tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58836762696561881082024-02-20T18:50:29.910-05:00Devices and Desires"We have folowed too much the devises and desyres of oure owne hearts."
--General Confession, Book of Common Prayer 1552Alan Stewarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00413914847275660133noreply@blogger.comBlogger58125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5883676269656188108.post-59979114837650564172012-10-22T11:06:00.001-04:002012-10-22T11:06:52.102-04:00The Gathering Storm: Poll Shows Romney Michigan Charge<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Special to the <i>New York Times</i>:</div>
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DETROIT, Oct. 21, 1962 -- George Romney, Republican candidate for Governor of Michigan, has a 4.7 percentage point lead over Gov. John B. Swainson, who is seeking re-election, the latest poll of The Detroit News shows.</div>
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The results, made public today, give Mr. Romney 52 per cent of the statewide vote, and Mr. Swainson 47.3 per cent. This is an increase of 4.5 per cent for Mr. Romney since the previous poll results published September 30. At that time Mr. Romney had 49.7 per cent and the Governor 49.5</div>
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Alan Stewarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00413914847275660133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5883676269656188108.post-24518197613326913572012-10-16T09:52:00.000-04:002012-10-16T09:52:18.845-04:00The 3 Most Moronic Townhall Debate Questioners<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Republicans have trouble with Town Hall debates. Thery were, after all, a diabolical concoction of Bill Clinton, who had found town hall meetings a perfect vehicle for his campaign. They allowed him to emote, to assure the audience that he felt their pain. Republicans' first instinct is to try to answer a question seriously, which can be a deadly instinct when the question is a deliberate trap, or a sentimental effusion rather than a question, or is just plain moronic. The generic advice to debaters in this situation is that they should emit a sentence or two that is at least vaguely relevant to the question insofar as it is understood, then relate a horrific anecdote demonstrating the seriousness of the problem, or an inspiring anecdote demonstrating the unsurpassed ability of Americans deal with adversity. Then talk about whatever you want until time is about to run out, ending with something that will be embarrassing to the next candidate as he starts his answer.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Forewarned is forearmed; here are the 3 most moronic townhall debate questioners ever:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">1. <b>Richmond, Virginia, October 15, 1992, Carole Simpson, Moderator</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Note: This question was asked in response to an invitation by Carole Simpson to complain about the tenor of the campaign.</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Asked by the most famous questioner of all time, "pony tail guy".</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">SIMPSON: Who wants to say why you don't like the way the campaign is going? We have a gentleman back here.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">AUDIENCE QUESTION: And forgive the notes here but I'm shy on camera.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The focus of my work as a domestic mediator is meeting the needs of the children that I work with, by way of their parents, and not the wants of their parents. And I ask the three of you, how can we, as symbolically the children of the future president, expect the two of you, the three of you to meet our needs, the needs in housing and in crime and you name it, as opposed to the wants of your political spin doctors and your political parties?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">SIMPSON: So your question is?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">AUDIENCE QUESTION: Can we focus on the issues and not the personalities and the mud? I think there's a need, if we could take a poll here with the folks from Gallup perhaps, I think there's a real need here to focus at this point on the needs....[Short series of comments by candidates]... Could we cross our hearts? It sounds silly here but could we make a commitment? You know, we're not under oath at this point but could you make a commitment to the citizens of the US to meet our needs, and we have many, and not yours again? I repeat that. It's a real need, I think, that we all have.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">2. <b>Richmond, Virginia, October 15, 1992, Carole Simpson, Moderator</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">AUDIENCE QUESTION: Yes. How has the national debt personally affected each of your lives? And if it hasn't, how can you honestly find a cure for the economic problems of the common people if you have no experience in what's ailing them?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">[Note: there then followed a period of confusion in which President Bush tried to figure out what the questioner was talking about, and in which the questioner and Ms. Simpson responded to Bush’s discussion of the economy with the demand that he say how he had personally been affected. Later, the questioner clarified (?) what she had meant:]</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">AUDIENCE QUESTION: Well, I've had friends that have been laid off from jobs....I know people who cannot afford to pay the mortgage on their homes, their car payment. I have personal problems with the national debt. But how has it affected you and if you have no experience in it, how can you help us, if you don't know what we're feeling?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">3. <b>San Diego, October 16, 1996, Jim Lehrer, Moderator</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">MS. McAFEE: My name is Shannon McAfee. I'm a beginning educator in this country, and I really think it's important what children have to say. They're still very idealistic. And they -- everything they say comes from the heart. I have a quote for you from "If I Were President," compiled by Peggy Gavin. A sixth grader says, "If I were president, I would think about Abraham Lincoln and George Washington and what they did to make our country great. We should unite the white and black people and people of all cultures. Democrats and Republicans should unite also. We should all come together and think of the best ways to solve the economic problems of our country. "I believe that when we are able to come together and stop fighting amongst ourselves we will get along a lot better." These are the ideals and morals that we are teach -- we are trying to teach our children in these days. Yet we don't seem to be practicing them in our government, in anything. If you are president, how will you begin to practice what we are preaching to our children, the future of our nation?</span></div>
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Alan Stewarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00413914847275660133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5883676269656188108.post-29322013465745378042012-04-28T09:49:00.000-04:002012-04-28T09:49:27.868-04:00The Strange Death of Social Conservatism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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George Dangerfield’s classic <i>The Strange Death of Liberal England</i> argued that the British Liberal Party was destroyed not because anything in its philosophy had suddenly become hideously unpopular, but because it was caught in crossfires in four radically divisive social debates, over Irish home rule, women’s suffrage, union radicalism, and the House of Lords' power to reject laws passed by the Commons. The book is memorable for the high-pitched intensity with which the narrative sustains throughout.
<a href="http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/04/24/alberta-election-2012-wildrose-loss/"> Kathryn Blaze Carlson </a> adduces the shock upset of Wildrose as proof that social conservatism has become an "electorally toxic Pandora's Box". I confess that the same dark thoughts had been roaming through my mind the day after the election. If a conservative party can be taken over by the Left and then, though unpopular, win an election -- in Alberta -- by smearing as too social conservative a party that had fervently pledged itself not to touch the most crucial socon issues then what hope does social conservatism have anywhere?
But what is the evidence that fatal flaws of social conservatism were responsible for the Alberta disaster? Carlson's whole case against social conservatism derives from the two 'bigotry' incidents: <br />
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One pastor wrote in his blog that gays would burn in a “lake of fire,” while another MLA-hopeful said he had an advantage as a white candidate in an ethnically diverse Calgary constituency.</blockquote>
The social conservative cause has nothing to do with the state's taking a position on the eternal destiny of homosexuals, nor is race a forum of socon interest, except for a preference for merit hiring and a general advocacy that people chill out about the issue and stop using factitious allegations of bigotry for political advantage or as a proof of moral superiority.
So what's the connection?
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“It’s the social conservatism that does them in,” said Faron Ellis, a Lethbridge College political scientist who authored a book on the rise of the Reform party. “Until you draw a clear line in the sand over which you’re not going to let social conservatives drag your party, it becomes electorally toxic.” Prof. Ellis said the Wildrose Party was doomed the moment it tread into social conservatism without assuring voters it had limits. Ms. Smith chose not to draw a “clear line in the sand” and instead espoused free speech and freedom of religion, refusing to condemn candidates for making bigoted and racially charged comments. </blockquote>
Ah, those nasty, nasty things, free speech and freedom of religion.
Danielle Smith was boxed in a corner. Allan Hunsperger's statements about homosexuals simply reflect the doctrine of orthodox Christianity, a worldview that social liberals are trying to marginalize, but he did not present what evangelicals call a winsome testimony. Smith could hardly say that the views of orthodox Christians were unacceptable in her candidates and was left drawing a distinction between the private views of candidates and their public policy commitments. The real outrage was Alison Redford's comments, which demonstrated her unbearably sanctimonious intolerance: <br />
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Progressive Conservative leader Alison Redford said Hunsperger’s comments were “shocking” and spoke to the issue of who would make up a Wildrose government. “If we have people like this making these sorts of comments in Alberta, I think that it’s absolutely wrong. Of course I disagree with it and the fact that these are people who think that that’s a legitimate perspective, just absolutely blows my mind,” she said at an event at Calgary’s Sikh temple.</blockquote>
See, orthodox Christianity isn't a legitimate perspective; and people holding it should refrain from espousing it publicly. So says Premier Redford, Apostle of Tolerance.
Pastor #2, Ron Leech, committed the crime of trying to counter the ethnic appeals that visible minority candidates make to their own tribes more or less openly with a counter argument that he could be even more effective as a representative of Punjabi interests because he would *not* be looked on as a special pleader for that ethnic group. Here was a man who has spent time learning about Punjabi history and culture, a man who was urging that we avoid ethnic tribalism, and somehow <b>he</b> is the one tagged as a bigot. Redford responded to this one with another dose of sanctimony, saying that she would have fired Leech as a candidate.
Smith handled herself honourably and well; Redford was obnoxious and repellent, and the only demonstrated bigot in the whole affair; Redford is Premier of a majority government.
What are the lessons for social conservatism?<br />
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<b>1. Pastors Should Stay in Their Pulpits</b>
The kind of orthodox minister (of any religion) who will be running as a social conservative will have a career of boldly presenting the truth, and be trying to convert to a profession a large part of which involves shading, blurring and obscuring the truth. Such a person will have said things making him unelectable in a post-Christian society. Actually strong social conservative ex-ministers of this kind would have been hard to elect at any time. The occasional exception (e.g. Mike Huckabee) will have evidently unusual qualities.
Anyone who follows politics keenly would know not to say the things that Leech said by the time they reached high school. He broke a taboo, and successful politicians must know where the taboos are.<br />
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<b>2. Social Conservatives Must Select Candidates Differently
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Social liberal parties can just throw out anyone with the interest to run and the bucks to win a nominating convention knowing that their previous absurd and outrageous statements are unlikely to attract lamestream media interest. Social conservatives must police themselves to ensure that candidates with large skeletal closets never make it to the nomination. They must self-police; central parties, despite their eminent interest in presenting electable candidates, cannot be trusted to do it because they don't want social conservatives anyway. One socon looks like another to them When a nomination comes up and a socon expresses interest in running, socons need to network and ask, is this guy a credible candidate? Can we find a better one? Is this the *best* socon candidate we have available?
In those cases where socons have some entree into the central party and can exercise some influence, they should not oppose attempts by headquarters to grab control over nominations away from local riding associations.<br />
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<b>3. Social Conservatives Must Police Their Candidates Themselves</b>
Allan Hunsperger should have been told to scrub that blog the day he announced an intent to run.
Ron Leech was ensnared by his *second* comment on the issue. An earlier one had gone noticed. If the first time he had ever said that, someone had sat him down and explained why he must never say that again, the incident may have never occurred.
There's not much for volunteers to do in modern campaigns. Socons ought to watch their own candidates. track them as diligently as opposition researchers will.<br />
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Social conservatism hasn't been proved to be a fatal flaw to a campaign. The Alberta disaster is just a reminder that socons have to be better at what they do than social liberals, to survive.
</div>Alan Stewarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00413914847275660133noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5883676269656188108.post-15612290396605736082012-02-28T16:46:00.000-05:002012-02-28T16:46:31.024-05:00Penitential Lenten Reading List for Tories (Pt. One)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div style="font: 17.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">When I've been doing my reading the last year it's often occurred to me that in order to understand the era I'm reading about I need to know more about a leading man of the Left of that era. To understand the parlous state of conservatism in England in the long period of exile 1715 you need to know something about the slimy and oleaginous Robert Walpole. To understand the terrible period of desolation in Canada after 1921 you need to understand something about the tricky and strange William Lyon Mackenzie King. To understand the forces that set the nationin the path leading to violent dissolution towards war in the U.S. before the War Between the States you need to know something about Andrew Jackson.</div><div style="font: 17.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 20.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 17.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">The problem is that for any true blue conservative, the very thought of reading about a creature like Pierre Trudeau or Oliver Cromwell makes one's flesh crawl. To make it worse, their biographers tend of course to fawn and slobber over these monsters. In the John English biography of Trudeau you supposedly get a worshipful account of Trudeau's romantic adventures. Yuck.</div><div style="font: 17.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 20.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 17.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">So it occurred to be something during the last year that the project of necessary reading about notorious leftists should be approached in a penitential spirit, as a kind of spiritual discipline (I guess I'll call it a political discipline), a mortification of the mind, like wearing a hairshirt or scourging yourself.) So here's my top 10 Notorious Men of the Left reading list. It's constrained by availability of books at my library (you don't think I'd buy any of this filth, do you?) Otherwise worthy figures such as Mackenzie King and Earl Warren would appear on this list.I like to do these lists 10-to-1, to build suspense.</div><div style="font: 17.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 20.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 17.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">10. <und> <u> Andrew Jackson</u></und></div><div style="font: 17.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 20.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 17.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Andrew Jackson was in essence a street thug who,as sometimes happens, finds that the military was just made for him. Jackson would duel at the slightest provocation. He was in somewhere between 13 and over 100 duels in his life. According to Paul Johnson, a man duelling Old Hickory once had to be physically held in his place by the seconds --flat out murder. As President, Jackson naturally battles basically everyone decent in politics, including John Quincy Adams, John C. Calhoun, and Henry Clay. The book to read seems to be Robert Remini, <i>Andrew Jackson</i>. As a special act of penance you might instead choose Arthur Schlesinger's hagiographic<i>The Age of Jackson</i>.</div><div style="font: 17.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 20.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 17.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">9. <u><und>Mitch Hepburn</und></u><br />
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I once worked for a man who was around and active in Hepburn's time. He used to say that the Conservatives had proof that Hepburn had setup a whole floor in the Royal York and was having orgies with multiple prostitutes and everything. "We had the affidavits and all." Someone must have got cold feet.</div><div style="font: 17.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 20.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 17.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Despite his total unsuitability to be premier of anything, I don't know of anything Hepburn did to permanently harm Ontario, which is why he is so low on this list. His battles with Mackenzie King area militate in his favour as well. John Saywell's <i>Just Call Me Mitch: The Life of Mitchell Hepburn</i> seems to be the authority here.</div><div style="font: 17.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 20.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 17.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">8. <u>Woodrow Wilson</u></div><div style="font: 17.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 20.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 17.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Woodrow Wilson was a southerner, the first president associated with the presidency since Andrew Johnson. (Harry Turtledove has him as President of the Southern Confederacy in his alternate history series.) He makes the partly for his leadership of the progressive cause, partly for his imbecilic activities after WWI. His Fourteen Points are the absolute epitome of soppy sentimentality codified into ludicrous principle and proudly brandished as a serious programme that other nations were supposed to endorse. After reading #1 (Open covenants of peace openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but normal diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.) world leaders must have been splitting their sides laughing. Wilson was perfectly suited for one job: University president,and he was President of Princeton for a few years. August Hecksher's <i>Woodrow Wilson</i> appears to be the best recent biography.<br />
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(To Be Continued...) </div><div style="font: 17.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 20.0px;"><br />
</div></div>Alan Stewarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00413914847275660133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5883676269656188108.post-342024039680891712012-01-26T12:40:00.000-05:002012-01-26T12:40:53.625-05:00Newt in Florida: Fat Chance<a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/01/26/newt_vs_mitt_can_a_fat_man_beat_a_thin_man_112917.html">Carl Cannon</a> asks the question about the GOP race at the forefront of everyone's mind: can a fat man beat a thin man? <br />
<blockquote>...perhaps it’s not a true test, but last Saturday, Gingrich clearly outdid three thinner men. Presidential primary elections are not purely popularity contests, and this is not high school, but in attracting more votes than Mitt Romney, Gingrich bested a candidate who is not only in better shape, but better-looking, more physically graceful, and younger.<br />
Such a result is not unheard-of, but it defies the odds. Political consultants and presidential scholars will tell (not to mention psychologists, corporate headhunters, and Madison Avenue hucksters) that in social competition, physical qualities matter. Generally speaking, tall beats short, dark hair beats gray, agility beats klutzy, handsome beats homely. And trim definitely edges out pudgy, as any overweight kid ever called “fatso” on the playground can attest.<br />
</blockquote>Hmm... does this apply in Canada? Considering the general appearance issue rather than weight alone, the old Progressive Conservatives obviously did not have the reactions of other humans, choosing Bob Stanfield over Duff Roblin and Davey Fulton and Joe Clark over Claude Wagner and Brian Mulroney, getting the electoral results you would expect. The lamestream media at least did not seem to think that Preston Manning's appearance and voice were those of a leader, although I never concurred with the worldly minded on this. Manning always seemed to me to fit the image of a leader, while Brian Mulroney came across to me as a phony blowhard of the kind who gets his position by excelling in everything superficial. I never thought that the fixed teeth, contact lenses and $750 suits helped Manning any; they made seem like just another politician. Yet when he put his leadership on the line, Stockwell Day's sleekness in a Speedo was part of his implicit case against Manning.<br />
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Whenever I see Newt appearing particularly porcine my thought is that he should have made a point of losing 20 or 30 pounds over the year before his campaign started. It would have been a sign of seriousness in a campaign which many didn't take seriously at first, of self-restraint in a man who has often seemed to lack that virtue, of stability in a man feared to be too erratic. Haley Barbour said two years ago that if he was 25 pounds lighter a year from then, you would know that he either had cancer or was going to run for president.<br />
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In choosing a candidate, GOP primary voters say that they're more concerned about electability than any other qualification,including being a "true conservative". That means that voters, rather than choosing according to their own reactions to a candidate, are trying to guess how other people will react to him. That works to the advantage of a Ken-doll candidate like Romney. You and I may be too deep to pick a president on the basis of superficial characteristics, but we don't expect that your mushbrained independents, people who can't even figure out what party they belong to, will do the same. This factor helps Romney, and as of now he seems to have halted his decline in Florida, but I will say this: a candidacy like Romney's, based not on being the guy you want, but the guy who you think other people will want, is a house of cards. If Gingrich could ever manage to seize even a small advantage over Romney in trial heats against Obama, Romney's campaign could collapse quickly like a previous "Mr Moderate" frontrunner -- Mitt's father George, in 1968.<br />
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Or,as his tide goes out, Gingrich could be left stranded on the beaches of Florida. Like a beached whale.Alan Stewarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00413914847275660133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5883676269656188108.post-65842511541303858052012-01-20T10:51:00.004-05:002012-01-20T10:58:37.245-05:00Comment Dit-On Tasha Kheridden is a Liberal Elitist?Outside of the small number of unilingual speakers who are part of the minority in an area and so genuinely need government services in their own language, Official Bilingualism is a project of the New Class -- the caste of manipulators of symbols that includes high-level bureaucrats, some types of lawyers, the media and executives in government-regulated industries. So it is not as much of a surprise as it might be to find that Tasha Kheridden is <a href= "http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/01/18/tasha-kheiriddin-bilingualism-carries-benefits-beyond-cost/"> a staunch defender of Official Bilingualism</a><br /><br />Born and brought up in Montreal -- check -- who has worked as Legislative Assistant to the Attorney General of Ontario -- check -- before working as a producer for the CBC -- check.<br /><br />Consequently Ms.Kheridden mounts a defence of capital-B Bilingualism in the face of the recent Fraser Institute study pegging the costs of Bilingualism at $2.4 billion annually. So what is that defence? Well, people need to be able to deal with same-language government officials when fighting a traffic ticket or asking questions about how to get a passport. Granted. The provision of such services is a minute part of the cost of Official Bilingualism. What else?<br /><br /><blockquote>while GPS has largely replaced the need to ask for directions, bilingual tourism officers will ensure that a New Brunswicker travelling in Alberta will feel as at home there as back in his native province.</blockquote> Tourism officers? When is the last time you have found a Tourism Officer handy when you had to ask for directions?<br /><blockquote> Whitby, Ontario is about as Anglo Canadian as you can get, yet it boasts a huge, brand new French immersion elementary school. The Julie Payette Public School opened in 2011 at capacity: just under 700 students fill its classrooms, including six grade one classes. In an interview, principal Monique de Villers explained that parents choose bilingual education not only to enable their children to travel and work within Canada, but to prepare them to be “citizens of the wider world… Learning another language prepares them to talk to others.”</blockquote> Well of course upper middle class parents are going to want the option of French immersion for their children in a society where you have to speak French to be Prime Minister, a judge of the Supreme Court of Canada (once the Liberals and NDP get back into power), or a senior bureaucrat. It is very much in the interest of the bilingual New class to encourage such white elephants as French immersion, knowing that 90% of Immersion graduates will lose whatever ability they had within a few years of leaving school,and thus never be real competition for jobs with the genuinely bilingual. As for French immersion as a preparation for talking to others -- people living in Whitby, as in most of Ontario, would have to scour the region to find someone who speaks only French to talk to. <blockquote> Canada’s nationalist concept of bilingualism has morphed into an internationalist concept</blockquote> I don’t think many of the students entered into French immersion classes are planning to be diplomats or to move to France. <blockquote>...having two official languages sets our entire country apart on the world stage, allowing it to participate in both the Francophonie and the Commonwealth</blockquote> So we’d be thrown out of the Francophonie if we dismantled the excesses of Official Bilingualism? I think the presence of Quebec in Canada, and the status of French there, would militate against expelling that. <blockquote> It [the federal government]should review second language requirements within the public service, to make sure they are all fully necessary, before sending bureaucrats out for pricey language training. </blockquote> It should, but it won’t. Official Bilingualism has been in place for four decades, and the grip of mandatory French around the throat of English bureaucrats is worse than ever. French proficiency is required for posts in which the language will never be used. The <a href="http://www.ocol-clo.gc.ca/html/index_e.php ">Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages</a> acts as a permanent lobby for more Bilingualism, as well seeking every year things outside its jurisdiction to meddle in. <br /><br />That is the real cost of Bilingualism -- in every part of the civil service, the competent lose out in promotion to the bilingual. As concerned as people are about efficiency in government, there should be more outrage about a programme that systematically discriminates against the competent.<br /><br />And selection of a prime minister is as a practical matter now restricted to the small pool of bilingual people in Canada. That’s a tremendous cost when you consider how few great leaders a country has, even if it speaks only one language.<br /><br />All this is a substantial price to pay for the right to try to hunt down a bilingual Tourism Officer when you get lost in Alberta.Alan Stewarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00413914847275660133noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5883676269656188108.post-68706406328700039812012-01-19T05:27:00.001-05:002012-01-19T05:28:53.453-05:00DystopiaThe GOP presidential campaign lacks the excitement of a real race, but one thing it has is great television ads. I just hope these ad shops still have their game when the battle for control of the Senate comes up later this year.<br /><br /><img style="visibility:hidden;width:0px;height:0px;" border=0 width=0 height=0 src="http://c.gigcount.com/wildfire/IMP/CXNID=2000002.11NXC/bT*xJmx*PTEzMjY5NjgzMzc4OTQmcHQ9MTMyNjk2ODQwNTI3MiZwPSZkPSZnPTImbz*5YTAzNzY4ODgxMTk*NjM4ODk4ZjM2YjBj/N2M5YzU3NiZvZj*w.gif" /><object name="kaltura_player_1326968332" id="kaltura_player_1326968332" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowScriptAccess="always" allowNetworking="all" allowFullScreen="true" height="221" width="392" data="http://cdnapi.kaltura.com/index.php/kwidget/wid/0_8yccra0l/uiconf_id/5590821"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="allowNetworking" value="all" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#000000" /><param name="movie" value="http://cdnapi.kaltura.com/index.php/kwidget/wid/0_8yccra0l/uiconf_id/5590821"/><param name="flashVars" value="autoPlay=false&screensLayer.startScreenOverId=startScreen&screensLayer.startScreenId=startScreen"/><a href="http://corp.kaltura.com">video platform</a><a href="http://corp.kaltura.com/video_platform/video_management">video management</a><a href="http://corp.kaltura.com/solutions/video_solution">video solutions</a><a href="http://corp.kaltura.com/video_platform/video_publishing">video player</a></object>Alan Stewarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00413914847275660133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5883676269656188108.post-83411363860739024222012-01-18T08:55:00.001-05:002012-01-18T08:57:56.108-05:00Explaining BainBill Bennett and Fred Barnes are on the wireless worrying over Mitt's problem of explaining Bain. His advisers are <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/us/politics/11romney.html?pagewanted=all">spending their own intellectual capital on figuring out how to deal with this</a>. Here's how; and if they need more advice, my rates are reasonable:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">"Have you ever worked in a company that was being run into the ground? A company that was running down, that was being managed so poorly that you knew it was a matter of time before it went under and you lost your job? Or had a relative or friend who worked for a company like that? Well, we looked for companies like that, stepped in and bought them, streamlined them and turned them around. If it worked, people kept their jobs, and we made some money."<br /></span><br />Thank you. Next problem?Alan Stewarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00413914847275660133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5883676269656188108.post-75605049993513891462012-01-16T08:04:00.001-05:002012-01-16T08:07:23.089-05:00BULLETIN: 150 Religious Conservatives For Taft over Eisenhower for GOP NominationA group of 150 influential religious conservative leaders have endorsed Senator Robert A. Taft (R-- Oh) over General Dwight D. Eisenhower for the 1952 Republican nomination. The leaders had been divided, with many supporting the candidacies of General Douglas Macarthur and former Minnesota governor Harold Stassen. <br /><br />“Many of our members have been sitting on the fence, wanting to look more closely at these candidates,” said Kinfolk Analysis Coalition president Pony Terkins. “However we have determined that now is the time to act, when together we can have the decisive influence over the choice. The only major events that we have missed are the caucuses in Iowa and primary in New Hampshire, which are small states with relatively few delegates and not very important.There was not a fear that this is too late; there was a sense that this could be exactly the right time,” Terkins did say that the group was influenced to act now by a presentation by a noted political consultant, who suggested that the group should not wait overlong before acting as their ability to make an impact would be hurt by the fact that many of the delegates were now dead and so unlikely to be influenced to change their minds.Alan Stewarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00413914847275660133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5883676269656188108.post-90425742497003981322012-01-13T11:05:00.003-05:002012-01-13T11:11:00.959-05:00An Audition for SchiffrenMitt Romney has a bigger problem than his exploits, in his role as Robber Baron, as ruthless exploiter of the people. It’s one that we’re likely to hear more about steadily during the campaign. It’s described by many labels... inauthenticity, stiffness, distance from the average guy.<br /><br /><a href=http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/candidates-who-fail-to-connect-often-fail-to-win-will-romney-follow-history/2012/01/01/gIQAFAWwtP_story.html">Michael Leahy</a> describes the affliction as “failure to connect’: <blockquote>...concerns about his ability to connect are casually noted by Republican insiders, even among some who once worked for him.<br /><br />“This is Romney: He knows what is wrong with a car engine, and he knows how to rebuild that engine — but he doesn’t acknowledge the person driving the car,” said Doug Gross, who served as the Romney campaign’s Iowa state chairman in 2008 but is uncommitted in the 2012 race....“He’s not able to warm a room immediately or make an audience feel like he is speaking to them,” Gross said. “You’d have to put a new card in him for that to happen.” </blockquote><br />Leahy names Tom Dewey and Michael Dukakis as two whose presidential campaigns have foundered on this not-quite-humanness. (I’m surprised that the story of Dewey’s furious outburst against a careless train engineer didn’t make the story. ) I would have thought that Al Gore definitely makes this list, and John Kerry deserves at least an honourable mention. <br />It would be a mistake to try to be someone other than he is, to affect a ‘jes-folks’ demeanour and empathetic mien. As Dukakis’s press secretary says, <blockquote> “You can talk all you want about changing a candidate, but eventually the candidate will go back to his default position — he is who he is,” said Duncan, who along the way with Dukakis learned the most humbling truth of all, one that Romney likely has already discovered. “The attention of a presidential campaign is so glaring, so unrelenting for a candidate. Those parts of you that make you who you are eventually get exposed.” </blockquote><br />Lisa Schiffren thinks that conservatives could do better, but is trying to <a href=http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/287933/santorum-even-after-new-hampshire-lisa-schiffren”> accept the reality of Romney: </a> <blockquote> he is very handsome, and has such a good work ethic for a rich guy who really does not have a clue what it means to have to make the choices that normal middle-class people always have to make — which is why we don’t really trust him. Have you ever noticed how the very rich have so much more sympathy for the non-working poor than for the boring old middle class? ...Especially if he picks the right advisers. But why can’t he hire a conservative speechwriter, who knows the words and the music?</blockquote><br />Right on point. Mitt can’t stifle himself from blurting out that he likes to be able to fire people, or that other candidates are attacking him over Bain Capital out of envy. But he can hire speechwriters who can try to evoke that sense of hope and confidence that successful candidates evoke. And hey -- Lisa Schiffren’s a speechwriter isn’t she? Maybe she has better things to do, but isn’t that the good thing about being Richie Rich, that you can keep piling stacks of money on the table until you can get people to do what you want? If Lisa won’t do the writing, she should sure be picking and supervising the people who do.<br /><br />Keep a watch on who Romney’s speechwriters this campaign. It’ll tell us a lot.Alan Stewarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00413914847275660133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5883676269656188108.post-3649488644190925972012-01-11T11:07:00.002-05:002012-01-11T11:09:20.063-05:00Newt the UniterCould there be brilliant strategy behind Newt’s kamikaze attacks against Mitt? At first glance there’s no possible gain to the Republican Party or conservatism in launching a kamikaze campaign against the future presidential nominee of your party, depicting him as a remorseless capitalist vampire bloodsucker. Let’s see...you’re helping the Democrats hone their plan of attack and handing them ammunition to carry it out. You’re exacerbating divisions within the party of the kind that are slow to heal. You’re diverting attention from whatever shared positive ideas the GOP does have for the nation.<br /><br />But maybe there’s silver linings. Suddenly, people like <a href="http://michellemalkin.com/2012/01/09/the-abysmal-incompetence-of-the-non-romneys/"> Michelle Malkin</a>, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/10/rush-limbaugh-newt-gingrich-bain-capital-elizabeth-warren_n_1197922.html">Rush Limbaugh</a>, and the Club for Growth, who should be spending their time right now denouncing Romney as a pathetic and useless RINO deserving of reprobation by all true conservatives, are united in his defence; now Mitt is a Hero of Free Enterprise, a truer conservative than the man who won the House of Representatives at a time when people thought the GOP would never win the it again in their lifetimes. Politics fans get the demolition derby they expect from the primary season; populist conservatives have their catharsis, their opportunity to see a lashing given to the Wall Street/Big Corporation wing of the party. At the end of the day, everyone’s anger at the state of things having been voiced, everyone can resign themselves to Mitt in the end, knowing that they are not unrepresented in the party.<br /><br />Knowing Newt, if this is a brilliantly concocted masterpiece of strategy, complete with double feint, bait-and-switch and fumblerooski ploy, we can be sure that Newt will tell us.Alan Stewarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00413914847275660133noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5883676269656188108.post-34753823659274909952011-06-09T09:18:00.002-04:002011-06-09T09:21:12.533-04:00Wanted: A Canadian RehnquistThe 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 <i>Charter of Rights</i>. 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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".Alan Stewarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00413914847275660133noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5883676269656188108.post-86951878481988315302011-06-08T10:28:00.003-04:002011-06-08T10:41:20.413-04:00A Miss Thorne ConservativeWhen I came upon Trollope's portrait of Mr Thorne in <i>Barchester Towers</i>, I thought that I had found a man of fellow temperament: <blockquote>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.</blockquote>Mr Thorne for a while withdrew from political discussion and social intercourse entirely, but <br /><blockquote>...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.</blockquote>But Trollope had better to come. On discovering his sister, Miss Thorne, my feelings of sympathy of temperament were perfected: <br /><blockquote>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.</blockquote>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".Alan Stewarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00413914847275660133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5883676269656188108.post-72221098066200204932011-05-02T11:54:00.007-04:002011-05-02T12:02:45.863-04:00Projection: Looking for 10 Ridings Good and TrueThe 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.<br /><br />Expect as follows:<br />ATLANTIC:<br />Conservative 13, NDP 10, Liberal 9<br />QUEBEC:<br />NDP 41, Bloc 17, Liberal 10, Conservative 7<br />ONTARIO:<br />Conservative 58, NDP 26, Liberal 22<br />PRAIRIES:<br />Conservative 20, NDP 6, Liberal 2<br />ALBERTA:<br />Conservative 27, NDP 1<br />BRITISH COLUMBIA:<br />Conservative 19, NDP 14, Liberal 3<br />NORTH:<br />Conservative 1, NDP 1, Liberal 1<br /><br />TOTAL:<br />Conservative 145, NDP 99, Liberal 47, Bloc 17<br /><br />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:<br /><br />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<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.Alan Stewarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00413914847275660133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5883676269656188108.post-6833039080155505852011-04-18T12:39:00.004-04:002011-04-18T12:44:44.904-04:00Tory Top 30 -- All Hits All The TimeJohn Ibbitson said in the <i>Globe and Mail</i> 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!)<br /><br />Many of these seats are implausible given the current polls, but anyway....<br /><br />NWFD Avalon, St. John's East, St. John's South-Mount Pearl<br /> <br />NB Madawaska-Restigouche, Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe <br /><br />PEI Malpeque<br /> <br />QUE Chicoutimi-Le Fjord, Lac-Saint-Louis, Louis Hebert, Mount Royal, Richmond-Arthabaska<br /><br />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 <br /><br />MAN Elmwood-Transcona <br /><br />ALB Edmonton-Strathcona<br /> <br />BC Burnaby-Douglas, Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca, New Westminster-Coquitlam, Vancouver South<br /> <br />NWT Western Arctic<br /> <br />YUK Yukon<br /><br />Now if anybody wants to order them for me by likelihood....<br /><br />Next task is to pick the most likely seats that would get us to a majority....Alan Stewarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00413914847275660133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5883676269656188108.post-84998763070414157742011-04-12T08:57:00.004-04:002011-04-12T09:02:57.763-04:00The Real ScandalHow '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 <i>tout de suite</i> (as we say here in Ottawa)"?Alan Stewarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00413914847275660133noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5883676269656188108.post-17295183361791245202011-03-28T08:51:00.004-04:002011-03-28T08:59:57.536-04:00Lamestream Media Lets Iggy Off HookThe 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. <br /><br />In the <em>National Post</em>, <a href="http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/03/27/john-ivison-ignatieff-gambles-on-the-long-shot/">John Ivison</a> 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.”<br /><br />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: <br /><blockquote>!. Conservatives get more seats than the Liberals but not a majority.<br />2. Conservative government stays in office; prepares throne speech.<br />3. Combined opposition parties defeat Harper government on throne speech.<br />4. Mr Harper resigns, either immediately or (possibly) having been refused a request for another election.<br />5. The G-G asks the leader of the next largest party whether he believes he form a government. Mr Ignatieff says "Yes".<br />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.</blockquote> And for that matter the Liberals might make a "formal arrangement" with another party say six months later, to keep the thing running.<br /><br />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 <em>facto</em> 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.Alan Stewarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00413914847275660133noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5883676269656188108.post-71156680821714041852011-02-15T09:26:00.004-05:002011-02-15T09:33:02.383-05:00Top 10 English Tory Leaders: 6-10Who are the 10 greatest Tory leaders in English history? A few stipulations:<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />3. To build suspense, we list them from the bottom up, starting today with the first half of the list.<br /><br /><strong>10. Lord Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby 1846-68</strong><br /><br />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.<br /><br /><strong>9. Harold Macmillan, 1957-63</strong><br /><br />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. <br /><br /><strong>8. Stanley Baldwin 1923-37</strong><br /><br />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.<br /><br /><strong>7. Sir Robert Peel 1834-46</strong><br /><br />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.<br /><br /><strong>6. Winston Churchill 1940-55</strong><br /><br />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.<br />There are, of course, good things to be said for him, which is why he rates 6th.<br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />The subject of the quote in the last post was Niccolo Machiavelli.Alan Stewarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00413914847275660133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5883676269656188108.post-59147657232585279612011-01-26T17:27:00.000-05:002011-01-26T17:28:21.987-05:00The Philosopher in WinterThe philosopher in all eras must be prepared for disgrace and exile: <blockquote> 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."</blockquote><br />Who was this philosopher who knew how to live in winter? Answer at end of next post.Alan Stewarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00413914847275660133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5883676269656188108.post-77488870396953566392011-01-18T08:02:00.002-05:002011-01-18T08:05:14.148-05:00Lion's DenThe 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.<br />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.<br />Now <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/right-turn/2011/01/mitch_danielss_error.html">Jennifer Rubin</a> 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: <blockquote>"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."</blockquote><br />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.Alan Stewarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00413914847275660133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5883676269656188108.post-50270916714291252912011-01-12T11:22:00.003-05:002011-01-12T15:23:09.308-05:00Morning Line: 2012 GOP Nomination OddsNEW: 2012 GOP Nomination Morning Line January 2011:<br /><br />Romney 5/2<br />Pawlenty 7/1<br />Huckabee 7/1<br />Daniels 9/1<br />Palin 11/1<br />Gingrich 11/1<br />Thune 15/1<br />Jeb Bush 15/1<br />Barbour 20/1<br />Field 15/1<br /><br />Preview:<br /><br />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 <strong>while Romney collapses</strong>, 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.<br /><br />The candidates with the best cross-appeal to both factions are Gingrich and Barbour.<br />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 <em>Weekly Standard</em> interview.They would have a great opportunity should Huckabee and Palin both decide not to run.<br /><br />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. <br /><br />Compare my odds with the results of the recent Republican Insider poll, converted into odds:<br /><br />Romney 4/1<br />Daniels 7/1<br />Pawlenty 8/1<br />Thune 9/1<br />Palin 10/1<br />Huckabee 13/1<br />Barbour 13/1<br /><br />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.Alan Stewarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00413914847275660133noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5883676269656188108.post-33395679230746891562011-01-12T10:03:00.001-05:002011-01-12T10:05:35.261-05:00Jeb Plants His Flag<a href=http://www.lauraingraham.com/b/A-message-from-your-2016-GOP-Presidential-nominee.../697262350690120076.html"">Laura Ingraham</a> notes Jeb Bush's incessant repetition of the term "center-right" in his <a href= http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/01/09/2007805/bushconservative-movement-must.html>plea for a long-term outreach strategy</a> 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. <br />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: <blockquote>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."</blockquote> 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.Alan Stewarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00413914847275660133noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5883676269656188108.post-49114896713952940462010-07-26T16:27:00.001-04:002010-07-26T16:29:48.450-04:00Salisbury: The Triumph of ReactionI’ve just finished one of the best political biographies I’ve ever read (David Donald’s Lincoln is the only one I can think of that might be superior), about one of the greatest Conservative leaders in history: Andrew Roberts’ Salisbury. Roberts is a superb writer, and had the advantage of a subject who was just as superb a writer, spent 9 years in full-time political journalism and preserved a full set of correspondence and records.<br /><br />Robert Cecil, the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, won three general elections and was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for almost 14 years between 1885 and 1902. Despite these accomplishments, Lord Salisbury never entered the Conservative pantheon. He was totally eclipsed in memory by the dashing and romantic Disraeli who was by comparison an electoral failure, leaving to Salisbury the job of putting Gladstone away for good His memory has been overshadowed even by such comparatively ephemeral figures as Lord Randolph Churchill, the artificer of “Tory Democracy”. Part of the cause of his obscurity is ideological. Both Disraeli and Churchill were figures from the left of the party, both solid examples of the classic “Red Tory”, in the original meaning of the term. Salisbury on the other hand was an outright reactionary, a High Tory of a kind that had disappeared in Canada decades before. Reaction, in its secondary or vulgar sense of opposition to and obstruction of change, was the essence of his philosophy. Disraeli ‘stole the Whigs’ clothes’ and broadened the franchise in the 1867 Reform Act, seeing increased enfranchisement as inevitable and not wanting all newly enfranchised groups to regard the Liberals as their friend and the Tories as their enemy forever; Salisbury resigned from Cabinet over the measure. (But few conservatives know that Salisbury had done minute calculations of the likely effect on Conservative fortunes of Disraeli’s proposed enfranchisement, finding the calculations Disraeli was passing on to be wrong. The next election after the Bill proved Salisbury right. In 1884, on the other hand, Salisbury was able to insist that the next major broadening of the franchise not be enacted until it was accompanied by a redistribution which made the package as a whole to the Conservatives’ betterment.) Change, he said, was “an evil, and we do not desire to give it any assistance…it occupies time and energies which are wanted for other purposes.’<br />He has an unlikely personality for a politician: a loner, affected permanently, Roberts thinks, by severe bullying at Eton, reserved, shy and unsocial, to the extent that in his later years there were a number of instances of his not recognizing members of his own Cabinet (they were after all in the Commons, while he governed from the Lords); as unconcerned as anyone could be about being liked, admired or honoured; notoriously sloppy and careless in dress; dismissive of political oratory, writing the Queen that extra-Parliamentary speaking engagements were “an odious addition to the burdens of political life in modern times…a bad fashion introduced by Mr Gladstone.” (Victoria greatly preferred Salisbury to Gladstone, to the extent of, quite unconstitutionally, forwarding Gladstone’s letters to her while prime minister on to leader of the opposition Salisbury, just for his information.) He could never have attained political leadership in our time (for which we are the losers.) <br />His claim to greatness has multiple supports. Among Conservative leaders in the Anglosphere, he was one of the greatest writers, thinkers and parliamentary and electoral tacticians. One could fill a sheaf of pages with his mordant, witty, sometimes cynical observations and sayings – and I may just do that for a while.Alan Stewarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00413914847275660133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5883676269656188108.post-41511008667747738122010-07-23T08:59:00.003-04:002010-07-23T09:14:26.962-04:00Merit AloneIt's about time that the Government got around to reining in affirmative action. It's a move that is not just a matter of elementary social justice; handeled properly, it will be politically popular as well. As <a href="http://www.nationalpost.com/news/Affirmative+action+overhaul/3311196/story.html"> the <i>National Post</i> </a> <br />shows, reverse discrimination is no longer necessary in the federal public service, if it ever was: <blockquote>According to the commission’s latest figures, published in 2009, 18.8% of public service employees are visible minorities, 4.2% are aboriginal, 3.3% are people with disabilities and 57.1% are women. Canada-wide, according to the 2006 Statistics Canada census, 16.2% of Canadians are visible minorities, 3.8% are aboriginal and 51% are women. </blockquote> The government needs to march behind the banner "Merit Alone". The policy review needs to be guided toward toward the dropping of reverse discrimination and a total recasting of civil service policy. Hiring by merit thwaps hiring by status in any poll that gives both options. Some of the themes that the new policy should develop:<br /><br /> * true diversity, diversity of backgrounds and of ideas, thrives where selection be merit is taken seriously;<br /> * targets for percentage hiring of specified groups are simply quotas by another name;<br /> * selection by merit must replace "diversity' as the key phrase emphasized not just at hiring, but at every stage of the promotion process.<br /><br />As part of this review, the government should cough up some money to get the best and most sympathetic personnel experts it can find to design "Merit Workshops" which will replace the diversity workshops which now infest the land, poisoning both the public and private spheres. In the workshops, trained meritocrats would indoctrinate their captive audiences on disasters, real and hypothetical, caused by reverse discrimination hires; selection by merit as a key element of equality and social justice; how "obstacles to merit selection" may be identified and expunged from the workplace, and the like; how new and better "selection by merit" practices may be embedded in the system, etc. The idea would be that these workshops will become an alternate institution to the liberal institution of the diversity workshop, as conservatives conduct their Gramscian march through the institutions of liberal hegemony.<br /><br />One thing the government needs to do immediately is to drop the defensiveness, the whining about "Oh we're in favour of diversity, we're in favour of affirmative action, we really are." Stockwell Day may be permanently spooked because of his previous manhandling by the liberal media, but the government needs to stop cringing and walk with pride on this one. They have a bloody shirt to wave to start the thing going: the moral outrage of hiring people only from specified races.Alan Stewarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00413914847275660133noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5883676269656188108.post-76081388898658817022010-03-02T08:30:00.004-05:002010-03-02T08:37:43.906-05:00Russell Kirk and the Tyranny of the More Energetic NaturesRussell Kirk sets out two principles in setting out "the general lineaments of the kind of government which seems reasonably consonant with the general welfare." (Kirk has never a man to use 10 ordinary words when 20 words with a few archaisms thrown in would do.) <blockquote> The first principle is that a good government allows the more energetic natures among a people to fulfil their promise, while ensuring that these persons shall not tyrannize over the mass of men. (33)</blockquote> It's this last phrase that is of interest coming from an American conservative. With their libertarian bent, they find it impossible that "energetic natures" could "tyrannize over the mass of men"; only governments can tyrannize by definition.<br /><br />Kirk later adds that "not only should a just government recognize the rights of the more talented natures, but it should recognize the right of the majority of men not to be agitated and bullied by these aspiring talents....there have been ages in which the aristocracy, natural or hereditary, has usurped the whole governance of life, demanding of the average man a tribute and an obedience which deprive the majority of their desire to live by custom and prescription..." (34) He thinks that natural aristocracy is not a problem in his time (1964), though, because it is the era of the mass man, of Ortega's revolt of the masses. <br /><br />I think Kirk was missing the creation of an oppressive aristocracy right under his nose. Not the aristocracy of businessmen or capitalists that leftists might perceive. Aren't our new aristocrats the masters of the media, of Hollywood, of television, of popular music, even of newspapers as long as they're still around? From the time a child is sentient, they surround Kirk's fortresses of custom and tradition and besiege them with a 24/7 barrage of cultural and moral decadence. They ensure that those opposed to their rule must fight a guerilla war against a hostile culture in every area of life. Especially noxious is the insidious influence they exert over children, insistent upon asserting their control from the time they are first sentient. Unless parents or church or experience protect or rescue them, their worldview will be formed by their media overlords and they will be tyrannized by them until their dying breath.<br /><br />And a tyranny is something that exists to be overthrown and destroyed.<br /><br />(Quotations from "Prescription, Authority and Ordered Freedom" in Frank Meyer, <i>What is Conservatism?</i> (Toronto: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964) 23- 40. Frank Meyer was the great apostle of "fusionism", an attempt to find, in philosophy, a dialectical synthesis between traditionalist and libertarian conservatism, and, more practically, to stop these two factions from destroying each other. I'm reading this collection of essays by folk such as Kirk, Kendall, Hayek, etc. to see if it has any relevance to the war going on today between libertarians and social conservatives.)Alan Stewarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00413914847275660133noreply@blogger.com0