Chuck was no cad, man

The story coming out now about the bribe allegedly offered to Chuck Cadman to bring down the Martin government back in 2005 looks bad for the Conservatives to say the least. The explanation offered up yesterday by Tom Flanagan and Doug Finley seems, well, hard to believe. It was well known in 2005 that Cadman was very seriously ill with cancer, at some points it was unclear whether he would be well enough to make it into parliament for the vote. Why then would Flanagan and Finley offer to help Cadman with a riding nomination? Cadman died within a couple months of the vote, I cannot imagine that 1) Flanagan and Finley didn't appreciate or couldn't find out how serious Cadman's condition was, and 2) that they really thought that his priority at that point was to win another election given his health.

Harper, Flanagan, and Finley, I call bullshit.

The Prophet of Chalk River

I'd say it would be Harper's brain, Tom Flanagan who last year tipped his hand with these words:

"In times of perceived crisis, a conservative party can win by positioning itself further to the right, as shown by the victories of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Ralph Klein, Mike Harris and Gordon Campbell. But Canadians don't perceive themselves in crisis right now." [emphasis mine]

Here's the crisis they need to sell off the AECL to GE or someone else. Convert decades of Canadian taxpayer investment into private profits - that's what Lunn aims to do. It's probably what also drove Lunn into a fit of economic nationalism when he insisted that Ontario buy AECL reactors. Create value for GE, great, that's what will cause the Conservative to worry about the Ontario economy.

The Best of 2007: Quotes

Well, I'm not quite sure if this could be considered the "best" in a conventional sense. Rather, this quote is perhaps one of the more important ones. Tom Flanagan on the Conservatives game plan:

"In times of perceived crisis, a conservative party can win by positioning itself further to the right, as shown by the victories of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Ralph Klein, Mike Harris and Gordon Campbell. But Canadians don't perceive themselves in crisis right now." (emphasis mine)

Again, when you watch how Harper governs, remember this.

The Opening Shots in a Long War

I have this feeling that Harper has managed to shed the scary "hidden agenda" tag in the eyes of a great many Canadians once he got his free vote on same-sex-marriage handily defeated in the House of Commons. Perhaps it's too much attention paid to the American culture wars, but we in Canada have come to equate the term with gays and abortion. Harper made a half-hearted run at the former and has not touched the latter.

Not only have we adopted a very narrow view of a culture war, we have also grown accustomed (especially in Ontario) to Conservatives governing in a hurry. Mike Harris rushed through reems of legislation in the first couple years of his first mandate. I suspect this is in part because hard right-wingers seem to be aware that they do not enjoy much of a natural constituency in Canada - and that's according to their godfather, Tom Flanagan:

"Canada is not yet a conservative or Conservative country. The [Conservative] party can't win if it veers too far to the right of the average voter."

Harper and Flanagan seem to have taken the view that this political dynamic means that Conservatives need to go slow rather than try to rush through things in a term or two before the Liberals regroup.

For these guys this is a long war to remake Canada as a conservative country (not how Flanagan says "not yet"). They may well be anticipating that this will be a 20-year process. They are starting small, killing the Court Challenges Program and launching a war on drugs. Taken individually, you might have an austerity measure and a crime policy. Taken together, in the context of things that Flanagan and others have said, these are part of a long culture war, a conservative push-back. I suspect that the average voters isn't even aware of the Court Challenges Program (though they may have benefited from it) and the anti-drug policy can be sold as "tough-on-crime" or something of that ilk.

Expect a long, incremental attempt to build a conservative consensus on whole range of cultural and economic issues. These are not individual policies tacked together, these are pieces in a much larger puzzle for Harper.

Naomi Klein interviewed by John Cusack

This is one piece of Cusack's work where he didn't manage to get a small part for Joan. Seriously folks a 1980s film hero interviewing Naomi Klein is pretty kick ass. It's funny though that right-wingers and Jason Cherniak sort of hem and haw about Klein missing the point or being too radical or something. And yet the right-wingers themselves say the same stuff, witness Tom Flanagan's article in the Grope and Flail:

"In times of perceived crisis, a conservative party can win by positioning itself further to the right, as shown by the victories of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Ralph Klein, Mike Harris and Gordon Campbell. But Canadians don't perceive themselves in crisis right now." (emphasis mine)

Thanks to Holly for illuminating that point in my comments section. And now, for all you who clicked on this because I put "John Cusack" in the title:
Enjoy.

Harper's Grand Strategy

Impolitical linked to Tom Flanagan's Globe article laying out what the Conservatives ought to do to seek a permanent majority. Every progressive person, everyone who worries about climate change, everyone who cringes when they hear Stockwell Day slam our Charter ought to read this. These guys have a plan, a plan that isn't particularly new or innovative but one that has worked in several other jurisdictions.

Here's one bit that stood out to me:

"In times of perceived crisis, a conservative party can win by positioning itself further to the right, as shown by the victories of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Ralph Klein, Mike Harris and Gordon Campbell. But Canadians don't perceive themselves in crisis right now." (emphasis mine)

This reminds me of John Snobelen line about creating a "useful crisis" in education. In both cases the situation seems to be that conservatives and/or Conservatives know that Canadians wouldn't normally go for the types of policies they have in mind; rather they seem aware that they need to exploit a bona fide a crisis, create a crisis, or create the perception of a crisis. This is the opportunity that the Conservatives are looking for, watch out for them, they are looking to hit the panic button.

In a way it must irritate them to come to power with a balanced budget and a relatively healthy economy in a culture that has so far refused to engage in widespread moral panic over same-sex marriage.

Shorter Tom Flanagan...

It's not right that the other parties try to use legitimate parliamentary mechanisms to thwart the Conservatives! (Subscription required to see the whole thing)

Self-Hating Canadians at Macleans

The folks at Macleans have delivered another jeremiad about what's wrong with Canada. There's no link on the website yet, but this recent one is on page 32 of this week's issue. After articles in recent weeks about how we aren't competitive in the global economy and how we take too much vacation time, now we get scolded for not having any global brands. Author Andrea Mandel-Campbell twists a Chinese proverb about a tiger and a fox so as to call our nation an economic squirrel. Really.

According to the article, most of the brands that Canada does have are run by immigrants and/or transplanted American executives. I'm not sure why immigrants don't "count" as Canadians in this tirade, but Mandel-Campbell says it is so. Applying this to other countries, does Andrew Carnegie not count as an American success story as he was from Scotland?

Anyway, once again Macleans has another article scolding Canadians as a bunch of timid losers, do they think that this will turn us into a nation of entrepreneurs. Floggings will continue until moral improves.

One final addendum: What about Harper's brand of Conservatism? It's drawn heavily on Harper's mentor, Tom Flanagan, one of those transplanted Americans that Ms. Mandel-Campbell was so concerned about.

Media Bias: The Stephen Taylor Edition

Stephen Taylor of the Blogging Tories is up in arms about some report on the CBC. From what I'm able to tell the problem was that Tom Flanagan didn't get a chance to comment about the story. Thus, in Taylor's mind some kind of artificial balance was thrown out of proportion.

I'm somewhat concerned by balance fetishists because balances of opinion are artificial. Everyone's idea of a "balanced" news report is shaped by their own sense of what constitutes "balance" in the media. I'm sure that Flanagan has other reasons to be upset with CBC, and to him this is another in a long list of grievances. What is fascinating about Flanagan's letter to Taylor is that the one thing that the media needs for better balance is more Tom Flanagan.

Of course it's not as though Tom Flanagan (or Stephen Taylor for that matter) are silenced by the media. I've read lengthy Flanagan Op-Eds in the Globe and Mail and I see that Macleans has anointed both Flanagan and Taylor as two of their 50 extra-special opinion-shaping people. It is evident that there are lots of opportunities for both Taylor and Flanagan to get their opinions out there. So what if one reporter ditched Flanagan's shimmering pearls of wisdom on one story? I've seen plenty of one-sided articles emanating from both Macleans and the CanWest Global empire that I vehemently disagreed with.

What did I do?

Well, I didn't waste time trying to dig up some journalism code of ethics with which to sully these institutions. No. I accept that everyone is biased, you, me, Stephen Taylor, everyone. I criticized and/or mocked the pieces that I found disagreeable instead. There is nothing wrong with an editorial board having a point of view - in fact the media that I consider most suspicious are those that swear up and down that they are unbiased. It's humanly impossible to be unbiased, when some outlet says it's unbiased it likely means that the bias is more insidious than in other cases.

On a side note, what happened to the whole conservative pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps mentality? I mean this seems to be an appeal to have someone else fix a problem for you. Shouldn't true conservatives busy themselves using entrepreneurial energies to create a leaner, more innovative market-driven competitor to a big mushy government apparatus like the CBC?