"There is no way to stop it. . . . It's inevitable, because even with some 30-some backbench Liberals that will vote against, there's insufficient numbers to stop it," he said.
This on the eve of talk that Liberal Cabinet member Joe Comuzzi will resign over his party's support for same sex marriage.
By late next week their is little doubt in my mind that the legislation re-defining marriage will become law. The only hope the Defend Marriage movement had was that the government would fall, trigering an election which would delay the passing of the legislation and potentially change the balance of power in parliament.
But I have to say from what I've seen of the Defend Marriage movement, and their tactics, I haven't been impressed. I think the first problem is that the leadership of most on this side have no experience in politics. They had no appreciation for strategy, and didn't know the apparatus of Ottawa and how it works. Although well intentioned they seemed like they didn't know what they were doing.
Anyone could have counted the votes in parliament and realized that no letter writting campaign was going to make any difference in the result. The only thing that would change the result was if an election were called, and the Defend Marriage coalition swept MP's that supported Marriage to parliament. They should have had a massive letter campaign aimed at MP's like Comuzzi to vote against the Liberal budget to force an election on the issue. in a vote like that one all you needed was 1 MP to switch sides - not the 30 some odd needed in a vote on SSM. But I honestly think they just didn't get it. Instead they were still living by the assumption that they could win the vote on the SSM issue...
I would get Defend Marriage pamphlets in the mail, that were professional looking, but you honestly had to ask yourself what they were thinking. You see a white middle aged couple kissing on the front. What they should have had was a black young aged couple kissing on the front. This is politics people, and perception is everything. The media portrays the Defend Marriage movement as a bunch of apes running around burning crosses and wearing white masks. They should have had musslims, asians, and immigrants at the forefront of the entire organization. Everything we do needs to shatter those perceptions the media tries to create.
But it's all over now. The question is will the movement learn, and hire on some political strategists that have worked in federal politics - and actually take their advice? They have a federal leader of a federal party willing to back them up. And even he seems to get that the anti-SSM movement will only win as part of a large coalition.
No comments:
Post a Comment