“I think you can be constructive, I think you can be strong, but you don’t have to be angry,” said Ambrose. “I do think that my colleagues have sent the message loud and clear that we want to be effective and constructive but leave the nastiness behind.”
But, she’s only the interim leader and so, it doesn’t matter.
I have a general rule, which is useful: never trust a “nice” person.
Main Entry: nice
Pronunciation: ‘nis
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English nice “foolish, stupid,” from early French nice (same meaning), from Latin nescius “ignorant,” from nescire “not to know,” from ne- “not” and scire “to know” —
Since Maggie Thatcher’s name has come up, I’d like to point out that we conservatives are not above revisionist history at times, too.
I just finished watching a Netflix show called ‘Pandora’s Box’, a documentary that put lie to all the misinformation about nuclear power and the mendacity of the left in subverting the cleanest, most efficient and lowest cost energy source on earth.
In it, Maggie is shown speaking before the UN (1986), expounding on the dangers of climate change and the imminent danger it presents to mankind.
Apparently even this conservative stalwart was not immune to the lies and the corruption of the left, occasionally.
“We need a conservatism that is sunnier and more optimistic than what we have sometimes conveyed. We have to take collective responsibility for that.” – Jason Kenney
vs:
“The facts of life are conservative” ~ Margaret Thatcher, yes Jason, they are not sunny or optimistic.
We lost not because of the campaign. We lost for three reasons: 1. MSM, 2. Public sector unions 3. Stupidity of people who rejected facts and embraced a slick snake oils salesman with his promises that he will make them feel good. There was no honest campaign that could overcome it. When libranos tried to argue on issues despite having MSM and pub unions behind them they lost twice (Iggy Dion), when they argued for hair and change they won. That is all.
Will five years be enough for those idiots to realize that “the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money”? I am not sure about that. Americans re-elected the dumbest and most anti-American president they ever had… I’d like to think Canadians are smarter than that… but then I look at Ontario government.
“If you let them define you, you’re dead.”
Dead on, Lance. During John Tory’s tenure as leader of Ontario PCs, it was very apparent that the party hierarchy was terrified of the Toronto press…wherever it went, they followed. Consequently, they churned out nothing but pablum…usually digested pablum.
“I’d like to think Canadians are smarter than that… but then I look at Ontario government.”
And Alberta’s. As I keep pointing out, 8/10 provinces in the country are run by Liberals or Dippers, and the 9th is about to flip. And is there any such thing as a conservative-minded mayor in Canada? This country is hell-bent on going full-blown socialist for a good long while, it seems.
The last time the Liberals won power, they won 3 majorities and a minority before getting turfed. Given Trudeau’s age, the general stupidity of the average voter, the heavy Liberal bend of Canadian culture, and the lack of term limits, it wouldn’t at all shock me if he’s in power for 12 years or more, and we’ll no doubt be hearing the ‘historians’ lauding him as one of Canada’s greatest PMs long before his time in office is up. Even as the world falls down all around us.
Enjoy the decline. There’s simply nothing else we can do now.
You and Colonista are respectively right about how long the Liberals will in power now and why the Conservatives lost.
Colonista, among your three reasons you could have added a fourth, and that being the foreign money poured into Canada to help finance advertising against the Conservative government.
The sad part for me is that I am of the age where most likely I may well not live long enough to see the empty puppet head thrown out.
“Rightly or wrongly, in Ontario, perverse voters showed that they would vote for a crook and a liar over a perceived ‘meanie’.”
The first day-care generations are in charge of the country.
In all the comments about CPC running a terrible campaign, what should be kept in mind is that Stephen Harper was attempting to become the first PM since Wilfrid Laurier to win 4 time consecutively. No PM in a hundred years has managed this almost impossible task, and only Macdonald and Laurier ever did it. Even had he eked out a minority win, the 2 socialist parties would have ganged up and defeated him at the first opportunity. The nature of democracy is that voters tire of a regime after so many years and wish for change, whether rational or not. Given the odds against him, well articulated above, he did well to win almost 100 seats.
Time to cut Stephen Harper some slack as he rally deserves it.
I don’t know what part of Canada you guys live in, but all I saw during the election was Tory attack ads. At the very end, there were some decent radio ads by Harper, but it was too little, too late.
I didn’t see ANYTHING in the Tory ads that said “These positive things are why you should vote for us”; all I saw was “Trudeau’s just not ready – nice hair though” OVER AND OVER AND OVER until I thought I was going to puke. The Tories DID NOT RUN a positive campaign – they were negative from even before day 1 and that seemed to be all they had to offer.
And the pity was they did have a positive record to run on. Canada has been named, over and over, the best place in the world to live. Canadian cities, like Toronto, Vancouver, and Calgary, regularly make the list of top ten livable cities. If Harper was so terrible, how could those things happen after ten years in power?
But, to be fair, the Tories DID cock up a number of things. Thug Julian Fantino, who liked dressing up his OPP officers in jackboots, completely messed up Veteran Affairs. A TORY government, of all things, completely screwed up naval procurement.
and after Obama screwed us on Keystone, repeatedly (not just the latest version), what did Harper do? Did he pull out of the BS F-35, the world’s least needed plane? No. Did he tell Obama to pound sand when he asked for help against ISIS? No. So, he basically played the patsy for Obama, never standing up to him on anything. biggest disappointment to me, by far.
The Tories blew this election. Let’s get rid of the backroom boys that surrounded Harper and gave his such TERRIBLE, WORTHLESS advice. Let’s get a more open and transparent government. I think Ambrose is a good start; let’s see what happens in the leadership run.
Everyone is endlessly discussing why we came second in the beauty contest. Despite the fact that the winning contestant was a monkey and we were a human being, somehow we still came second. How should we react? Here’s a hint: hitting the gym so that we can look even better in the swimsuit competition next year is a pointless exercise. The only thing that conservatives can really do in this environment is earn less and give the pillagers less at tax time. If that’s decreasing your hours at work or taking fewer jobs this year, then do it. Our tax system right now makes it idiotic to earn any more than $90k a year.. and don’t be a fool, JT is coming after that tax bracket next. At that level, of each additional hundred bucks earned, the government takes 40 bucks. In thanks, the government then punches you in the genitals, and while you are down on one knee vomiting, head level with their ass, they turn around and fart in your face. Conservatives everywhere: Earn less, do less, sit back and watch the carnage.
The only other option will be to bolt to one of these floating cities they are making these days, but I think that idea needs to mature a bit more.
“story from an aide who saw Harper exploding on his campaign bus”
Second hand information is rarely accurate and, more often than not, contains more than a little embellishment. However, more importantly, the use of the “F” word, especially when angry, does not constitute nastiness. Going on the occaisional tirade with generous injections of the word for emphasis is very common. Like it or not, it is one of the most widely used and effective words in the English language, especially when utilized as an adjective or adverb.
Show me someone who has never used this word and I’ll show you a liar.
Thank you, those are some accomplishments of the CPC.
My point is we are doomed.
If all the conservative can accomplish is to slow the tide, why bother contradicting King Knut?
That tide is coming in.
Time to prepare for life in a tidal zone?
The ship of state is sinking, I have bailed for 39 years( paid more than my share of tax), my reward is a state that openly steals from me and rewards liars and fools.
Every promise of service by the state has turned out to be rubbish.
They take the necessary funds by force and provide services that mock the function.
I see no end in sight to our current kleptocracy regardless of which party holds power.
This makes me a “doctrinaire libertarian”?
Swell.
The gun registry, to be reimposed.C68 still strips FAC holders of their civil rights.
State monopolies, Egg and milk boards.
Bureaucratic fiat, never stopped and now emboldened.CSA?Environment Canada?
We had the pee in the cup guy(and he rinsed it I might add), they had the coat-hanger abortionist and the guy who wanted to F the pope( probably both literally and figuratively),
but the Conservatives are nasty?
The last few security measures announced seemed ill timed and hasty and were perceived as mean and attack ads seem to favor the underdog.
The backroom Liberals came up with a few upbeat catchy phrases like a “Canadian is a Canadian” which Trudrama feigned enthusiastically.
The truth,facts and consequences appear to be irrelevant these days.
Were we nasty? No,but the the Liberals appeared less nasty than us.
On a side note,even the Pope in his visit to the States(which many Canadians viewed) at the end of September, espoused left-wing progressive views. I think many people had a hard
time reconciling political with religious views.
The “Just Not Ready” ads were brilliant … for three weeks or so. It was an important point to make, to serve as a reference for future attempts to contrast CPC accomplishments and CPC proposals with the LPC’s cotton candy. Mind you, if you are a Conservative, contrasting your own policies and proposals with those of opponents will automatically be regarded by the media-academic complex as an “attack”.
It is also fair to say that the CPC had a very questionable media strategy. The rejection of the arrogant “Consortium” was a very defensible decision, but the Party did very little to defend it. The Party also badly under-performed on social media, while the Liberals created an onslaught reminiscent of the Obama campaigns. In the last couple of weeks, Mr Harper and some ministers began to talk to local media and did so effectively, but it was far too little, far too late. Too often the most inspired policies of the Harper government were never defended in a way that independent voters could understand why they were beneficiaries of those reforms.
I do not fault Mr Harper for “not standing up to Obama”, any more than I would have faulted the Finns for “not standing up to the USSR” (after 1941). American conservatives were quite clear about the contrast between Mr Harper and their own feckless leader. I was always impressed with his attempts to work with Australia and New Zealand, particularly, as well as other countries to exercise a foreign policy that at least tried distinguish between between our friends and our enemies. Once again, the Party failed to highlight the high regard in which Canada was held internationally *because* of Mr Harper’s leadership in response to the drumbeat of media and social media attacks that claimed that the government was tarnishing Canada’s international reputation (with a variety of leftist, activist groups).
I’m not sure if even a brilliant campaign would have saved the CPC this time. The damage done by the media-academic complex over the past 10 years was considerable, in part because it was never confronted, never answered. The government laboured under the handicaps of having been in office a long time (only part of which, however, involved majority government), of refusing PAC-type support, while a long list of “independent” groups could organize and spend money to attack the government, and having ceded the dominant political narrative to the Left. There was also insufficient attention to rallying supporters over the past few years. In my riding, one that the Party was, admittedly, unlikely to win, it was disheartening to see how few party members (even executive members) bothered to give as much as a dollar of their money or an hour of their time to the campaign. Some people didn’t care for the candidate, but not one person of a hundred who were contacted would even consider standing as a candidate, and the federal party was happy to endorse a very weak candidate as a sacrificial lamb.
No party can run a federal election without a strong team of “backroom boys” (and “girls”), but that group needs to be more representative of the party’s likely supporters while committed to a single goal. There is much work to be done in the next four years. The media-academic complex will continue to direct its fire at the CPC rather than at a Trudeau government, and our leaders need to be able to respond (And the jury is still out as to whether a “Prentice-apprentice” is up to the job). The party needs to begin now recruiting credible and attractive candidates for the next election and perhaps looking at our somewhat dated and chaotic nominations process, not just to cut down on the likelihood of nominating candidates who peeing in other people’s crockery but also to reflect the talent and the diversity of Canadian Conservatism. This does not mean whoring after “Red Tories”; they have found their new home and will be happy with it. It is rather to advance the message of a party that stands for personal freedom and protection of conscience, prudent fiscal management, respect for the federal system (something that does *not* entail the media circuses of the pompously named “Council of the Federation”), less government, more space for private investment and individual initiative, pride in Canada’s real heritage (not just the one that began with Lester Pearson), a responsible and independent foreign policy, and an approach to foreign and domestic issues that is measured, responsible, results-oriented (as opposed to symbol-oriented, such as bogus international climate change/AIDS/refugee/etc conferences) and various “public inquiries” and “Royal Commissions” that do little but employ lawyers and journalists at great public expense to engage in costly street theatre).
It also means focusing on the consequences of the current government’s policies, and on their impact on the economy, on the bloated and union-dominated “civil service”, on Canadians’ personal freedom of thought, expression, association, and their right to have a place in Canada’s professional communities. We need to fill up the tent again, but not with people who will work actively to undermine the principles that underpin the founding of the CPC.
Great comment.
“My point is we are doomed.”
That may well be.
So what is the answer?
Going Galt like some suggested above? Ugh that only works for childless antinatalists with not much to lose. We’re not going to go Galt because we are conservatives goddammit. Because if you are powerful and go Galt you lose power, and if you are poor and go Galt the state comes for your children.
No, we’re going to continue working our asses off. And we should invest in our children. Multiply our wealth, spend as little as necessary making sure that your wealth cannot be easily taxed (gold bars), buy land because it always is worth something. Be the Jews. they survived for centuries of oppression through investing in family, education (knowledge) and multiplying their wealth. Learn from them. Despite everything done to them .2% of world population earned 22% of Nobel Prize winners. There is a lesson in it for conservatives in exile in the formerly western world. Either learn it or perish.
Sorry, I grew up behind the Iron Curtain, those libtard f***ers do not scare me, they anger me because they are destroying the western world which is the best hope for hummanity, they are destroying the world I as a kid always dreamed of being a part off, but they do not scare me. They are rank amateurs, as a teen I got my ticket stamped by ZOMO, there is nothing they can do to compare. But yes sabotage them. On every occasion if it does not cost you too much fight back. Disobey every unjust law that you can get away with. Make the state as dysfunctional as possible. The more people get burned by the dysfunction the more of them will reject the liberal mantra.
“and after Obama screwed us on Keystone, repeatedly (not just the latest version), what did Harper do? Did he pull out of the BS F-35, the world’s least needed plane? No. Did he tell Obama to pound sand when he asked for help against ISIS? No. So, he basically played the patsy for Obama,”
OMG, seriously? F-35 is the only viable choice for Canada in the long run. We need it and there are no alternatives. And if you disagree (I really do not want to start that debate again) then at least be honest enough to acknowledge that a lot of people including the conservative government thought so, consequently pulling out of F-35 would have hurt Canada Keystone or no Keystone.
And yes, Harper had an independent of US foreign policy. Canada not US was the best friend of Israel. Harper stood up to Pootin regarding Ukraine etc. All this will change now, drastically.
You are absolutely right about the impact on the election of the foreign interest lobby. Gutting Canadian oil sector is a wet dream for Pootin, US oil producers, turbaned tyrants of Tehran (recall the Iranian UN ambassador investigating the impact of the Oil Sands development on the sacred standards of living of Canadian beloved Natives) and others, and so they either directly or though green front groups sabotaged it.