The Last Outing Of Stephen Harper And His Wannabe Republicans
Posted on Friday, December 02 at 09:38 by robertjb
We also forget too soon that prior to the FTA Canada had a vibrant and mutually beneficial trading relationship with the US and the two stated justifications for the agreement have never been achieved.
The constitutional overhaul came in the form of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords. Fortunately, both these accords failed as they were really blue prints for the balkanization of the country. Even without these accords balkanization persists as both Alberta and Quebec would love to define and their own federalism.
The excesses of the Mulroney era have had a profound effect on the country and distorted our political culture. His reckless “rolling of the dice” made him an unwitting founding father of both the Reform Party (aka The Alliance, aka the Conservative Party of Canada), and the BQ--now entrenched in Parliament as the champion of Quebec sovereignty.
Mulroney paid the price for his reckless and compulsive duplicity at the end of his second term. The electorate destroyed his Progressive Conservative Party at the polls, leaving the conservative movement in Canada fractured: on one hand, a PC party reduced to a rump; and a caustic ultra-right regional party, the Reformers.
Canada no longer had an effective party system and the Liberals were rewarded by default three successive majority governments. Jean Chrétien in his private moments must sing praises to Brian Mulroney--his covert political ally.
The Reform Party realized that national aspirations in its present incarnation were not achievable, so, like a nimble chameleon, it became the Alliance. It was a bad dye job, its roots still showing; Stockwell Day became the lamb for slaughter.
As we entered the new millennium the split in the right was reaching crisis proportions as the Liberals continued to win elections and the fortunes of the Alliance were to starting to sink. The electorate recognized the Alliance for what it was--a dead-ended regional party of the ultra right at odds with Canadian conservatism--that is, a wasted vote!
The split in the right was also an ongoing embarrassment to one Brian Mulroney--one he had precipitated. His political step-children were not following the script and he needed an errand boy.
Also, the Progressive Conservative Party was showing signs of resurgence, but horror of horrors, some smart-assed farmer from Sas-kat-cheee-wan was trying take over the party and return it to its Red Tory roots!
A leadership convention: the stage is set. The farmer’s name is David Orchard. The errand boy is Peter MacKay. There is betrayal in the air! Orchard supports MacKay on the ballot on the condition there is no merger. MacKay agrees. MacKay Wins. MacKay immediately and secretly approaches Harper to discuss merger!
The story ends happily. At the press conference Harper and MacKay gloat over their lurid political shenanigans like two frat boys. Harper’s Alliance has been saved from political oblivion. MacKay, the errand boy, the political dilettante, has earned his keep, and a former Right Honourable can take comfort, chortling over this most recent roll of the dice.
But is it a happy ending? No!
So many conservatives were alienated and disenfranchised by this subterfuge--which claimed to be a merger--they have fled elsewhere. What is left is still a fractured right, an abortive merger, and political rump operating under the name of the Conservative Party of Canada. These political chameleons can run but they can’t hide. They are wannabe Republicans of the neoconservative persuasion, lacking the political courage to out themselves and declare what they really stand for--all the while deceitfully lecturing the Liberals and Canadians on political integrity and morality.
Alas, even now, the Liberals have been awarded another undeserved victory, the conservative movement is dominated by stumblebums, and Sas-kat-cheee-wan farmers are proven, but one more time, to have a modicum of wisdom and political smarts.
[Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on December 3, 2005]
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Is this what we have to look forward to for the entire election campaign when we log onto this website? Conservatives in denial over their true Liberal roots complaining about the merger of the Progressive Conservative Party and the Alliance? Could someone please enlighten us as to how this is relevant to the campaign at hand?
You have to accept the fact that Joe Clarke, David Orchard, and Scott Brison are in the party that they belong in. Frankly, Orchard looses all credibility in my eyes by running for the Liberal Party. I used to respect him, but now I think he's just pathetic. And childish lest we forget. It would have made more sense for him to run for the New Democrats.
But what secret agenda are you talking about? If you're going to go on about Canadian soveriengty and deep integration with the United States take a cold hard look in the mirror buddy. The party that has run Canada for decades is also the party that has always favoured deep integration and they are the Liberal Party of Canada. Get used to it.
I appreciate the Conservatives, they tell us what they want to do if they get in power. There's no secret agenda with them, they come out and say it. The Liberals on the other hand? They play the anti-American card to death during an election campaign (as we're about to witness) and then turn around once they're in power and sell Canada out. And then idiots like the author and poster here cry foul and point the finger at Stephen Harper and the Conservatives. Grow up!
Ask yourself if you are against private health care, what party has allowed private health care through the door here in Canada? It's not the Conservatives, they haven't been in power! Yes, it is the Liberal Party. Don't you think THAT is a LIBERAL HIDDEN AGENDA?
On the first day of the campaign Stephen Harper came out and said that he was going to bring the redefinition of marriage up again if elected. No secrets, he came out and said what he plans on doing should Parliament approve, and given the fact that the next Parliament is going to be a minority government one way or the other, I wouldn't count on his proposal passing. But don't go on about a secret agenda when there clearly isn't one.
And I would like to point out that it was Stephen Harper, and certainly not Paul Martin who came out and said that Canada should look towards expanding into other markets such as India, China, and the European Union and away from the United States. Doesn't the NDP agree with Harper on this one? Martin only wishes he could have thought of it first.
And for the record Brian Mulroney was more Liberal than Pierre Trudeau. Conservativism, especially in the American Republican sense of the word, does not endorse initiatives such as the GST. And that's only one of a number of reasons why Mulroney wasn't much of a Conservative.
You will remember that we owe the existence of the separtist movement in Quebec to Pierre Elliot Trudeau, and not Brian Mulroney. And as a good little Quebec Liberal, he didn't help out much when he took over from Trudeau. And if it weren't for his Treudeauite policies there never would have been the Reform Party of Canada. But you say that last point as if it was a bad thing? The only bad thing was for them to change their name to the Alliance and make Stockwell Day their leader. That was just plain silly.
If you don't like the Conservatives that's fine. Vote for the New Democrats or the Canadian Action Party. That actually sounds like a sensible vote to me. This election should be between the New Democrats and the Conservatives, and it would be nice to have the CAP make a decent showing. But no, we have to put up with your Liberal Party. The only other party besides the Progressive Liberal/Conservative Party that needed to go.
Read before you write
Don't indulge in quarrelsome assumptions
Read the following post. "Harper, Bush...
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Robert Billyard
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Dave Ruston
Why can't you guys take this article at face value?
The Liberals are the subject of my next post, stay tuned...
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Robert Billyard
Wake up<br />
<a href="http://thetyee.ca/Mediacheck/2005/11/29/HarperBush/">http://thetyee.ca/Mediacheck/2005/11/29/HarperBush/</a><br />
<br />
Harper, Bush Share Roots in Controversial Philosophy<br />
<br />
Linked by Leo Strauss Close advisors schooled in 'the noble lie' and 'regime change'.<br />
By Donald Gutstein <br />
Published: November 29, 2005 <br />
<br />
TheTyee.ca<br />
What do close advisors to Stephen Harper and George W. Bush have in common? They reflect the disturbing teachings of Leo Strauss, the German-Jewish émigré who spawned the neoconservative movement.<br />
<br />
Strauss, who died in 1973, believed in the inherent inequality of humanity. Most people, he famously taught, are too stupid to make informed decisions about their political affairs. Elite philosophers must decide on affairs of state for us.<br />
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In Washington, Straussians exert powerful influence from within the inner circle of the White House. In Canada, they roost, for now, in the so-called Calgary School, guiding Harper in framing his election strategies. What preoccupies Straussians in both places is the question of "regime change."<br />
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Strauss defined a regime as a set of governing ideas, institutions and traditions. The neoconservatives in the Bush administration, who secretly conspired to make the invasion of Iraq a certainty, had a precise plan for regime change. They weren't out to merely replace Saddam with an American puppet. They planned to make the system more like the U.S., with an electoral process that can be manipulated by the elites, corporate control over the levers of power and socially conservative values.<br />
<br />
Usually regime change is imposed on a country from outside through violent means, such as invasion. On occasion, it occurs within a country through civil war. After the American Civil War, a new regime was imposed on the Deep South by the North, although the old regime was never entirely replaced.<br />
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Is regime change possible through the electoral process? It's happening in the U.S., where the neocons are succeeding in transforming the American state from a liberal democracy into a corporatist, theocratic regime. As Canada readies for a federal election, the question must be asked: Are we next?<br />
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The 'noble lie'<br />
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Strauss believed that allowing citizens to govern themselves will lead, inevitably, to terror and tyranny, as the Weimar Republic succumbed to the Nazis in the 1930s. A ruling elite of political philosophers must make those decisions because it is the only group smart enough. It must resort to deception -- Strauss's "noble lie" -- to protect citizens from themselves. The elite must hide the truth from the public by writing in code. "Using metaphors and cryptic language," philosophers communicated one message for the elite, and another message for "the unsophisticated general population," philosopher Jeet Heer recently wrote in the Globe and Mail. "For Strauss, the art of concealment and secrecy was among the greatest legacies of antiquity."<br />
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The recent outing of star New York Times reporter Judith Miller reveals how today's neocons use the media to conceal the truth from the public. For Straussians, telling Americans that Saddam didn't have WMD's and had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda, but that we needed to take him out for geopolitical and ideological reasons you can't comprehend, was a non-starter. The people wouldn't get it. Time for a whopper.<br />
<p>---<br>Your mantra has been your opinions are stifled due to their contrary nature, when they are actually stifled for being without perceivable foundation
candidates, often. But the party didn't have enough to back its first stab and
thereby lost the credibility needed to break-through.
Mel Hurtig had some celebrity and a lot of media attention when the National
Party first started. Even at that, though - unable to make the televised
debates - they failed. People should have recognized the grounds he tested
would remain unchanged. He gave it is all and saw that there was little more
he could pitch at it a 2nd time around, unlike the example of the CIC's
collapse and the creation of the CoC. The CAP tried to pick up that niche, but
unless it rebrands itself, it will never have any real credibility as an alternative
force in our biased, first-past-the-post system
The minute he came to power he drastically cut corporate taxes by about $2. billion a year, and started cutting hospital beds, increasing waiting lists and even causing deaths, cut wages, schools, sold off parts of BC Hydro, BC Rail with a long list of privatizations, causing poverty, cut services and filth all over.
The BCLibs are the offshoot of the Reform Party, Harper helped to create and establish the policies. His latest claim to cut hospital waiting lists is a blatant lie, coming from a former lobbyist of the NCC, one of the worst case propaganda outfits for private health insurance.
Anybody who falls for this pathetic reincarnation of Mulroney is a total sucker. Martin is bad enough, but Harper is a menace and the biggest danger Canada has ever faced.
Ed Deak, Big Lake. BC.
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Dave Ruston
Canada already had a second Liberal Party under Joe Clark. It certainly didn't need a second NDP under David Orchard! There isn't even a party suitable for the kind of one-note anti-Americanism Orchard preaches, as even the New Democrats saw fit to crush the Waffle. CAP's probably the closest we have these days. I'm sure though he'll find some street corner to peddle his hate on.