Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Natural Governing Party

Adam Radwanski is spot on today:

Yes, it's not hard to dislike Stephen Harper if you watch him on a day-to-day basis. But in the big-picture sense, it's not entirely clear to your average person what it is that's fundamentally wrong with his government.

The opposition, to this point, has done a lousy job of framing the case against the Conservatives - because fundamentally, it's yet to disagree with it on major issues of economic stewardship (at least since January's budget), major social priorities, foreign policy...anything, really. There's hasn't even been a convincing, consistent argument that the government is economically incompetent - admittedly a tough case to make when it more or less adopted your budget demands

Instead, policy differences like the trumped-up EI spat are predicated on the notion that all you need is an excuse to bring it down, and that all Canadians are looking for is an excuse to replace it.

4 Comments:

  • With the liberal spending lately from the feds, what can the opposition really attack. Wanting the EI hours set at a ridiculous rate is not going to cut it. Be interesting to see the platform release

    By Blogger Derrick Jacobson, at 8:31 p.m.  

  • Before the Conservatives were elected, the other parties told us that they would take away the right to have abortions, outlaw homosexuality, cut immigration, remove anti-discrimination legislation, cut social programs, privatize health care, send our troops to Iraq, eliminate gun control legislation, abolish unions, reduce taxes for the rich, and surrender our sovereignty to our friends to the south.

    Given those expectations, what case could the Liberals possibly make that the Conservatives need to be replaced? On their worst day they're a million times better than what we were told they would be like.

    By Blogger Robert Vollman, at 10:05 a.m.  

  • Robert, there is an element of truth to what you say (it has been no where near as bad, because he has a minority government) but we were not that far off. They have: cut funding, demoted ministers and staff for supporting Gay Pride events; removed status of women offices and weakened anti-discrimination policies (also at status of women); dumped the national child care program (as they promised/liberls warned they would do); ignored the medicare reform/wait time crisis (this will bite them down the road); we were already out of Iraq, but he would have sent us there; he HAS been trying to kill the gun registry; he tried to abolish the right to strike for many workers last fall; he did cut GST across the board (ie the rich save big on their new BMWs); and he is clearly willing to let Obama set our climate change plan. All of this with a minority government. We were warning that it would be worse with a majority. Honestly, do you think he has not been held back?

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 12:55 a.m.  

  • Robert

    In fact, the conservatives ARE diminishing anti-discrimination laws through their repeal of the court challenges program and constant attacks on the Human Rights commission. This is also a back-door way of attacking homosexuals.

    The Conservatives ARE threatening immigration through their stubborn red-tape policies that make it tougher for people to become Canadian citizens, or prisoners of G.W's "war on terror" to be re-patriated.

    The conservatives ARE surrendering our sovereignty to the U.S through its continued support of the war in Afghanistan, despite the wishes of most Canadians, and caving in to U.S bully tactics on "free trade".


    now, the sorry tories want to spy on us by giving police the power to snoop on our internet activities. Sounds like Nazi Germany to me. The only thing keeping the Tories from sending us into Iraq and re-criminalizing abortion is the fact they only have a minority government. There are dozens of issues and scandals that the liberals can use to bring down this dangerous regime before they ruin what is left of a great country.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 9:47 p.m.  

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