Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘tories’

In a democracy, I have an absolute right not to discuss how I intend to vote with anyone. However, I’m choosing to waive that right, because politics is such an important topic on this blog, to discuss why, despite the corruption, scandals and aggravation, unlike so many Canadians, I won’t be switching my vote from Liberal to Tory this time around. This is the first time I’ve ever felt the need to explain my vote, and maybe that makes the vote all that much more important.

So why vote Liberal, you may ask?

Is it because I think the Liberals have done such a great job? Not really.

Is it because I buy into the scare tactics about Stephen Harper being George W. Bush reincarnated, prepared to turn us into a far right-wing theocracy? No, I find those ads amusing at best and ridiculously disastrous for the Liberals at worst.

Is it because I think that the culture of corruption that has set in amongst the Liberals is worth rewarding? Definitely not.

Is it because I’m voting strategically, in a riding where a Liberal vote would prevent a Bloc or NDP candidate from getting elected? Nope, my riding has been solidly Liberal since 1968 and even the sponsorship scandal won’t be changing that anytime soon. I could safely lodge a protest vote with little impact.

Is it because Martin convinced me in the debates? Not at all; in fact, he’s probably one of the worst debaters I’ve ever seen, and he got his butt kicked all the way to Ellesmere Island and back.

Is it because I agree with the majority of the Liberal policies and platform issues? Not even.

Is it because I believe that a Liberal victory represents the best chance to keep Quebec in Canada and to fight sovereignty? On the contrary, I think it will probably hurt a great deal.

So, you’re probably asking yourself, why on earth would I vote for this party?

Good question.

The answer is simple: Despite all the scandals, despite all the corruption, despite the promises I don’t believe and the policies I don’t agree with, the Liberal party still is the “best of the worst” in my mind. On the major things the government has done lately, I’ve been much closer to the Liberal point of view than to the Tory one.

Some examples:

• The economy: Whatever else he’s done, Martin has balanced the budget and improved economic conditions. He did his best to stand up to people like Jack Layton against spending we can’t afford. He even stood up to Bono – and hey, if you can say no to Bono, you can say no to anyone. The Canadian dollar is up, unemployment is down, and while the economy is still plagued with problems, I simply don’t believe that Harper is better equipped to solve them than Martin is. The Tory promises to reduce the GST may play well in the media, but in practice there are plenty of other places worth cutting first.
• Social issues: Gay marriage is probably the most prominent example lately. As I’ve stated many times on this blog before, every Canadian – gay or straight – ought to recognize this as an issue of fundamental human rights. Any of us who belong to any kind of minority should understand that if you can have a majority-rules decision against one minority, the same logic could be used against any of us. Martin and the Liberals were on the right side of this one. Harper and the Tories were on the wrong side. And while I don’t really believe Harper will reverse it, nor do I agree with electing a party that has dedicated so much time, energy and resources to fighting it. I think the Liberals took a courageous position on this one and I respect them for it (if for little else).
• Voting for the candidate, not the party: Cop-out? Perhaps. But I like Marlene Jennings, the incumbent Liberal MP in my riding, well enough. Her voting record is often in step with what I believe (though not always), and she has been especially strong in defending Israel and in working to strengthen Canada’s ties with Israel, which is an issue of importance to me. And I’m comfortable having her represent my riding in Parliament, whether as a member of the government or as a member of the opposition.

So the upshot is, I’m not entirely happy to be voting Liberal and I’m not about to hit the campaign trail for Martin’s team. There are plenty of places where I flat-out disagree with the Liberals on policy, and there’s no doubt the party is about as corrupt as you can get. But I’m not going blue this time, for those reasons and for the reason that I simply don’t believe the Tories have presented enough of a positive platform. They’ve been stronger in attacking the Liberals, sure, but their policy initiatives haven’t won me over.

Okay, bring it on. I’m ready.

Mario Dumont is one thing. But I would’ve never predicted that La Presse would endorse the Tories in a Federal election.

La Presse is one of Montreal’s major newspapers and is widely considered the French federalist voice in Montreal (as opposed to Le Devoir, which leans separatist) and it had previously endorsed the Liberals almost automatically. But with the sponsorship scandal tarnishing the Liberal name, there’s a feeling now that the Tories may actually make some inroads. I’ve been saying it won’t happen for a long time, and if it does I may have to admit I was wrong and eat my words.

Then again, as they say, the only poll that matters is on election day. I’m still not convinced that this surge in polling numbers is going to translate into seats. And there’s no way the Liberals will be shut out of Quebec – whatever else happens, the Liberal stronghold seats in English Montreal are safe. As for percentages, since polls are not conducted riding-by-riding, there are as many ways to predict how the distribution will break as there are political opinions in Canada. I still believe that the surge in polling for the Conservatives in Quebec will translate into a lot of second-place showings in ridings where the Bloc wins, as opposed to seats. (The Election Prediction Project has the Tories ahead recently for the first time, but too many seats are too close to call to truly predict the outcome).

Nonetheless, with less than a week to go, Stephen Harper has overcome his toughest challenge: fear of a Tory government. With 55% of Canadians saying they believe a Conservative majority is a good idea, it seems that the Liberal attack campaign backfired on itself. And take a closer look at those numbers: the percentage of people who think a Tory majority would be a good idea is highest in Quebec – even higher than it is in Western Canada. (For the record, I’m not among those 55%, but then, regular readers already knew that).

Ontario, of course, remains the key battleground, and if it turns out that people are all talk and no action on election day, then we will be ushering in another Martin government. If Ontario goes blue, however, Stephen Harper should start preparing for his new job as Prime Minister.

I can’t help but wonder why, with a week left until the election and with the issue never having been on the table in the first place, abortion rights are suddenly making news.

Whatever my reservations about the Tories, I can’t imagine that they would take steps to restrict a woman’s right to choose. And although the attack is supposedly coming from an independent source, it’s difficult not to read between the lines and attribute this to the Liberal strategy of trying to paint Harper with the U.S. right-wing fanatic brush. Martin might think he’s scoring points, but the scare tactics are looking much more like desperation tactics at this point.

In a bizarre twist, ADQ leader Mario Dumont spoke out Thursday saying he intends to vote Conservative and urging Quebecers not to vote for the Bloc:

Dumont said the Bloc limits the province’s influence on the national scene and acts more like a millstone around Quebecers’ necks.

He said he would vote Conservative, but only recommended that voters not vote for the Bloc.

This is a truly odd move for a politician whose party has practically defined fence-strattling on the sovereignty issue, but is nonetheless pretty clearly separatist. The ADQ spiked in popularity a few years back, but came down pretty quickly when people in Quebec realized the party’s platform was a lot further to the right than most of them agreed with.

So ideologically I can understand why Dumont might vote Tory. Politically, I’m not quite sure what he’s doing. Viewed in context of the next election, is Dumont perhaps repositioning himself as a federalist? Doubtful. Though he usually answers questions about sovereignty with the convenient answer that he wants to “get past” the issue, Dumont has never been anything but nationalist.

More likely, he’s betting that the provincial Liberals have lost so much support, that if the ADQ wants to win seats in the next provincial election, their real opponents will be the Parti Quebecois. He sees Bloc momentum as leading to PQ momentum, and he wants to position himself as an alternative voice.

At any rate, most people in Quebec are unlikely to listen. Whatever happens in the rest of Canada, Gilles Duceppe has never been more popular in Quebec right now, and the Bloc is positioned to win perhaps 60 seats, maybe even more. Despite recent polls showing the Tories taking a slight lead overall in Quebec over the Liberals, this is unlikely to translate into any Tory seats, as their numbers will put them second in a number of Bloc ridings but the Liberals still have concentrated support in many Montreal ridings (including my own).

So Dumont’s comments will probably have little effect in the short-term. But they’re worth keeping an eye on for how they might affect the political landscape ahead of the next Quebec election.

Last night’s “top story” on the news was all about how the campaign has taken a “negative turn” with the new Liberal attack ads on the Tories.

Now, there’s very little dispute that the Liberal campaign has been terribly run. These ads are a bit of a running joke, especially to those of us in the business. And they’re fun to parody and are probably hurting the Liberals more than helping them.

But since when is the negative tone of this campaign “news”? The Tory ads have all attacked the Liberals from day one. They were better ads, granted, but they still spoke exclusively of how bad the Liberals were and had nothing to say about the Tories or their platforms. This has been an attack campaign since the beginning; the only difference is that now the Liberals have climbed into the ring. And if these are their “knockout punches”, Paul Martin’s team is in big trouble.

In the meantime, the Tories have their own troubles, with the news that one of their candidates has been charged with smuggling. The Tories claim they didn’t know, which is probably true. But if they’re going to run a campaign attacking Paul Martin’s claim that he didn’t know about the sponsorship money, at the very least they ought to react to this with more than a “it’s not our fault, we didn’t know”.

And as the two parties throw mud at one another, here in Quebec, Gilles Duceppe is using the opportunity to build support for sovereignty. Regardless of the result of the federal election, the news for Quebec looks bleak.

…is not so great. So far.

Martin tripping over his words and talking with his hands, Harper so eerily calm that he seems tranquilized, Layton with his little weasel smile, and Duceppe once again making me wish he was on the other side. Plus ça change…

Want to liven up these debates? Let all the parties participate. Not only the Greens, who probably deserve to be there, but also the White Elephants, the Marxist/Leninists, the Communists, the Marijuana Party, the Libertarians, and, for good measure, the Christian Heritage Party. Let the kooks loose on stage and all the 4 main parties will suddenly appear middle-of-the-road.

Polls for the first time are showing the Conservatives taking the lead. People are actually starting to see Harper as the man to beat here as opposed to Martin. I’m still very skeptical. I think this is the high-water mark for the Tories, and that many people who would have voted Conservative as a protest vote will think twice now that they actually have a chance of winning.

But then, there are still 2 weeks until the election. Anything could happen.

Gilles Duceppe challenged Paul Martin to a one-on-one debate. Martin declined. So Stephen Harper offered Duceppe take him up on it instead.

Some believe that Harper is going to score points in Quebec thanks to this move:

Aside from the possibility that the Liberals may try to spin this as giving Gilles Duceppe a legitimacy he does not deserve – even though they agreed to let Duceppe take part in the main leaders’ debates, in French and English – I think this is an absolutely brilliant move by Harper. And once again, Martin dropped it right in his lap.

Many Quebec federalists are sick of the Liberals, but feel like they have no other choice if they want to keep the separatists under control. [. . . ] The Conservatives have to change that, and this would be an excellent step forward. We should be using that “stand up for Canada” line as often as we can.

I disagree. Harper has practically zero chance of making gains in Quebec no matter how many times he claims otherwise. He simply doesn’t have his pulse of the political nature of the province. He’s running a campaign marketing his party as the “anti-Liberals”, but we already have the “anti-Liberals” in Quebec in the form of the Bloc.

Even soft nationalists or Quebecois federalists will be willing to vote Bloc if they’re mad at the Liberals, realizing that it’s a far cry from an actual vote for sovereignty. (Hell, 40% of Quebecers think that even a vote for sovereignty still means that they want Quebec to stay in Canada. Our electorate ain’t always the brightest).

So Harper can’t score too many points in the province by saying “the Liberals are corrupt, don’t vote for them”. Because Quebecers will simply counter with “we know the Liberals are corrupt, thanks” and turn around and vote for the Bloc.

However, Harper’s move isn’t all idiocy. He has nowhere to really climb in Quebec, but he probably will pick up support based on this challenge, where it counts: in the rest of Canada. He can use this to make Martin look soft on sovereignty and himself look like the guy willing to stand up for Canada. And with that, he may pick up some support in Ontario, a critical battleground.

In his first major campaign promise since swearing to once again fight to restrict the rights of gays to get hitched, Stephen Harper vowed to slash the GST from 7% to 5% if the Tories are elected.

This is exactly the sort of thing I’d like to see from the Conservative party. But if you want voters to buy in, you need to convince them you’ve thought it through and you can afford the tax cut while still maintaining a balanced budget. And somehow, comments like this one aren’t doing much to reassure me that Harper understands the intricacies of economic policy:

“I’ve never supported the GST myself. I believe all taxes are bad. Lower taxes are good,” Harper said.

Wow, that statement is nearly Bush-like in its oversimplification! (Does that mean that Harper is promising us Bush-like deficits, too?)

There are lots of places where the government could cut useless spending to afford a tax cut. I’d like to see Harper suggest some of them. Otherwise, this is nothing but an empty campaign promise and I remain unconvinced.

Canadians will be faced with a wonderful choice on January 23rd at the polls.

We’ve got the NDP, who are a bunch of commie rat bastards.
We’ve got the Conservatives, who are a bunch of fascists.
We’ve got the Bloc Quebecois, who are a bunch of separatists.
And then we’ve got the Liberals, who are a bunch of crooks.

Pick the adjective that you find the least insulting and cast your ballot. May the least bad insult win.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I like Damian Penny’s blog an awful lot. I even agree with most of the things he writes. But some of his readers and commentators… well, that’s another story altogether. Case in point: the delusion-fest going on right now about how Harper and the Conservatives are going to win the election by focusing endlessly on the same two issues they’ve spent the last couple of years talking about.

The post starts by linking to a very sensible column in the Ottawa Citizen about what Harper needs to do if he wants to improve his chances in this election:

For the past couple of years, the party has focused on highlighting Liberal corruption and opposing same-sex marriage. This strategy has created three problems, all of which remain unresolved and continue to plague Mr. Harper.

One, Canadians know little about what he actually stands for: they only know what he is against. Two, the Liberals and the media defined the Tory leader before he could do so himself, which explains his personal unpopularity and the Tories’ inability to break 30 per cent in polls. And three, the party has not been able to attract new support because it has failed to reach out to new constituencies. Most people who oppose same-sex marriage are already voting Tory. The party has to move beyond that base.

Then, on the news that Harper is doing precisely the opposite, we get comments like these:

It’s an appeal to the social conservative vote, all right, but that’s not just the stereotypical Christian right. It’s also a way to appeal to new immigrants and the various ethnic communities, who need assurance that the Tories won’t ram a secular social change down their throats.

Actually, the idea that the Tories would pick up votes from immigrant communities by bashing gay marriage proved to be a massive failure in the last election. Why Harper keeps harping on it (no pun intended) is a mystery probably best explained by lack of any other coherent policies.

Then there’s this gem:

This IS a brilliant idea! Here’s how it works:

By bringing up SSM and causing the Liberals to use their ‘boogeyman’ tactics, Stephen Harper has deprived the Liberals of their most powerful weapon.

In this phase of the campaign, the parties should be keeping their most powerful arguments for the final stage. By forcing the Liberals to respond now, their most dangerous argument is going to be exhausted before the end of the campaign, and the Liberal message will appear repetitive.

This is a risk, and will cause a bump in the polls for the Liberals, but it is a brilliant strategy which will ultimately help make a Conservative win happen.

Never doubt Stephen Harper’s intelligence.

Oh, that’s a great strategy there. Lead off the election campaign by talking constantly about the thing you want voters to forget??? Sounds like the other person whose intelligence I need to doubt is the author of this comment.

The Conservatives don’t have a chance in hell. But the delusion-fest continues. Read if you dare.