Thursday, June 9, 2011

Wanted: A Canadian Rehnquist

The Harper government should have an opportunity during its term to make the Supreme Court into a body where the principles of judicial restraint and sound legal reasoning have strong exponents. Its opportunity is however restricted by the complete absence in Canada of a movement comparable to the U.S. conservative judicial revolution of the last few decades. It is not Stephen Harper's fault that one may look over the entire Court of Appeal plus all law faculties in the province and find no one who dares to dissent from the current regime of legal Bolshevism that followed the enactment of the Charter of Rights. Worse, the Ontario A-G and Federal DOJ constitutional lawyers of whom I have personal knowledge are if not card-carrying members, at least committed sympathizers of the left-wing human rights industry.

What the Government needs to come up with is another William Rehnquist. Rehnquist's career prior to his nomination as a SCOTUS judge was not as a judge or legal academic, but as a lawyer in the Department of Justice. (President Nixon happened to drop by a meeting at the Department of Justice which Rehnquist had handled with great skill. He was also at that time however wearing a jacket with a flamboyantly wide lapel and a bright yellow tie, leading Nixon to refer to him thereafter as "that clown". Nixon also was unable to remember Rehnquist's name, so after two of his nominees had been defeated by the Democratic Senate, Nixon, searching for a replacement, asked, 'What about that clown Renchburg?') The extent of Rehnquist's legal conservatism was, because of his DOJ background, unknown to those passing scrutiny on him. With the paper trail he would have had as a judge or professor, he would never have got through the Senate.

In addition, Rehnquist had the courage of his convictions. Rehnquist had no problem with recurrently being on the wrong end of 8-1 decisions, earning him the title, seriously or mockingly, of "The Great Dissenter". It would be over a decade before Rehnquist would be joined on the court by anyone else with a similar commitment to judicial restraint and original meaning. And longer than that before the legal academics were to take conservative legal thought seriously. But once you have 3 or 4 exponents of any judicial approach on the court, they have no choice.

With two Ontario appointments this summer, the Government can be cautious and prudent and select a woman practitioner or government lawyer who at least is not a full-fledged fanatic. But with the other appointment. what the Prime Minister needs to do is to pull, apparently out of his hat, the name of another Rehnquist, someone to hold the fort until the lower courts can be seeded with possible future appointees and some means can be designed to give the jurisprudence of true meaning and judicial restraint a foothold in the academy. He needs to be able to find himself a facsimile of "that clown Renchburg".

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

A Miss Thorne Conservative

When I came upon Trollope's portrait of Mr Thorne in Barchester Towers, I thought that I had found a man of fellow temperament:
In politics, Mr. Thorne was an unflinching conservative. He looked on those fifty-three Trojans, who, as Mr. Dod tells us, censured free trade in November, 1852, as the only patriots left among the public men of England. When that terrible crisis of free trade had arrived, when the repeal of the corn laws was carried by those very men whom Mr. Thorne had hitherto regarded as the only possible saviours of his country, he was for a time paralysed. His country was lost; but that was comparatively a small thing. Other countries had flourished and fallen, and the human race still went on improving under God's providence. But now all trust in human faith must for ever be at an end. Not only most ruin come, but it must come through the apostasy of those who has been regarded as the truest of true believers. Politics in England, as a pursuit for gentlemen, must be at an end. Had Mr. Thorne been trodden under foot by a Whig, he could have borne it as a Tory and a martyr; but to be so utterly thrown over and deceived by those he had so earnestly trusted, was more than he could endure and live.
Mr Thorne for a while withdrew from political discussion and social intercourse entirely, but
...that plan of his for avoiding the world did not answer. He, however, and others around him who still maintained the same staunch principles of protection -- men like himself, who were too true, to flinch at the cry of a mob -- had their own way of consoling themselves. They were, and felt themselves to be, the only true depositaries left of certain Eleusinian mysteries...To them and them only was it now given to know these things, and to perpetuate them, if that might still be done, by the careful and secret education of their children...He had within him something of the feeling of Cato, who gloried that he could kill himself because Romans were no longer worthy of their name. Mr Thorne had no thought of killing himself, being a Christian, and still possessing his 4000& a year; but the feeling was not on that account the less comfortable.
But Trollope had better to come. On discovering his sister, Miss Thorne, my feelings of sympathy of temperament were perfected:
As a politician, Miss Thorne had been so thoroughly disgusted with public life by base deeds long antecedent to the Corn Law question, that that had but little moved her. In her estimation her brother had been a fast young man, hurried away by a too ardent temperament into democratic tendencies. Now happily he was brought to sounder views by seeing the iniquity of the world. She had not yet reconciled herself to the Reform Bill, and still groaned in spirit over the defalcations of the Duke as touching the Catholic Emancipation. If asked whom she thought the Queen should take as her counsellor, she probably would have named Lord Eldon; and when reminded that that venerable man was no longer present in the flesh to assist us, she would probably have answered with a sigh that none now could help us but the dead.
I've never known how to describe myself when asked what kind of conservative I was. Now I can say that I am a "Miss Thorne conservative".

Monday, May 2, 2011

Projection: Looking for 10 Ridings Good and True

The final polling weekend indicates that the final trend is continuing decline by the Liberals, mostly to the Conservatives in Ontario, mostly to the NDP in British Columbia.

Expect as follows:
ATLANTIC:
Conservative 13, NDP 10, Liberal 9
QUEBEC:
NDP 41, Bloc 17, Liberal 10, Conservative 7
ONTARIO:
Conservative 58, NDP 26, Liberal 22
PRAIRIES:
Conservative 20, NDP 6, Liberal 2
ALBERTA:
Conservative 27, NDP 1
BRITISH COLUMBIA:
Conservative 19, NDP 14, Liberal 3
NORTH:
Conservative 1, NDP 1, Liberal 1

TOTAL:
Conservative 145, NDP 99, Liberal 47, Bloc 17

That means we're looking for 10 ridings good men and true, to stand up and give us a Conservative majority. Here's a list of 10 prospects. The Conservatives don't need to win all 10 to win a majority; if they fail in one area they could make it up by picking up additional marginals elsewhere. In particular there's 4 more GTA ridings that could fall if the Liberal collapse is even more severe than it seems. But, for a majority, the Conservatives should be winning (or holding) 7 or more of these 10 to form a majority:

Central Nova, Essex, Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca, Kamloops-Thompson-Caribou, Kingston and the Islands, Lotbiniere-Chutes de la Chaudiere, Mississauga-Streetsville, Palliser, Pontiac, South Shore-St. Margaret's

So those of you who live in Atlantica should watch to see whether the Tories can hold Central Nova and South Shore-St. Margaret's against the NDP tide. For those elsewhere, I understand that Elections Canada has ruled that the results can be transmitted west from the Atlantic by smoke signals, so long as the fire is started by matches and not by any more modern technological device, particularly one that uses hashtags.

One final note: don't cheer too loud at the evisceration of the Bloc. The last 2 things we want are the NDP and Liberals together having more seats than the Tories, or, worse, having a majority without needing Bloc assistance.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Tory Top 30 -- All Hits All The Time

John Ibbitson said in the Globe and Mail over the weekend that the Tories had a list of 30 seats they could win. I decided to sit down and start analyzing things and come up with my own list of seats, with help in finding the last few (and identifying one good one I missed) from someone more knowledgeable about these things than me. In fact we're now up to 31! (All hits all the time! 31 straight hits with no commercials!)

Many of these seats are implausible given the current polls, but anyway....

NWFD Avalon, St. John's East, St. John's South-Mount Pearl

NB Madawaska-Restigouche, Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe

PEI Malpeque

QUE Chicoutimi-Le Fjord, Lac-Saint-Louis, Louis Hebert, Mount Royal, Richmond-Arthabaska

ONT Ajax-Pickering, Bramalea-Gore-Malton, Brampton Springdale, Brampton West, Eglinton-Lawrence, Guelph, Kingston and the Islands, London North Centre, Mississauga South, Sault Ste Marie, Welland, York Centre

MAN Elmwood-Transcona

ALB Edmonton-Strathcona

BC Burnaby-Douglas, Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca, New Westminster-Coquitlam, Vancouver South

NWT Western Arctic

YUK Yukon

Now if anybody wants to order them for me by likelihood....

Next task is to pick the most likely seats that would get us to a majority....

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

The Real Scandal

How 'bout the Auditor General says "I am outraged that drafts of my reports are being stolen and leaked for political purposes. These acts endanger the very important political neutrality of this office, both the perceived neutrality and possibly the real neutrality, depending on the identity of the perpetrators. I have asked the RCMP to investigate and find the perpetrators tout de suite (as we say here in Ottawa)"?

Monday, March 28, 2011

Lamestream Media Lets Iggy Off Hook

The media seems to think it has forced Michael Ignatieff to box himself in on the issue of the Grits' forming a government despite having fewer seats than the Conservatives. In fact it has left not just the back door, but the front door wide open.

In the National Post, John Ivison says: In Montreal Sunday, [Ignatieff] put the final nail in the coalition coffin lid, when he clarified one possible ambiguity in the statement he made the day before: did the commitment to rule out a coalition and a formal arrangement to the Bloc extend to a Conservative minority? “Yes,” he said. “We will work with other parties but a coalition is out of the question. I have an obligation to voters to be as clear on this as I can.”

But a coalition or formal arrangement with the other parties isn't the only way in which a second-largest party might form a government early in a minority situation; it's not even the most typical way. The likely scenario is this:
!. Conservatives get more seats than the Liberals but not a majority.
2. Conservative government stays in office; prepares throne speech.
3. Combined opposition parties defeat Harper government on throne speech.
4. Mr Harper resigns, either immediately or (possibly) having been refused a request for another election.
5. The G-G asks the leader of the next largest party whether he believes he form a government. Mr Ignatieff says "Yes".
6. Liberals form government, not based on a coalition, or a formal arrangement with another party (e.g. the Liberal-NDP 'Accord' in 1985), but simply seeking support from any and all parties on an issue-by-issue basis, just as the Conservatives have been doing for the last five years.
And for that matter the Liberals might make a "formal arrangement" with another party say six months later, to keep the thing running.

I don't know whether Ignatieff has secret intentions along these lines or not. He might not have thought it all through yet. He does not seem to know much about the constitutional niceties of these situations. It is not true, as he says, that after an election the G-G invites the leader of the largest party to form a government. Rather the government stays in power until it resigns; it is fully entitled to go back to Parliament and proceed with a Speech from the Throne even if some party has more seats, as numerous governments have thought of doing in such situations (e.g., the St Laurent Gov't in 1957). Theoretically it could even do so if another party had a majority of the seats; it is the disapproval of the public and his own party that prevents a defeated prime minister from doing this. The Prime Minister's use of the word "coalition" has helped Iggy keep his options open so far. Harper can legitimately use the word to include a de facto arrangement, while Ignatieff uses it in its stricter sense and so evade the issue. But if Canadians don't want to have a second-place party forming a government, the media will have to be a lot more specific, and get a commitment from all the parties that they will allow the party with the most seats a reasonable time to govern on the principles it has set out during the campaign.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Top 10 English Tory Leaders: 6-10

Who are the 10 greatest Tory leaders in English history? A few stipulations:

1. We're ranking them as party leaders, not as prime ministers. Some were much better at one than at the other. You could theoretically make the list even while spending your entire career as Leader of the Opposition, although the inability to win an election would leave you with some splainin' to do.

2. We are starting, essentially, with the French Revolution. We are looking at what Keith Feiling called the Second Tory Party, and we will draw a discreet veil over the miserable period between 1714 and the late 18th century, not trying to figure out where Bolingbroke fits in the great scheme of things. Modern conservatism is often said to have originated philosophically with Burke; its first great leaders are of the same period.

3. To build suspense, we list them from the bottom up, starting today with the first half of the list.

10. Lord Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby 1846-68

Who? Who? Such was the nickname of Lord Stanley's ministry, earned when the names of the newly formed Cabinet were read out to the deaf Duke of Wellington. He was the longest serving leader of the Conservative party, although his three ministries lasted only a total of four years. Rather than blame him for not winning more often, we credit him for holding the remnants of the party together in the wake of the split over the reform of the corn laws and passing it on to good hands; Derby, not Disraeli, was prime minister at the time of the 1867 Reform Act.. Famous for his oratory; could be the second best orator among party leaders. The Cup was named for his second son.

9. Harold Macmillan, 1957-63

Supermac pulled the party together after the Suez disaster, in support of which in Cabinet he had been "First in, first out", in Harold Wilson's famous phrase. Subsequent Tory generations were to blame him for his budgetary profligacy, but there was just not the support for any form of economic conservatism. Under him the British people indeed "never had it so good". Sometimes thought to have left because of the Profumo crisis, he in fact survived that, and resigned after being misdiagnosed with a terminal disease; he lived until 1986. He left the party in good shape, but loses much credit for that for foisting Alec Douglas-Home on the party as his successor because of his contempt for Rab Butler, who might have won the next election.

8. Stanley Baldwin 1923-37

The selection of Baldwin over Lord Curzon in 1923 marks the party's successful adaptation to the modern, post-World War I era. A One Nation conservative, he was the first Tory leader to shed enough of its aristocratic lineage to allow it to succeed. Assigned too much blame for the failure to arm in the 30s considering the complexion of public opinion in the period. Successfully wrestled the Government away from Labour in 1931, co-opting the sitting prime minister Ramsay MacDonald into a coalition government, eventually transmogrified into a Tory one. Keeping a party popular and in party in the Depression was no easy feat; ask R. B. Bennett, who eventually sat with Baldwin in the House of Lords late in life.

7. Sir Robert Peel 1834-46

This is a toughie; party hero or party destroyer? The corn laws had to be repealed because the Tories could not win in even the slightly democratized electorate while standing for protection on food. The truth of this is shown by the Tories' abandonment of serious support for food protection not long after repeal. On this issue, as on things like Catholic Emancipation, Peel had the sense of when to fight and when to accept the reality of defeat. It is revealing that the serious part of the party -- the part with brains -- stayed with Peel after the great party split; the stalwart landed gentry and country gentlemen may have been in some sense the backbone of the party, but they were not its future. Although the Peelites were lost to Toryism, we can be thankful that Peel himself refused to join any Whig/Radical government.

6. Winston Churchill 1940-55

Churchill 6th? Remember we are assessing him as party leader, not as prime minister. He became prime minister as leader of a coalition government; caring little about domestic politics, he let Labour ministers run loose, preparing for the post-war establishment of a welfare state. Although he made a point of securing the official party leadership so that he would never suffer the fate of other emergency coalition leaders Lloyd George and MacDonald, he never really considered himself a Conservative, and considered the conservative backbench and the "average conservative" distasteful. His wild "Gestapo" charges may have cost the party the 1945 election, in which the socialist welfare state was firmly established, never to be uprooted. He was a spent volcano in his last term, and his choice of successor was a near-disaster and could have cost the party power.
There are, of course, good things to be said for him, which is why he rates 6th.

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The subject of the quote in the last post was Niccolo Machiavelli.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

The Philosopher in Winter

The philosopher in all eras must be prepared for disgrace and exile:
In spite of his exile, he had a wide circle of friends and admirers to whom he wrote unbuttoned letters. In the most famous of these, to Francesco Vettori, we glimpse his addiction to hobnobbing with simple people over cards and drinks at the tavern. When in the late afternoon he is through with that recreation, he goes home, dresses in handsome garments, and converses with the ancients, "asking" them about their lives and actions. During these four studious hours he is never bored, he forgets his poverty and disgrace, and does not fear death."

Who was this philosopher who knew how to live in winter? Answer at end of next post.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Lion's Den

The commentators expecting Mitch Daniels to make a strong outsider run for the 2012 GOP nomination as a fiscal conservative underestimate the impact of Daniels' intentional snubbing of social conservatives via a "truce" on social issues. The idea is ill thought out in every respect. It took a couple weeks before Daniels clarified that the truce was with liberals -- who are not interested in any such thing. No explanation has been given why a legislature cannot act on economic and social issues both. Most importantly, socons know that people who think that way would always find a reason why urgent concerns of some other kind demand a "temporary" putting aside of social issues. If the economy was hot, the suddenly urgent issues might be inflation and infrastructure.
Socons cannot elect a nominee, but they can defeat one. By taking them on, Daniels has put a target on his back -- metaphorically speaking only, of course.
Now Jennifer Rubin has identified two other significant groups of Republican conservatives that Daniels is alienating. "National security hawks are concerned that he is sounding more Robert Taft (Midwest isolationist) than Ronald Reagan internationalist." Worse than that, although the whole rationale for his candidacy is his economic expertise, Daniels is not a tax cutter, as are the great majority of GOP fiscal conservatives. Says the Cato Institute:
"He's kind of a more of a 'trains run on time' kind of guy, like a balanced budget kind of guy. He wants the government to be efficient but he doesn't necessarily want it to be smaller. Other than his property tax cut, he hasn't cut state level taxes at all. He hasn't really even proposed to cut them. Indiana has an above-average business tax."

What's going on here? Is Daniels setting himself up to run a brave-speaker-of-truth maverick campaign, Daniels as the prophet challenging the established wisdom of his party and warning of the danger to come? This kind of campaign wins disproportionately large coverage and editorial raves from the New York Times and Washington Post but doesn't win nominations even in the Democratic Party (Paul Tsongas; Gary Hart) where their seal of approval is valued. Or by snubbing social conservatives does Daniels hope to become the Establishment candidate, taking over as frontrunner if Romney implodes? But while the GOP Establishment might silently cheer as Daniels disses social conservatives, they will not make him their candidate, because they do not support candidates who intentionally divide the party.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Morning Line: 2012 GOP Nomination Odds

NEW: 2012 GOP Nomination Morning Line January 2011:

Romney 5/2
Pawlenty 7/1
Huckabee 7/1
Daniels 9/1
Palin 11/1
Gingrich 11/1
Thune 15/1
Jeb Bush 15/1
Barbour 20/1
Field 15/1

Preview:

There are two parallel GOP primaries. The social conservative primary is between Huckabee and Palin plus outsiders such as Pence and Bachmann. The winner of that primary goes up against the Establishment Republican primary, between frontrunner Romney and everyone else. The winner of the Establishment Republican primary should win the nomination. The best chance for the winner of the Socon primary is winning Iowa and running respectably in NH while Romney collapses, and then winning in South Carolina and Florida, taking a commanding lead before the establishment wing of the party can compose itself and unite behind someone else.

The candidates with the best cross-appeal to both factions are Gingrich and Barbour.
Barbour was going to be my long-choice for the nomination. The very day I was going to write about that, he shot himself in the foot in the Weekly Standard interview.They would have a great opportunity should Huckabee and Palin both decide not to run.

Despite my making Mitt the favourite, I would definitely not place my bet on him. 43 years ago his father was the favourite for the 1968 nomination, before collapsing in the winter of 1968 after admitting to/complaining about being "brainwashed" by the generals about Vietnam. Romney doesn't excite many people, has the burden of explaining the difference between his Massachusetts health care plan and Obamacare, and is still mistrusted by people who are suspicious of a Republican who tried to beat Ted Kennedy by running to his left.

Compare my odds with the results of the recent Republican Insider poll, converted into odds:

Romney 4/1
Daniels 7/1
Pawlenty 8/1
Thune 9/1
Palin 10/1
Huckabee 13/1
Barbour 13/1

I think that the Insiders underrate the degree to which Daniels has pinned a target on his back by his call for a truce on social issues. Socons will now exert themselves for his defeat. The Insiders, obviously appreciative of the difficulty that any Socon will have, still underrate Huckabee's high favourability with the race. Thune is apparently a highly thought-of establishment dark horse; Gingrich didn't even make the top 7.

Jeb Plants His Flag

Laura Ingraham notes Jeb Bush's incessant repetition of the term "center-right" in his plea for a long-term outreach strategy to Hispanics, most obviously, but maybe also to anybody else who doesn't seem inclined to vote Republican. Laura asks "Query: Have the Bushes decided to start moving away from the word "conservative"? I think we can answer that one with the a clear "Yes". The dad never liked being associated with conservatives except at primary time, and brother George had to paste the "compassionate" disclaimer on before he would use it. Jeb is clearly going to differentiate himself from the Palins and Huckabees and anybody else who doesn't have who don't have a clear business agenda.
No surprise that Jeb is going to do a lot of pandering to Hispanics. Absent from his pitch is both the word and the concept of "immigration", showing that Jeb isn't going to doom any future candidacy immediately by showcasing his softness on the subject. Notice the vacuity of the Jeb agenda:
A center-right agenda means keeping taxes low and easing the regulatory burden on small businesses to encourage the entrepreneurial spirit and job growth. A center-right agenda means instituting real education reforms that reward outstanding teachers and empower parents with choices if their children are trapped in a failing school. In short, a center-right agenda provides opportunity for those willing to work hard."
Yawn. Looks like a "center-right agenda" is marketable as an insomnia cure. Observe the complete absence of any social conservatism in the agenda, along with the commitment of redoubled efforts at the kind of incoherent and off-the-point education reforms also dumped unto the national agenda by little brother. If he keeps this up Jeb is going to have to switch quickly to a long-term outreach strategy to conservatives.