No, no, I should’ve said some aspects of the Liberals are perceived as “Centrist.” Trudeau was a Nazi-cum-Stalinist, well on the left, but not all the members of the Libs were moonbats. Of course, again, by our standards, most of them really are, anyhow. Just their compass got thrown out of whack about 3-4 decades ago.
I also can’t see the CA Recall election being comparable, either. You’re talking about a specific Gubernatorial race vs. an entire nationwide parliamentary election. If each of our states had races like that, CA wouldn’t have had a GOP Governor since the late ‘60s because they couldn’t win a majority in the legislature (for whom the “Governor” or “Premier” would be the party leader — you’d have had Willie Brown leading the state for a dozen years, a terrifying thought).
There’s advantages and disadvantages to the parliamentary system. I tend to favor our way down south, but those living in Canada and Oz have good arguments against implementing a republic, as the Gov-Gen equivalent can halt (at Her Majesty’s discretion) extremist hijackings of gov’t. Come to think of it, this is a prime example of why the Gov-Gen ought to give the thumbs-down to this mess. The sole reason that participated the unbridled panic from the left was Harper’s plan to defund the moonbats. I’m not even sure what the equivalent to that would be in our country.
There are two aspects of the British system I prefer over our own government though: the "prime minister question time" where members of Congress from each party are allowed to speak up and call the "ruling government" to task on its agenda (vs. the U.S. system of "state of the union address" which has evolved into one big, pre-scripted meaningless pep rally, follwed by a pre-scripted "opposition response" given to no one except the cameraman). John McCain agreed with me on the latter, and wanted to implement something like that in the USA. But of course Obama would never allow the GOP minority in Congress the power to debate him and debunk his socialist agenda in front him on live TV cameras. The second, of course, is the ability to get rid of cabinet members by votes of "no confidence", because here in the USA the only way to get rid of them is either the President fires the bastards or Congress manages to impeachment and remove them for high crimes (which never happens) As a result we get stuck with people like Janet Reno for eight years. In England she could have been "dismissed" by a simple majority "no confidence" vote after the Waco fisaco.
Re - Mexico's political parties. I agree the "conservative" government of Mexico has been a huge pain in the ass, especially Vicente Fox, which is perhaps the biggest disappointment in modern political history since he upset the ruling party after 80 years and had the potential to be a Mexican Ronald Reagan, but instead did nothing but blame the U.S. for six years. Harper's not as conservative as I'd like, but I think he's more of a Canadian version of Bob Ehrlich, whereas Fox is the Mexican version of George Ryan -- an arrogant elitist socialist elected by a "conservative party", yet delights in undermining George Bush, stabbing his own party in the back, and bilking the system to enrich himself. Ironically, the communist PRD would be the best scenario for U.S. conservatives (though not Mexican conservatives), because commies keep their people from escaping and our government would be forced to stop kissing Mexican but and deal with Mexico as an hostile enemy state. I personally would have preferred a PRI win though, because it would have been the most direct repudiation of Vicente Fox's failed policies... I also think many PRI members are more ideologically conservative than Vicente is.
If PRI and PNR agreed to caucus together and back the same person for Speaker/Senate President/etc., they could end "conservative" rule in Mexico very easily though. By simply caucusing together right now, their combined totals would give them 280 seats in the Mexican House (vs. PAN's 206) and 75 seats in the Mexican Senate (vs. PAN's 52)
“Trudeau was a Nazi-cum-Stalinist”
Uh huh. Since you’ve previously proudly professed to know precious little about the Progressive Conservative party, how is it that your pronouncements about Trudeau should be received as anything more?
“the Gov-Gen equivalent can halt (at Her Majesty’s discretion)”
Hate to break it to you but Her Majesty has nothing to do with the equation. Seems to be something that Yanks just can’t seem to grasp for whatever reason.
“The sole reason that participated the unbridled panic from the left was Harper’s plan to defund the moonbats.”
Perhaps if you understood the circumstance that had the public coffer supporting the political parties. You see, the whole concept was to remove the influence of Corporate and Union monies as influence in the direction of political parties. This came to pass under the Liberal leadership 5 years ago. Now the grass-root funded Conservatives want to strangle their opposition who played by the rules. Ooh, the nasty Opposition that thinks playing by the rules is a good thing.
Oh, and by the way? The Conservatives want to sit on their hands and let the economy go in the dumper. That’s really a proactive response to the economic times we’re in.