First Andrew Coyne (of all people), now the FP's Jacqueline Thrope:
“The argument has been a minority government can’t make bold moves, but bold moves a majority may make.”
Now, I've been railing against that and other cowardly thinking for years, but I'm neither a policy wonk nor a party hack. I'm just a nobody blogger who admits to being more interested in Principles than practicality.
Sadly, much of the "conservative" blogosphere reflects the Party's unprincipled, unimaginative tendency. Lots of boring number crunching, and poll analysis and half-baked strategy, from bloggers with an awfully fluid/threadbare idea of what "conservative" means. It's all about "getting elected." It's a game or a horse race and you just want your "team" to win. It's like the World Cup but with neckties.
How's that working out? We've now got a "conservative" PM who you know doesn't believe in Global Warming, pretending to believe in Global Warming and pretending not to notice that we notice that he's lying. He wants us all to buy a certain kind of light bulb now. Politicians -- "conservative" politicians -- are telling us how to decorate our homes, people. Hello??
But for the timid, grasping, careerist wonk bloggers out there, dying to get tapped for a Party job one day, none of that matters. (Why so many of them are male, and so many of us mouthy, outrageous, say-anything, more idealist bloggers are female remains a minor mystery...)
(I'm obliged to add, however, a word of congratulations to our boys for not going the way of so many US and UK pundits on "our" side: the popular conservative talk radio guest/author who hired a hooker to suck his toes, or to suck hers, I try to forget; the far greater author who liked to be spanked -- yes, I know, he is British after all, and if he'd been the "top" I wouldn't have cared, but the position of men in the Movement should never be prone; the presidential candidate who wanted to install his mistress in the mayor's mansion; the other one who dumped the mother of his children, the one who kept the family together while he was in the Hanoi Hilton; the soon-to-be candidate prone to getting b-js in parking lots with other men's wives... And remember (if you can bear it -- I mean, have you ever seen Boris Johnson?) the "Sex-tator" Scandal. Thank you, one and all, Canadian boys, for keeping your pants zipped in public.)
Anyway, Jay Currie (I'll forgive him for being a libertarian -- for today) has actually come up with an ok conservative platform -- one that contains actual conservatism and not the Liberal Lite pap we're tied to now.
Not all of this is laudatory, and certainly much is as far from "conservative" as one can get (legalized drugs and prostitution -- ladies and gentleman, does "doing your own thing" really sound like a "conservative" principle to you? Really? Really??)
And I'm going to pretend that Jay just forgot to credit my idea from earlier this year, of paying every status Indian in Canada a million bucks to shut up forever.
Otherwise, worth a read and a discussion.
I don't believe that a Conservative majority is realistic nor has it ever been realistic. Which is all the more reason Harper should start acting like a conservative. I have to go add value to the economy now.
Campaigning from the right then governing from the left is a recipe for failure. Just ask Joe Clark.
test
-Means test for pensions. If you have a million dollar home in Point Grey or a million dollar nest egg or a suitable workplace pension then you don’t need a government pension.
-An tax on the generations that lived well beyond their means and left following generations with a half trillion dollar debt.
-Raising the fertility rate is a net negative if most of our children are bastards. We will strengthen families by strengthening marriage and removing incentives to break up families.
-All forms of “affirmative action”: gone. Just because the Charter says they’re allowed doesn’t mean we have to have them. Productivity will increase dramatically in the new merit based economy.
-Immigration: We deal with the 3 year backlog first while we bring our immigration rate to G8 average.
-Enhance freedom of expression via libel law reform.
-Middle class tax cut.
I, for one, find myself very disillusioned with the CPC's performance as our government.
Of course I realize that, as a minority, they can't just go ahead and be as conservative as the country needs. Obviously, they were going to have to compromise on some things. For example, I understand that they couldn't actually wipe out the long gun registry...amnesty was the best they could do under the circumstances. This makes sense.
But to become more liberal than the Liberals??? Doesn't make any sense. And if it's all to try and help secure a majority down the road, I don't see the pay-off. Polls have them still a ways from majority territory.
As Andrew Coyne pointed out a little while ago, grassroots Conservative supporters can now only hope for what they railed against for so long: There has to be a hidden agenda.
[ We've now got a "conservative" PM who you know doesn't believe in Global Warming, pretending to believe in Global Warming and pretending not to notice that we notice that he's lying.]
How can you say that ???
PM Harper was instrumental in destroying Kyoto as we know it at the recent G8 meeting in Germany. It is a dead duck.
Canada was instrumental in persuading Japan, China, India, US and others to forget Kyoto I and work towards real pollution controls.
Maurice Strong, Gore, Suzuki, Dion and especially the United Nations have been working on the Hoax for decades. Even though it is now rapidly unraveling, it will take some time to complete the task.
Science is easy to 'dumb-down'. A lot harder to 'smart-it-up'. Sound bites do not work on the way up :)
Keep in mind the standard of living destroying ways Dion and the Kyoto Kult had in store for us.
"the soon-to-be candidate prone to getting b-js in parking lots with other men's wives"
I know Gingrich has done a lot of despicable things and Thompson is no saint either, but I never heard this one before. To which one of them are you referring? (Whichever one it is, what a pig!)
Ron in Kelowna: could Harper's ploy be similar to Marc Antony's "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him"? If so, we haven't gotten past the first few lines yet (with the possible exception of Kyoto).
I'm willing to give PMSH more rope...besides, there is NO OTHER PARTY that I could possibly vote for at this point, and recreating Reform will just split the conservative vote.
500,000 status indians x $1,000,000 is $500 Billion dollars. That would double the national debt. I say nuke 'em.
Ron: It's Gingrich. The man's brain is as big as a chesterfield, but he's also the reason God made cabinet posts. I just can't look at him without shuddering. One Clinton (twice in a row) is enough.
Brian: ok, maybe they'd take 250,000 each. I bet a lot of em would sign their lives away for 100 grand...
Kathy, I agree they would sell grandma for 100 grand. But after that was blown they'd be back - feathered cap in hand - regardless of the deal.
It's a great idea, but I can't see it working....
The question remains, ladies and gentleman and Kathy: is anyone not doing their own thing? Is it not the case that whether or not doing one's thing is a conservative principle depends on whether or not one's thing is a conservative principle? Or is it being suggested that we should tailor our lives to do someone else's thing, in the name of some sort of conservativism?
I think human liberty has been broadly increasing over the millenia. I'd like to conserve those gains. Am I a liberal or a conservative?
"Brian: ok, maybe they'd take 250,000 each. I bet a lot of em would sign their lives away for 100 grand..."
Would you believe 25 bucks and a 1.5 liter of Evian?
I like articles written by economists about as much as hearing the libewrals spouting off about
how Paul Martin was an economic genius. This article just sounds like an anti-Harper rant..I care less about the tag line at the end..
The US has almost everything to do with our economy. Unless some other country(ies) manage to tank the US dollar, things will bubble right along, just like the oil into an SUV.
When Iraq tried to sell oil in Euros look what happened.
one simple little conservative thing that could be done is elimate the penny. Australia and NZ did it back in the 1990s. It would make us all more efficient, help the environment with less metal used and less moving all those pennies around ther country.
Pennyless !!! Good idea.
Only one option to fix government in this country, starve it.
Tax cut, now please. 50% will do for a start. 50% per year for 10 years would be decent progress.
My definition of Conservative includes a very heavy dose of Pragmatism.
This goes like this.
Those in power get to make the rules.
You can indulge in idealism only when you are in unchallenged power or in oposition.
When you are forced (By reason of minority govt) to adapt a more balanced approach you have to compromise or lose power.
I'm not suggesting that you sell out all your principals for the sake of power. You have to play the give and take.
Example.
Give. Table environmental legislation to appease the enviro-wakos and MSM.
Take. Procure equipment for our ailing military.
The ratio of give and take is indicative of the level of power you have.
So... don't be so hasty to judge this government by ignoring the Take and just complaining about the Give.