I believe Harper is on his way to a majority.....

The speed with which Stephen Harper is working to make Canada over in his own image is frightening. He has gone from one thing to another since his election, acting as if he has a majority, because he knows the other parties will not force an election at this time. The announcement today of three new supply ships as part of a multi-billion-dollar investment in the Canadian military is an example of his scheme. The cost of the new 28,000 tonne ships is expected to be about $2.9 billion. Much of the work on the ships will be done at the Davie Shipyard in Quebec. Hmmm...I wonder how many seats he'll get in Quebec in the next election?
I saw a piece on Harper last night on CPAC. It was his closest associates and friends explaining Stephen Harper. The thing that came across clear as a bell from all of them (although they seemed to think it was a plus for him) was that he is a control freak and almost never changes his mind or admits he's wrong about anything! To them, this was proof of what a strong and reliable leader he is...Uugghhh!
Unless something completely unforseen happens to derail him, I'm so afraid he will get his majority and as his mentor Mulroney once said, "when I get through with Canada you won't know it." I pray I'm wrong.

I actually feel afraid that we are going to be thrown back into the Mulroney era once again. Did anyone see the CBC special where Mulroney's phone conversations were made public? I get the feeling that ol' Steve has the same attitude...that the Canadian public are a bunch of moronic sheep who are voting for "the lesser of two evils". I honestly hate that statement because there's only one party I feel is evil, and that's the neocons. It's ridiculous that he can make statements about the Liberals being corrupt, but he's headed down the same path. Apparently he's going to use the gay marriage thing as a hot button issue just like Bush is. I truly hope that Canadians see through his helmet-head hair and do not vote him a majority when the time comes. I also hope that the party responsible for an election will not be punished for bringing the government down because people are "tired of voting". We should never be too tired to stand up for our principles.

with the same script.

I remember an interview years ago with the founder editor of Frank magazine (back when they LOVED to go after Muldoon on anything they could sweep up on the guy) and he said, as best he could figure out, the country is run by approximately 3500 people. Parliament and the it's parties are simply window dressing to keep the rubes busy. It is partly why 'paternalism' is a laudable political goal -- the sheep must answer to their betters in Canada.

In the 80s when you had a wildly unpopular US president who was making a Neo-Con revolution of sorts down south--you had Joe and Pierre and Joe was tagged as the 'Yankee' and Pierre was the saviour of Canada defending our Dominion against the evil GOP and all was well. (familiar?)

Back then it was 'Joe who?' (a Red Tory from the western canada that placed, among other things, as home onwership and decriminalizing marijuana as his priorities)-- Joe was such a loser that even his wife wouldn't use his last name. Then Mulroney comes back--yeah the guy that spent half a million in 1976 only to lose against Clark--and is really little more than a sleazy corporate lawyer from Quebec. No chance in hell, we thought.

But then the Liberals got themselves a sleazy corporate lawyer (Turner) and so they were equalized as being the 'lesser of two evils' among Progressives. (ergo rise in NDP support to the end of the decade under Broadbent). So the script was Joe was scary and now Lyin' Brian was even scarier....or a puppet of US mining interests and perhaps a wolverine or some such creature.

Then, as if a switch was flicked, somewhere in this great country and the light of reason poured forth.

Mulroney wasn't so bad -- he managed to consolidate Quebec support (a true national party), whereas Turner couldn't rally Quebec. Joe who all of a sudden became a valuable red tory statesman who would balance the 'blue' tory neo-conservatism of Muldoon, thus making the Conservatives, less scary.

All of a sudden, Turner became a reckless drunk with no base. The Trudeau legacy, especially what was missed by the new Charter and that was a Quebec signature, became a big 'issue' to important people which the Tories could solve because of their 'fresh' new start. Turner was tagged as an out of touch elitist and a Trudeau era crony (patronnage! and 'you had a choice sir'! became radical slogans). The media went to work and Mulroney won 211 seats and the Liberals got 40.

Essentially there are things that the federal government is suppose to do and that is to provide capital with a safe environment for exploitation and a docile population that won't ever figure out that it lives in one of the richest mineral resource-based countries in the world with a population of only 30 million...with huge regional disparaties, poverty, homelessness, low levels of home ownership and some of the highest prices for food and transportation anywhere.

Oh yes...Harper will get a majority and I think the switch was flicked this time at the point Brian Mulroney was feted as the 'greenest' PM ever -- the commies would call that 'posthumous rehabilitation'.

This is why there is no Opposition and why the Media, if they are critical of Harper, it is usually baseless 'ad homs' and not issues. The media is fluid as they will inevitably have to go back and re-position Harper and his party as the 'real deal'.

It's a co-ordinator class where Team A and Team B (black hats/white hats) simply shift positions to keep the Parliamentary front going...that's all.

Back to sleep until the script hits the second act--which will be when the Liberals find a champion among the former new dems, americans, pro-lifers, social democrats and shameless tokens.

It's like all reason has left a good part of them. They go around rooting for Harper and I wouldn't be surprised is Charest got elected for a second term, despite having proven himself an idiot in his handling of issue after issue for 3 years straight. After the Harpers election I get the distinct impression that all you have to do to win over here is act nicely during the campaing and every should fall into your lap.

Makes me mad as Hell. :mad: :banghead:

There is much in your analysis that I agree with, but I can't agree with the notion that Harper is playing out a Mulroney-esque script.

Mulroney was a traditional Canadian conservative of the non-Red variety, but there was much about his electoral coalition, his government, and those around him, that reflected traditional Canadian Toryism.

Harper, however, is a displaced Republican neocon, which is quite a different political perspective. I think people who want Harper defeated make a factual and tactical mistake when they compare him to traditional Canadian conservatives such as Mulroney.

Making this comparison makes him more palatable and less scary for many voters who still want to punish Chretien for the sins of the 90s (as per the pleadings of the NDP) but who would not knowingly want to turn the country over to Bushian neocons (which is fine with the NDP, provided they get to keep their seats in the House, and maybe pick up a few more.)

- B

Mulroney was neo-con. Period.

Now as far as Canadian toryism-- nope neo-conservativism...proof? FTA, GST, privatized air canada, privatized petro-can, privatize this and that, debt reduction at all costs, choke off the money supply if inflation raises it ugle head...all neo-conservative innovations. Period.

I can't begin to think of anything Mulroney did that could even be considered Canadian or Toryism--high, low, Burkean, Disraeli, paleo or anything other Toryism--or conservatism.

Now if you insist on disagreeing on history--fine, but please be a little more enlightened as to mention at least ONE thing YOU think he did that was 'Toryism'? or whatever you think Toryism is?

I think your playing semantics actually...do you honestly believe that Mulroney reflected the values of say, George Grant? or Diefenbaker? or even William Davis? Hardly...so I am very curious as to what you think Canadian toryism actually is and how you think that Mulroney fit the bill, when all his economic ideas and that of Mike Wilson came straight out of the Chicago School of economics?

Now if you insist on disagreeing on history--fine, but please be a little more enlightened as to mention at least ONE thing YOU think he did that was 'Toryism'? or whatever you think Toryism is?

I was no big fan of Mulroney, nor am I an apologist for him. However, off the top of my mind, as I recall:

- Mulroney was pivotal in organizing the Commonwealth to put pressure on South Africa to abandon apartheid.

- Mulroney did not try to limit the federal government to security and foreign affairs, nor was he reluctant to assert federal power in areas of provincial jurisdiction.

- Mutoney held classic conservative views on the environment, and brought in the green plan as a government priority.

- Mulroney held classic conservative views on social programs and (some) wealth redistribution, which unlike Harper, he was not opposed to in principle.

- Mulroney did not pander to the social conservatives in his party.

- Mulroney wasn't afraid to raise taxes, or ideologically opposed to doing so. In fact, though Mulroney was right wing, he wasn't much of an ideologue on anything.

No doubt you can scour Mulroneys 10 years in power and come up with examples of some specific policies that contradict some of the above, but I honestly think that pretending that Harper is a carbon copy of Mulroney leads to the same baffling, incoherent, low-traction analysis that you get from the NDP when they (incessantly) claim there is no difference between Conservatives and Liberals. Anyone with eyes, ears and a brain knows there is a difference.

tactically, I think telling people that Harper is a clone of Mulroney only makes people more comfortable with Harper because they know that Mulroney governed for a decade, and the country came out the other end reasonably fine, with our values and basic institutions seemingly intact.

I think it is for this very reason that Harper likes to publicly associate himself with Mulroney. The association works for him because it gives voters comfort that he is something that he isn't -- namely, a traditional Canadian conservative like others who have gone before him.

- B

As has been pointed out, the Liberals had abandoned their traditional strengths, and left the field vacant for someone else who was able to do what it took to hold onto power while getting as much of what they wanted as they could.

There was window dressing in the cabinet -- like Flora MacDonald, who was utterly ineffective and lived up to nothing that should have been expected of her.

There was window dressing in foreign policy -- like the South Africa stuff you mention, which cost Canada, and Conservatives and their friends here, nothing to speak of.

There were small sacrifices, like environment stuff.

And the proof? Mulroney went on to win another election. He had persuaded the people he was a Liberal. The Liberals were left flapping around on free trade, leaderless and platformless.

What brought him down? Well, that whiff of corruption sure didn't help. Just like a Liberal: not content to take what he can get and stay in for the long haul; gotta have more, now. The fatal flaw.

Oops. I'm afraid this has just been some of that

same baffling, incoherent, low-traction analysis that you get from the NDP when they (incessantly) claim there is no difference between Conservatives and Liberals. Anyone with eyes, ears and a brain knows there is a difference.

Next time I'll think before I let all that propaganda in my head ooze out.

You make the same mistake most do...you confuse ideology with party politics.

The brilliance of the neo-conservative revolution was that it was simply an economic policy and to a degree you are right -- it was liberal. It attempted to recapture classical liberalism from what they believed was ravaged by a century of Keynesian meddling.

Neo-cons (in the UK it was called Thatcherism, in the US it was called Reaganism) saw quite rightly that the big problem with traditional conservative parties is that they were slavishly tied to a whole range of moral and socially conservative platforms (capital punishment, for instance) that NO LONGER appealed to the baby boomer generation and were election killers.

So basically the traditional vehicle used by business to promote their goals and policies in Canada was no longer viable. Some would suggest that the neocons operated much like the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks were a small extremist and unpopular faction of a much larger popular movement that managed to create enough internal dissent among traditional allies that allowed the movement to fracture and then allow this small, but highly organized group to takeover.

There are elements of this 'strategy' (not ideology) in the relationship between the Christian Right and the GOP in the US. If you notice much of the critique of neocons in the US lies in the fact that many were self-declared former commies and Trotskyites. If you notice also just how seamlessly these folks moved from one set of 19th century economic ideas to another set of economic ideas without the hint of contradiction...in the same way Jean Charest was able to move so seamlessly from a Tory blue to Liberal rouge. The party names are meaningless...political parties simply 'structure the vote'.

Now as the thoughtful comments of Bragi pointed out...Mulroney quite passionly supported an end to apartheid. Lots of people did. However, the motives for Mulroney or John Major for doing so are probably a lot different than say Bishop Tutu or Pope John Paul -- South Africa was an important trading country and continued trade became untenable. Within the rationale of neocon thought it was simple to be against it simply because it unfair and intolerable government regulation on free trade and labour. Nothing wrong with thinking if it helped to destroy the apartheid system, as far as I was concerned. I do remember being involved in that movement (SACTU) and there was some crude attempt by dumbass commie types to demand 'purity' in motive -- being pragmatic, I never gave shit and as such those commie types didn't like me either ;-)

But in particular, at the time, there was some speculation that part of Canada's motives in supporting sanctions is that it sure didn't hurt Maple Leaf gold coins (a perennial second to gold krugerrands in international sales) and that Canada also had diamonds for sale. Imagine that. I am sure that Brian Mulroney, whose background was in Canadian mining, never thought about that as 'externalities'. Never. Not once.

But I digress...as far as Mulroney's committment to the environment and in particular the 'acid rain' treaty (which was and is worthless)it was made very easy for him politically when the Reagan administration quite loudly and publicly banned Canadian made documentaries on the subject.

It became a really big deal when Hollywood decided to nominate those two films for Academy Awards. Mulroney was smart. He, like most Prime Ministers, grabbed the Yankee conflict and ran with it. He was standing up for Canada while at the same time he was actually negotiating a wide ranging FREE TRADE agreement that would strip this country of much of it's economic automony. I would see this an entirely the cynicism of neocon thinking and optics management rather than any dramatic committment to the environment, but since NONE of the other parties ever took the environment very seriously, save for a few, I will defer to the shared wisdom of making Lyin' Brian a 'Greenie'. (Note: the last two leaders of the federal green party are former Tories...could they be the new Bolsheviks? in the environmental movement? just speculation)

Now why you would think all this has anything to do with the NDP is really a corker. But I will take exception to your 'window dressing' comment. If Florid McDonald was window dressing...then what of Kim Campbell or Mary Clancey or Babs McDougell? Were they also window dressing?

But a funny story about that--the NDP at the time were really hot about 'gender parity' and attempted to make this an issue, which it wasn't (as usual) and was really more of an irritant to party members internally. But when the smoke cleared after the 1988 election, it was actually the Tories, without even trying, that ran more women than the NDP, inspite of their big push to sisterhood. There was an amazing number of women elected, especially out of Quebec, during the Mulroney years.

So to recap the NDP propaganda mill...Mulroney was 'green' and a 'feminist'. See how one can seamlessly move from from ideology to party politics and back again without anyone suspecting a thing...yeah we NDPers are wiley bunch. LOL

So there--I was mean to the NDP as well ;-)

Last things first.

Now why you would think all this has anything to do with the NDP is really a corker.

Uh ... I didn't. The reference to the NDP, in boldface in my post, was a quotation from the post I was responding to; that's how I identify quotations from posts I'm responding to, and often the poor grammar and spelling in them is the tip-off to them not being my own words. My comment in reply was sarcastic: obviously nothing I had just said should be taken seriously, because it was just NDP traction or however that went.

And I have no idea what this is about:

So to recap the NDP propaganda mill...Mulroney was 'green' and a 'feminist'.

The would-be new leader of the Greens, the one on the panel that annointed Mulroney, has made it her stated mission to destroy the NDP, as I understand it. Perhaps Jack has been praising Brian behind my back, I dunno.

Moving along ...

I don't disagree with anything in your analysis of Mulroney's behaviour, actually. I just didn't go into detail in my own post. Opposing apartheid wasn't likely to hurt his interests -- and yuppers, it was indeed likely to further the interests of his class/cronies whatever. Was he a committed philosophical believer in the equal rights of all people and peoples to life, liberty and security, and to self-determination? Excuse me while I snicker. (I shared office space with Defence and Aid back when; wasn't actively involved in that particular issue/struggle, but sure did have a hard time getting my hand to grasp the bottle of SA wine on the LCBO shelf when the boycott ended.) But as you sort of imply, one can't really complain when bad people do good things, even if for bad reasons. Why else would we lobby our bad governments? One can't complain, but one doesn't need to pin medals on.

And he was in a position where doing the tiniest thing (like the acid rain treaty) made him look good ... as Canadian politicians not uncommonly are, the US being our standard point of comparison.

Indeed, the economic elements of neo-conservatism are classical liberalism. We oldsters / non-USAmericans are quite aware of that. What I'm not grasping is what this big distinction you see between the Liberal and Conservative parties in this respect might be.

Mediums are messages, and strategies are ideologies, in some sense. The Liberal strategy of grasping onto power at all costs is in many ways their ideology: not power for its own sake, but power for what they can get with it. But their belief in their natural governing status really is a sort of ideology. Power is their ordained entitlement, and what they do with it is purely up to them. How is what they want to get with it different from what Conservatives want to get with it? How is Martin different from Mulroney? from Stronach? Hey - from Rae? (I *never* liked him, trust me, and nothing at all to do with his brief lamented premiership.)

My reference to Flora MacDonald (whose leadership campaign I dabbled in) as window-dressing was to her Red Tory status, not her sex. I don't think that Babs qualified. Being immigration ministers didn't really put them in the halls of power.

All in all, I'm not really seeing your points. You seem to think we disagreed on something, and I'm not seeing much, except perhaps our conclusions regarding the closeness in kind of the Liberal and Conservative parties on economic matters -- and your Charest anecdote would seem to belie any insistence that they are different.

pussycat dolls with the "Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? HUh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh?". You should watch it. That doesn't help the flow of discussion. I say it to anyone who uses it repeatedly. Watch the "Huh?".

(which I was far too polite to do) -- "huh?" is 100% pure USAmurrican.

Not for me, "huh?" Me and my mum will stick with "eh?"

Fuckin eh.

The big problem with this post-literate pop culture stuff is that there is SO much dreck out there, that it is hard to keep up.

I should thank you -- oh not for the 'Huh?' thing, I am still working on that reference--but I googled pussycat dolls and had no idea they existed. So I went to their home page and wouldn't you know--I finally found out why the hell all these 15 year old girls dress like skanky crackheads.



That's why I try to stay away from pop culture shit, I start to think that Fundies might have a point...:scared:

I'll work on the Mofo, Y'alls, Booyahs!, 'Sup? and all that other literary debris that floats up from those Brutes in South...

A poll today from Atlantic Canada adds to the concern about Harper inexorably moving towards a majority...

Atlantic Canadians are warming up to the federal Conservatives, according to a new poll.

The Tories are the party of preference for the first time in the 17-year history of the Atlantic Quarterly, a survey of voters in the region conducted every three months by Corporate Research Associates.

Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, who toppled the Liberals to win a minority government in January, were the choice of 42 per cent of decided voters in the most recent survey, conducted between May 15 and June 6.

That was up from the 35 per cent support the Conservatives received in February’s survey.

Atlantic support for the Liberals slipped to 31 per cent, down from 35 per cent in February, while 19 per cent said they would vote for the NDP, down from 22 per cent. Eight per cent of decided voters said they supported none of the three parties, favoured another party or did not plan to vote.

http://www.herald.ca/Canada/512620.html

- B

Since the election, he has spent every possible moment traveling across the country from one province to another, promising each area he visits that he will meet their needs, and the fact that he has been so busy doing things already has persuaded the people that here is a guy we can count on who gets things done!...I really believe that's what it's all about. He is such a contrast in his activism to dithering Paul Martin that he has won people over. He's winning them over by beguiling them into believing he will give them what they want and if he gets a majority, he'll go hell bent as fast as he can to change Canada into the neoconservative nation he wants.

Basically said he'd focus on five things (I forget which five; one's that "accountability" crap) to the exclusion of all else, so he could get people to give him a majority at the end of this mandate one way or another. This is why he's doing stuff like not bothering with reporters, skipping that major international AIDS conference in Toronto, etc.

(I'm also annoyed because I'm actually for the increase in defense spending, even though I can't help but spittake at the per-unit cost for the helos and C-17s..)

in to believe in him. It's like being for apple pie and motherhood. For instance one of the things he has done which seems on the surface to be a welcome thing is lowering the GST. They are saying it will save Canadians millions of dollars a year, which sounds great until you stop and figure out that it means you would save all of ONE DOLLAR on a $100 item!...He's all smoke and mirrors.

So, I will take this with a grain of salt.

the NDP will sign up for this fight.

I also think the Cons are going after things that are popular. Such as the justice system. Most Canadians don't really understand how the system works. They just know they see headlines that make them mad. So, trying to "Toughen up" the system is a good bet to get popularity.
As well, it's something the Liberals know, they know if they argue against it the un-educated public will turn on them.
What the Liberals need to start doing is attacking the little mistakes with vigour. Such as the cancellation of energuide.