|
| Group: |
ab.politics |
[ Post new message ] |
|
|
 |
| Author: |
jimjames5417 |
| Subject: |
Re: Is a return to Red Toryism the only way American Republican-style Stephen Harper's Conservatives are ever going to win a majority government by way of vote rich socially progressive Ontario and Quebec? |
| Body: |
On May 16, 11:30 am, robertpeff...@aol.com wrote:
> ADING THE ELECTION
>
> Red Toryism rising
>
> John Tory went down hard this week but it wasn't his moderate brand of
> conservatism that voters rejected.
> In fact, the spirit of Red Toryism is being embraced by leaders the
> world over
>
> Oct 13, 2007 04:30 AM
> David Olive
> Toronto Star
>
> In the minds of some observers, Red Toryism died with John Tory's
> humiliating defeat Wednesday.
>
> If one figures the last Red Tory to rule Ontario was Bill Davis, the
> brand's sell-by date was 1985. But that assumes Ontario PCs have a
> near-monopoly on Red Toryism - a natural enough conclusion given the
> role of Leslie Frost, John Robarts and Davis in perfecting their
> version of it.
>
> Yet the prevailing political ethic in Canada and much of the world is
> Red Toryism, if by that term we mean investment in physical and social
> infrastructure within a framework of fiscal restraint and bending
> when
> necessary to overwhelming popular sentiment.
>
> Red Toryism is so pervasive you can't see it. It's pervasive because
> it works. Its recent practitioners include John Howard, Jacques
> Chirac, Angela Merkel, Bill Clinton, Junichiro Koizumi, Stephen Harper
> and Dalton McGuinty.
>
> Red Toryism is disdained by ideological purists on both the right and
> left of the political spectrum, who see the world in black and white.
> The certainty of their convictions makes them shun compromise - the
> lubricant of democratic governance - and for these reasons they
> generally prefer not to seek office but merely offer advice from the
> sidelines. When they do come to power it is generally through military-
> backed uprisings. Think Lenin. The theocracy that runs Iran. And
> George W. Bush, who, like Caesar, is as fixed as the North Star - even
> if it means that failing to be dissuaded from going to the Senate on a
> particular day will bring a rendezvous with Brutus & Co.
>
> In a nutshell, Red Toryism is pragmatism with a conscience. Poet F.R.
> Scott famously inveighed against Mackenzie King for "doing by halves
> what he could not do by quarters." That was a few decades before
> historians declared the best of Canada's prime ministers to be King, a
> man who saw his job as thwarting bad ideas and making social progress
> by increments.
>
> To paraphrase Prussian field marshal Helmuth von Moltke on war
> strategy, a Red Tory's ideological beliefs rarely survive contact with
> political reality. Brian Mulroney was hell-bent on deindexing
> government pensions until a pensioner bawled him out in a highly
> publicized Parliament Hill encounter. Mulroney did not index pensions.
> Which helped seed the record $43 billion deficit that is part of the
> Mulroney legacy. But Mulroney was later the first Tory PM since
> Macdonald to win back-to-back majority governments.
>
> Jean Chr=E9tien's great fortune was that Canadians were finally ready in
> the 1990s to suffer the hardship of eradicating the deficit.
> Chr=E9tien's ostensibly Liberal (read: tax-and-spend) government slashed
> budgets in all but two or three ministries, and furiously downloaded
> program costs to the provinces. The reaction of purported socialists
> Gary Doer, Roy Romanow and Mike Harcourt was not deficit spending but
> harsh cuts of their own provincial social-service budgets, higher user
> fees on government services, and the closure of rural medical
> clinics.
>
> But with the arrival of surpluses in the late 1990s, changed
> circumstances drove even hardline premiers Ralph Klein and Mike Harris
> to begin making record expenditures in health care and education,
> while Chr=E9tien committed unprecedented funds to R&D. Chr=E9tien's
> successor reached an accord with the provinces for record federal
> funding of health care. Paul Martin followed that with a similar
> landmark Kelowna agreement with provincial and native leaders (since
> scrapped by Harper, who promises a similarly generous accommodation of
> his own).
>
> In the aftermath of cool relations between Washington and Pierre
> Trudeau's Ottawa, Brian and Mila Mulroney and the Reagans gave song,
> literally, to a new continentalism that turned the stomach of more
> than a few Canadian nationalists. But Mulroney then cut a deal with
> Reagan that finally curbed the acid rain destroying the Kawarthas. And
> he jeopardized relations with both Washington and London by
> spearheading the initiative that helped end South African apartheid
> that had not disturbed the conscience of Reagan or Margaret Thatcher.
>
> As president of the extreme right-wing National Citizens Coalition,
> Stephen Harper advocated private-school vouchers that would have
> undermined the public school system, and urged Klein to repudiate the
> Canada Health Act. As an opposition leader in the Commons, Harper was
> tolerant of anti-francophone zealots, homophobes and shrill pro-lifers
> among his Commons candidates.
>
> But as PM, Harper muzzled his politically incorrect caucus colleagues
> and became a fount of the corporate-welfare handouts he had excoriated
> as recently as 2005. No one would mistake Harper today for a
> bleeding-
> heart liberal. But Harper in office has been gradually aligning his
> policies to the will of the people, prompted by the hard calculation
> that the Quebec and urban voters he needs to form a majority aren't in
> the market for his earlier brand of ideological stridency.
>
> When the National Post ran a post-election headline, "Eek! An inept
> Tory leader!" one could be forgiven in expecting the article was about
> Dalton McGuinty's record. The premier has, after all, governed as a
> Red Tory.
>
> McGuinty made short work of the $5.3-billion deficit he inherited - a
> signature goal of Red Tory regimes.
> And he broke a no-new-taxes election pledge by imposing a $2.5-billion
> health tax rather than swell the deficit or incur justifiable wrath
> over declining heath-care quality. He also reneged on a campaign vow
> to shut the province's coal-fired power plants. But when the time came
> to punish McGuinty for his broken promises, voters were sympathetic
> about McGuinty's pragmatism in safeguarding health care and retaining
> coal-fired plants if that was the only way to keep the lights on.
>
> This same McGuinty has 100 new hospitals completed or under
> construction since 2003, and has raised the minimum wage four times in
> as many years. And in the cause of job preservation, McGuinty joined
> Ottawa in lavishing Ontario automakers with corporate handouts. He
> will soon have a new Toyota plant in Woodstock to show for it, along
> with a $2.5-billion expansion of GM's facilities in Oshawa.
>
> This is the kind of "investment" that drives conservative purists
> nuts, since they "know" that governments are incapable of picking
> industrial winners. That the Internet wouldn't exist had the Pentagon
> not invented it, or that Montreal would not be a world aerospace
> centre without three decades of handouts to Bombardier Inc. is, for
> the ideological absolutists, a sin against the holy writ of Milton
> Friedman. Vote-seeking Red Tories with little time to spare for the
> works of Friedman or Friedrich Hayek routinely allow themselves to be
> confronted by blue-collar workers as they come off assembly lines. And
> they do see a role for government in nurturing the "industrial
> champions" that employ their constituents.
>
> The dilemma for Barcalounger politicians like Bill Kristol, Tom
> Flanagan and Andrew Coyne is that while they are capable of hijacking
> political parties or portions thereof for a time, they seldom manage
> the same feat with the electorate. Their ideological rigidity just
> isn't electorally viable.
>
> Kristol's reaction to George W. Bush's recent veto of a bill that
> would have extended health care to millions of children in need was,
> "First of all, whenever I hear anything described as a heartless
> assault on our children, I tend to think it's a good idea. I'm happy
> that the president is willing to do something bad for the kids." Try
> running for dogcatcher on that platform, even in Dick Cheney's scarlet-
> red state of Wyoming.
>
> Red Tories governed Ontario uninterrupted for 43 years - inviting
> comparisons with the tenure of Joseph Stalin - by measuring the
> electorate's desires against what was financially possible. When they
> could, they delivered the goods, and took copious credit.
>
> It is unfortunate that John Tory could not win an audience for his Red
> Tory agenda of additional funds for public transit and affordable
> housing. He's a decent man with youthful vigour and 30-odd years of
> political experience. Alas, with his call for extending the public
> funding of religious schools, Tory over-reached, reportedly on the
> advice of social-conservative MPP Frank Klees. In this, Tory veered
> dangerously from the creed of one of the early masters of Red
> Toryism.
>
> "I am satisfied to confine myself to practical things - to the
> securing of such practical measures as the country really wants," said
> Sir John A. "I am satisfied not to have a reputation for indulging in
> imaginary schemes and harbouring visionary ideas."
>
> http://www.thestar.com/sciencetech/Ideas/article/266392
Poor Senile Old Boob!! Forced to use an article from last October in
the Red Star talking about the Ontario Provincial election!!! As
usual, nothing in the article relates to his header!! No wonder Dion's
trust rating is at 15%!!!
|
|
| Topic: |
Is a return to Red Toryism the only way American Republican-style Stephen Harper's Conservatives are ever going to win a majority government by way of vote rich socially progressive Ontario and Quebec? |
|
| Message: |
Author |
Date |
|
|
*Message 1* |
jimjames5417 |
Fri, 16 May 2008, 9:01 am |
|