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Labor has won the Adelaide seat of Fisher after the Liberals pulled narrowly ahead in the hard-fought race.

The SA Electoral Commission on Saturday said Nat Cook was elected after preferences were distributed from last weekend's by-election.

The Liberals' Heidi Harris had been expected to win back the seat, which had been held by former Liberal Bob Such, who became an independent in 2000 and died from a brain tumour in October.

After the initial count on Saturday night saw a swing of more than nine per cent to Labor, Premier Jay Weatherill said it showed voter dissatisfaction with broken promises from the federal coalition government.

Later in the week, Ms Harris led Labor by just 17 votes leading to a cliffhanger preference count.

It's resulted in Ms Cook being elected with 50.1 per cent of the vote ahead of her rival's 49.9 per cent.

Mr Weatherill congratulated Ms Cook, saying her life experience and outstanding work will make her a strong and valuable voice for the people of Fisher and South Australia.

"In the end, Labor won Fisher because we ran the best candidate with a positive agenda and I look forward to working with Nat in government," the premier said.

Earlier in the week, senior Liberals admitted Defence Minister David Johnston's claim he wouldn't trust SA-based shipbuilder ASC "to build a canoe" played a large part in the initial swings towards Labor.

Federal SA Labor MP Amanda Rishworth said her colleague's success sent a chilling message to Prime Minister Tony Abbott about abandoning South Australians.

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SA Libs consider call for Fisher recount

The Conservatives want to replace Daniel Constantin at the helm of the Conservative Party (PC) by merging with Calin Popescu Tariceanus new party, according to the stiripesurse.ro news website. The merger with PLR could be considered, especially since they were working together. They are not yet a party, have no structures, but they have a fairly powerful parliamentary group, so a possible merger under PCs aegis, with a possible L from Liberals added to it, would raise the strength of a center-right party. If a new party is formed everything will have to be changed, a PC leader explained, being quoted by the aforementioned source.

In September, Calin Popescu Tariceanu stated on public television (referring to the new PC-PLR parliamentary group set up back then) that this is not an agreement between parties, but strictly between parliamentary groups that have decided to unite in order to gain more strength. We have become the third-largest group in Parliament. We plan to promote solutions in what concerns the right-wing spectrum and to fulfill them. The parties (PC and PLR editors note) maintain their independence.

In his turn, Daniel Constantin stated on that occasion, in a communiqu, that he salutes President Calin Popescu Tariceanus decision to join us, in order to jointly build a strong parliamentary group that would promote center-right measures. () Along with our PLR colleagues, we have thought-out a dynamic and flexible parliamentary construct that helps us fulfill the center-right doctrinaire goals, without affecting in any way the other commitments taken by our parties at political and government level.

According to Daniel Constantin, depending on the results of the parliamentary cooperation between PC and PLR, results that will be embodied in the Center-right Measures for Romania program, it would be possible to develop the partnership in other dimensions too.

Daniel Constantin is criticized by several PC MPs and members of party branches for being too close to Premier Victor Ponta, the critics demanding a distancing from PSD as a result. According to stiripesurse.ro, during a meeting of PC branches from northwestern regions, a meeting that took place at the end of last month, it was clearly stated that almost everyone is dissatisfied with the partys current leadership and that a party congress would be welcomed. The news websites sources hinted that this congress should result in the replacement of Daniel Constantin.

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Liberals could merge with Conservatives. Daniel Constantins position threatened

NDP liberals PC cost us billion the Green Party o
This video was uploaded from an Android phone.

By: Phil Ryerson

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NDP liberals PC cost us billion the Green Party o - Video

Liberals Making the Difference - A Project on Roma Integration (full video)
Liberals, Roma, Integration, Central Europe, Southeast Europe.

By: European Liberal Forum (ELF)

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Liberals Making the Difference - A Project on Roma Integration (full video) - Video

December 11, 2014|2:27 pm

Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, delivering the Institute on Religion and Democracy's 2014 Diane Knippers Memorial Lecture, Washington, D.C., October 16, 2014.

WASHINGTON Will those liberals who value diversity and tolerance of differing viewpoints lose their fight with the liberals who have worked to drive those who do not share their opinions from the public square? Professor Robert P. George believes they will. Tolerant liberals, however, have two advantages in that fight.

On Oct. 16, George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, delivered the Institute on Religion and Democracy's 2014 Diane Knippers Memorial Lecture in Washington, D.C. In that speech (coverage and links to the video here), he argued that supporters of gay marriage will not allow for the religious freedom of those opposed to gay marriage because their ideology does not allow for the fact that gay marriage dissenters can be reasonable people of goodwill. There are some tolerant liberals that continue to support religious freedom, he said, but those liberals "will lose the battle."

During the Q&A after the speech, I suggested to George two reasons he could be wrong, that tolerant liberals could win that fight with intolerant liberals.

First, in American democracy extremism loses and moderation wins. In fact, our Founders designed our government to function that way. If most elections in the United States had a proportional representation system, candidates who can gain the support of a small portion of the population can still gain some measure of political power. Instead, the United States has a winner-take-all electoral system in which a plurality of the vote is required to win elections. This encourages candidates to build broad coalitions in order to win. In this way, our election system has a moderating effect on our candidates and our political discourse.

Intolerant liberalism has only recently become a mainstream phenomenon. It has been below the surface (or confined mostly to college campuses) for a while, but since President Barack Obama was reelected in 2012, intolerant liberals have been much more strident and much more public.

This extremism will lead to a backlash. We may have already seen the beginnings of the backlash in the responses to the Houston Mayor sermon subpoena scandal, the Hitching Post Wedding Chapel storyand the Republican victories in the midterm elections.

While support for gay marriage has seen strong growth in recent years, support for religious freedom also remains strong. Political candidates, even those who support gay marriage, will not want to be associated with a movement seen as attacking religious freedom.

Second, tolerant liberals are holding views consistent with their ideology. The hypocrisy of intolerant liberals is unsustainable in the long-term as the absurdity of their position continues to reveal itself.

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Analysis: Why Tolerant Liberals Can Win Their Fight With Intolerant Liberals; A Response to Robert P. George