Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Ignatieff Miscalculates

Michael Ignatieff had momentum. The Liberals had been successfully hammering Stephen Harper for proroguing Parliament. They had tied the Conservatives in most polls.

Now Ignatieff has changed the story. He's demanding that Stephen Harper drive a hard pro-abortion agenda at the upcoming G8 conference in June. That's simply wrong headed and the prime minister's office has already responded:

“Saving lives of mothers and children should not be a political football,” said Mr. Harper's press secretary, Dimitri Soudas. “This has nothing to do with abortion. This has nothing to do with gay marriage. This had nothing to do with capital punishment.” He called Mr. Ignatieff's remarks “sad.”

“Far too many lives have already been lost for want of relatively simple health-care
necessities such as clean water, inoculation, better nutrition, or well-trained health care workers,” Mr. Soudas said.

Mr. Soudas is right, there are many easy ways to improve the lives of mothers in developing countries - if the G8 can help they certainly should. The Liberals have been trying to make Harper look like a pro-life extremist (whatever that is) since he became leader of the Conservatives and it hasn't stuck. It won't stick this time either. Instead the Liberals will look like extremists for bringing an issue that nobody wants to talk about and trying to make it a hot button.

The Liberals only need to look at two recent examples to see that over-reach by abortion promoters only alienates the rest of us in the real world. Funding abortion in Obama's health bill, and an effort to prevent a pro-life Super Bowl ad from being aired have both back fired on the left wingers. Ignatieff's latest overreach will too.

9 comments:

Surecure said...

Iggy certainly has miscalculated. Angus-Reid just finished a poll that indicates that while 43% of Canadians believe abortion should be fully funded, 41% believe that it should only be funded in the event of rape, incest of risk to the mother's health.

Ignatieff is dividing a line right down the middle of Canadian society. And the thing is, he brought it up. This is going to give a lot of talk about the current lack of any laws in Canada regarding abortion.

Pandora would be pleased...

wilson said...

Well, when yah don't have squat for policy, other than dusting off the 1993 Liberal Red Book,
go to Donolo's plan B,
dust off the 2004 boogeymen, Jack Layton likes that.

hunter said...

Iggy is listening to his feminist MP's, they think choice means abortion, full stop. They hate the fact that choice can mean life as well. It doesn't play well to their victim image.

Anonymous said...

Iggy's going after Catholic vote ;-)

wilson said...

pay kids to get jobs, national daycare, abortions for the planet, restrict PMSHs powers to do anything....it's a Dipper agenda

imo the basis for a joint election platform from the LibDippers.

The_Iceman said...

I think that they are deliberately trying to incite a feud between opposite sides of a divisive issue in the name of opportunism. They are trying to create a fissure. You can be pro choice and oppose spending tax dollars on foreign abortions in an economic recession.

Joanne (True Blue) said...

Funny thing is that Mr. Iffy always refers to 'that guy' as being divisive. Takes one to know one I guess.

Patrick O'Neil said...

Awesome comments all. Joanne and Iceman, saw your posts too.

Anonymous said...

Ignatieff is suicidal, hero of Canadian abortion movement Henry Morgentaler turned out to be pseudo-medical fraud who obtained his medical diploma at University of Montreal in 1953 by making fraudulent claims about his studies of medicine in Germany and in Belgium prior to his immigration to Canada in 1950.