Young Liberal gets a smackdown

One word of advice to Young Liberals in the by-election city of Guelph... if you're going to attack people for being "hyper-partisan", don't get caught being "hyper-partisan" yourself!

I saw on my Google News page this morning an article about the federal election finance issues, so I gave it a read. It turned out to be a Letter to the Editor in the Guelph Mercury, which was itself a response to a Liberal attack letter from the previous week. Looks like one of the Young Liberals in Guelph got rocked today... but the funny part is that the smackdown line was his own!

The author of today's letter pulled out a quote that this young Liberal had himself used to attack a local Tory back in March, and threw it right back at him! For the record, it's actually really good and worthwhile quote, one that I heartily agree with... but it's too bad he didn't take his own advice. (his original line is in bold below)

"Mitchell's attempt to smear the Conservatives and their supporters is another sad example of the gotcha politics that is becoming far to common in the House of Commons.

There's a significant and rather hypocritical element to his letter, considering some of his own past statements in this paper. In fact, it's very well expressed in the following quote from him in a March 5 letter to the editor: "Canadians and Guelphites want to hear rational, constructive debate on topics of such crucial importance, not hyper-partisan rhetoric that only further serves to obfuscate the problem at hand."

Mitchell's brand of "hyper-partisanship," on display in his May 8 letter, lessens the level of debate and takes away from the real issues we ought to be discussing about the future of our nation."

HEAR! HEAR! The moral of today's story? We should all try to spend more time talking about the issues of importance to Canadians, and not wasting time trying to score partisan political points by attacking others.

And just for the record, I know that I can do a better job of that myself.