
Healthcare for everyone in America ? Sorry....we don't have that type of cash.
You are free, and free to pay more.
Almost any politician in the USA today would never get elected in any other Western democracy. The most radical Republican or Democrat there would be a right winger anywhere else.
Well said and 100% accurate MG. 
I often wondered why the American people can accept billions poured into their military while they have tent cities and anarchy in their inner cities due to poverty.
The right wing neo cons are the worst for this. Fully support war in your national interest while holding a bible. Talk about being hypocrites.
Another question;
Why is New Orleans still a mess?
Can't afford to make it right? Or dont really want to because there is no money in it for Haliburton / Carlyle?
Doesnt any-one down there find it odd that a Canadian rescue team dispatched from Vancouver made it there before any Federal American relief agency did after Katrina blew through? | |
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rks58
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Joined: 1/28/2006
Msg: 28 | |
| Political Tags - What Do You Think?
Posted: 8/24/2006 6:51:20 PM |
And how many Canadian parties get any national media coverage? Is it de facto limited to the 4 in the second list, by virtue of having sufficient representation?
At the National level it has generally (prior to Bloc Quebecois) been the NDP (New Democratic Party), Liberal and Conservatives that have received the bulk of the coverage. After the Bloc came on the scene they have shared in that national coverage. The smaller parties usually don't get much because of the local nature of their support. On the local level, it varies widely, you will often see the smaller parties getting more coverage. This is an artifact of the nature of the Canadian electoral system and probably why the same split isn't seen in the US. Because of the way the parliamentary system is arranged each election hinges on what happens at the local (Riding) level. To equate it to the US system it would be like having each state's electoral college votes tied to a specific region of the state with that vote going to whoever carried that region rather than state-wide. The 10-15 party thing has been fairly consistent for as long as I can remember.
The vote split has, overall, remained fairly consistent (prior to Bloc Quebecois) with the NDP (one time CCF) historically carrying approximately 15% of the vote on average (which translates into 9-15% of the seats in parliament depending on where they get their most support, it really varies from election to election) and the remaining being split between Liberal and Conservative in various measure (sometimes fairly evenly resulting in a minority gov't or lopsided resulting in a majority gov't).
When the Bloc came along they drew most of their votes from the Liberal and Conservative parties (mainly Liberal) and have historically pulled about 10-11% of the vote. However, because they are based in Quebec (which holds almost 25% of the seats) this usually translates into an average of 17% of the seats. This leaves the Liberals and Conservatives with about 73% of the seats to split between them.
Every now and then there are 1 or 2 independants, but usually without specific party affiliation.
P.S. The notion of conservatism and liberalism is far more closely tied to fiscal policy rather than social policy on the national level. Socially, the Canadian Conservative Party is usually more liberal than the US Democrats (they tended to take an extra step right starting with Mulroney) though mildly right of center for Canada, the Liberals are generally centrist in Canadian terms (but socialist in US terms) and the NDP are socialist in Canadian terms (but would be downright communist to many Americans so you can imagine where the Communist Party fits in and I don't think any American could even fathom how far left the Marxist-Leninists are). | |
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| Political Tags - What Do You Think?
Posted: 9/4/2006 6:39:16 PM | O.P. - You left out the two biggest tags. That of the natioalist and of the patriot. All others would fit under either
of these tags. What do they mean to you ( open quuestion ). | |
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| Political Tags - What Do You Think?
Posted: 9/7/2006 3:09:03 AM |
O.P. - You left out the two biggest tags. That of the nationalist and of the patriot. All others would fit under either of these tags. What do they mean to you ( open question ).
To me, a nationalist (in the pure sense) is someone who thinks his country and people are better than anyone else's. Most times, with nationalism, you will find at least an element of hatred or at least disdain for other nationalities and countries.
A patriot is proud of his country, it's accomplishments, history, and people - but doesn't see them as being better than anyone else in any other country - just different. | |
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