Mayor of Toronto on the Way Out

Politics and religion
221

One of the issues I align with conservatives on is the need to reform the senate. I want an elected Senate. However, conservatives have made no move to reform the senate since gaining a majority despite all their talk, and instead chose continue the previous governments pattern of exploiting the senate as a rubberstamp. I would say that Harper’s appointments were especially ill-considered seeing how things have turned out.

Harper is part of the problem. Personally I think that the conservatives have realized that any elected senate that is broadly representative of the regions will be a Liberal senate, and they have just decided to exploit the existing system instead of enacting any meaningful reform.

222

“Bitches love money.”

223

That’s just untrue. They can’t unilaterally change anything, so they did the ONLY thing that they could do – paved the way for the future by requiring, as a condition of appointment, all senators to contractually agree to step down for an elected senate if that becomes possible – that alone is a major step forward, as we won’t be stuck with a body that’s entirely grandfathered, making real change more rapidly implemented. Since that would actually prejudice the Conservative party, hopefully any successor party will continue that trend, at least.

Personally I think that the conservatives have realized that any elected senate that is broadly representative of the regions will be a Liberal senate, and they have just decided to exploit the existing system instead of enacting any meaningful reform.

Despite the fact that the Conservatives have far broader national presence right now? The Liberal Party was basically irrelevant in the last election other than in a few Maritime provinces.

224

Any reason why you indicate that he called women bitches when he didn’t say anything like that? Why is this even a story when lots of spouses give money?

Goofy, exaggerated attacks are why he’s somehow managed to gain support in some circles. The last thing we need is this guy being able to make a credible case that he’s being unfairly attacked by the media and that they’re exaggerating his flaws.

225

I’m paraphrasing his continued lack of self awareness for shits and giggles.

226

If only they were nobles. But no, they’re just party hacks with the occasional partisan celebrity thrown in. Can’t actually get the voters to elect someone you want in your cabinet? Appoint him to the Senate. Want to reward your faithful director of communications (or any other some such party worker)? The Senate. Need to wheel and deal with someone too powerful to circumvent? The Senate. It even makes the Order of Canada (Money and Celebrity galore) look good by comparison.

Now if only the liberals and the NDP allowed the Senators to be voted in instead of being fatcat political appointments, as the conservatives have been trying to change for a couple of decades now, we might have a less embarrassing parliament.

The problem is that for Senate reform you need a constitutional amendment, which means kissing up to the provinces. And since the proponents of Senate reform still seem to stick to the myth of the Triple-E (especially in the West and Ontario where they’re whining about being under-represented), is there a single Atlantic province that would endorse Senate reform? Not to mention Quebec, which has been deliberately pissing off the rest of the country for decades by blocking any reform attempt. So you can kiss your 7-50 requirement goodbye.

227

They do not. They are nowhere near as popular as the old Progressive Conservatives before their implosion, and have less broad appeal than the PC had. Nationally they are lucky to have on average 30-35% support, a bare minimum for a majority in the most favourable possible circumstances; they are in power now because a) non-right wing vote is badly split between Liberal and NDP b) special circumstances in the last election wound up favouring them artificially.

Conservative poll numbers are a disaster right now and they will have to work hard to catch the resurgent Liberals. Granted the Liberals could shoot themselves in both feet, but assuming minimum levels of competence the next election will be a Liberal victory of some degree. Bad news for the NDP overall but honestly Mulcair has left wing cred but no charm. Layton built the party as it is now and without him it’s going to take a beating.

Point being; Liberals consistently poll better than Conservatives nationally and provincially. Conservative uptick in the last decade had more to do with the Liberals failing than Conservatives especially succeeding. A minimally competent Liberal party is going to get most of it’s voters back.

228

I’d have thought Mulcair had it the other way – well, charm, not really, but at least he has what it takes to fight a political battle (unlike Topp or Ignatieff or Dion or others like them), but that he did not have much “left wing cred” – he’s an ex-Liberal, after all, and was at loggerheads with the union bosses running the NDP. And don’t forget: the NDP more or less stagnated in the Rest of Canada; it was Quebec which put it where it is now. Quebec isn’t going to vote for Justin Prettyface and isn’t going to vote for Harperites. If you say the NDP is going to take a beating, you’re all but saying the Bloc will be making a comeback. It’s worth asking where Maria Mourani is going to go now that she’s taken great pains to stick little maple leaves all over her press release saying she no longer was a separatist, but an article in Le Devoir gave the game away when it mentioned her riding was going (like in the rest of the province) to get gerrymandered out of existence, rendering her chances of re-election as a Bloquiste in Ethnicland practically nil. Expect her to go Liberal or NDP some time soon.

By the way, anyone left-wing who votes Liberal is an idiot. That’s the party of John Manley, of Paul Martin, of the Golden Horseshit elite going back to Laurier, voted in power by a contingent of self-satisfied “who’s minding the store?” petit-bourgeois who want to pretend they have a social conscience as they clamour for tax cuts and more opportunities.

I hate Liberals, with a passion. You can keep them a decade in the opposition, and they still won’t shake off the idea that they’re the Natural Governing Party. They’re still falling for the same populism that put the Tories in place – see how they didn’t know how to sell Ignatieff to the electorate. But they know how to sell Trudeau Junior; he’s got a name, has got a face, so he’s obviously qualified to be Prime Minister. And of course the Myth of Multiculturalism. Even the Tories were too clever to go against it – just see how Kenney’s doing.

229

It’s hard to believe that enough of Canada is so far gone that they’d elect an unqualified assclown like Justin Trudeau as its “leader” – it would be negligent to leave him in charge of a single retail store, let alone a country. Are they incapable of finding a candidate with any actual skill and experience? I agree with Soapy that the Liberals would have had a much better shot of regaining power if they hadn’t selected one ludicrous candidate after another. Is there nobody with significant executive experience in that party?

Despite all the griping from the left to try to inflate trivial nonsense into scandals, we’ve been pretty damn lucky to have had the Conservatives in power over most of the past decade, and the Canadian economy is in much better shape as a result – the Conservatives believe they can eliminate the deficit by the next election as well, which should give them some momentum among anyone capable of basic lucidity, if the alternative is some vainglorious imbecile.

230

I’m sure they’ll have as much success as their friends in the UK.

231

I wouldn’t call Dion or Ignatieff “ludicrous”. Unless you mean that, as intellectuals, they didn’t stand a chance against Harper and company in the Great Scramble for the Lowest Common Denominator.

232

Vet you are a slave to your own bias. Liberals are polling better than anyone else in Quebec by a strong margin and NDP numbers have slumped. Does anyone still vote Bloc? It’s not too apaprent from the polling.

Who cares what you like or don’t like? Your views stopped being popular or significant in the late 30s.

233

First, what you think are my views, aren’t. And if people accused of those views aren’t significant, I assume you’re not looking at Europe. I wouldn’t be surprised if Marine Le Pen ended up at the Palais de l’Élysée in 2017. (You seem to forget that you’re dealing with people who, the more they’re scoffed at, the more they are galvanized.)

234

My view is that the party had to crash and burn before it could figure itself out. Your opinion of Justin notwithstanding, at minimum he is young, vital and popular. He has done reasonably well so far. The election campaign will be the real test; it’s easy to paint a new and relatively untested leader as lacking in substance but by the time Canadians go to the polls things will be more apparent.

Despite all the griping from the left to try to inflate trivial nonsense into scandals, we’ve been pretty damn lucky to have had the Conservatives in power over most of the past decade, and the Canadian economy is in much better shape as a result

Since we can’t know how a Liberal or even NDP government would have handled the last couple of years, there is no basis for saying the Conservatives have done especially well. I think they are hawking the country. Remember their orginal plan in the face of the 2007-08 financial crisis was literally to do nothing.

235

Glad to have them come out into the open for one last gasp… and then good riddance.

236

I don’t think Liberal management would have differed that much from what the Conservatives are doing, because then it would have been the Blue Liberal contingent taking over, if not a Martin type who gravitates in the same circles of high finance.

The NDP, that would have been interesting; I suspect they would have run into trouble, but not financially – I’m thinking of federal-provincial relations, especially with the party now beholden to Quebec.

Ah giovinezza, primavera di bellezza.

237

You forget, I see.

“Vote for the crook, not the fascist”

Moreover, France’s extraordinarily divided society is in most ways to blame for the far right in France. It’s an echo chamber effect.

238

I beleive that party governing policy has to be a team effort, and the leader has to be the face. Harper has been trying to evolve the PMO office into more of a presidential position, keeping a tight lid on his own party (though there maybe too much pressure now for that to continue), my preference is that the Prime Minister be the expression of the party consensus, rather than the iron-fisted source from which all policy flows.

So even if Justin turns out to be a cipher, that is not a bad result. The Liberal party must succeed ultimately on it’s policy positions, and then once elected on it’s execution thereof.

Note: though I am biased towards centrism and I am a small-el liberal, I am by no means a loyal big-el Liberal. I think an NDP government would be good for the country, to course-correct it back from the American-aping Conservative policies. I just don’t think it is likely to happen anytime soon.

addendum: I don’t think the old saying that the Liberals are the natural governing party of Canada is correct. It’s that Canadians tend strongly towards centrism, and the Liberals are typically the party who bring that to the table.

239

He has done reasonably well so far. The election campaign will be the real test;

In a rational world, being young and popular would not be considered as anything other than what they actually are – evidence of a lack of experience and substance, highlighting how completely unqualified he is.

He’s as qualified to do brain surgery as he is to assume an executive position in a massive organization that runs a country. If it was your noggin about to be operated upon, you wouldn’t happily bleat about your surgeon “hey, he’s young, and popular - hasn’t done anything remotely like this before, but I think he’ll do reasonable well. Getting picked to be my surgeon was the real test!”

That’s how your views look to sensible people who understand what running a large organization is actually like. It’s as if you have no idea of what an executive role requires.

Since we can’t know how a Liberal or even NDP government would have handled the last couple of years, there is no basis for saying the Conservatives have done especially well.

There is actually very sound basis for knowing how disastrous a liberal, let alone NDP, government would have handled the last decade, because we know what their policies are and the resulting effects. We have a perfect example of it south of the border, where such policies turned a significant recession into a prolonged economic malaise and created (or magnified) problems that will endure for generations.

Remember their orginal plan in the face of the 2007-08 financial crisis was literally to do nothing

That’s nonsense, of course - they had a very good plan for the financial crisis, and had they been allowed to implement it, the country would actually be in even better shape than it is, since we’d already have a balanced budget instead of being encumbered by deficits imposed by the ridiculously impotent plan of the liberals to light money on fire by aping Obama’s disastrous “stimulus.”

Even though it was imposed upon them, at least the Conservatives managed to turn that plan into something that had some utility by directing that cash expenditure at infrastructure expenditures and immediately available jobs - instead of just being diverted to pet social engineering projects and general government expenditures unlike Americans did.

240

Agree that it’s hard to understand how anyone could possibly like David Cameron or his party – they don’t seem to have any analogue in either the US or Canada. They’re called conservative, but are more like the NDP than any party in Canada or the US. Do they have any positions that the NDP wouldn’t agree with? Maybe some fiscal policies, but I can’t actually think of any off hand. Support for Israel, I guess. Do they have any other positions that the Conservative Party in Canada would agree with? Or that either the Democrats or Republicans would agree with? They are a really strange bird.