So when he writes, “I can’t vote for the Harper Conservatives. I just can’t.” I take notice.
I make no bones about the fact that I am a Tory. I even have a Conservative Party of Canada membership card.
Stupid people think that means I am a plant from the PMO.
What can you do about stupid people? Ask them to read the many thousands of words I have written criticizing Stephen Harper?
When I closed my law office and embarked on a second career as a writer, a wise old journalist told me that I’d have to give up my party membership. It would be a conflict of interest. He called himself a socialist and never voted anything but CCF or NDP.
Do I like Stephen Harper? I’ve never met him. And am not keen to. Except to give him a piece of my mind. Though I’m not confident it would do him any good. But in this world in which we live in, as Paul McCartney sang, we have to make choices.
I’m not in favour of compulsory voting. If John Robson simply can’t find anyone, or any party, he can stomach, let him not vote. But it will make a difference.
Consider the alternatives.
According to the polls, we are alarmingly close to electing an NDP government. The NDP is no longer officially socialist. It is officially nice.
Tom Mulcair wants us to believe he is a safe pair of hands. He was a Quebec Liberal. In 2007 he was prepared to work for the Conservatives, until he was shocked to discover that the Conservatives didn’t plan electoral suicide by offering the voters something stronger on climate change than what assured the defeat of the Liberals under Stéphane Dion in 2008. He’s not left wing. He’s a political gun for hire.
And he was hired by Jack Layton for the NDP and he must go with the NDP flow.
The constant harping on the power of party leaders leads people to think that parties don’t matter. That leaders can lead parties wherever the they like. But they can’t. They can only lead them where they want to go. And the NDP wants to go left.
Those who are running for the NDP and excite themselves on its behalf are fervently, if confusedly, left wing. That’s not what Canadians want, but if the John Robsons bow out and the closet kneedippers in the media get their way, that’s what Canadians will get.
Apart from his threat to impose proportional representation, and thus assure that the voters of Canada can never again decide who will govern them, Mulcair’s two signal proposals are to hand pre-schoolers over to CUPE and raise corporate income tax.
Raising corporate income taxes is stupidity calculated to appeal to the corporation-hating left-wing base. When Sweden was supposed to be a social democratic paradise its corporate taxes were relatively low.
And the NDP is institutionally linked to the unions, which these days means mainly public-sector unions committed to exploiting governments’ monopolies to extort the maximum for their members at the expense of the taxpayers and those who rely on their services.
And then there is Justin Trudeau. He has some shrewd operators around him, but the heavyweight Liberals who used to try to run the country well for their own sake have all departed to corporate boards or university presidencies.
He has moved left of the NDP by promising to tax the rich, which will hit him more directly than John Robson or me, but will hurt us all indirectly as the economy suffers. Beyond that he too would impose proportional representation, but hasn’t figured out which cockeyed scheme. And he’ll do whatever he figures may win votes for the Liberals. Just as Harper does whatever he figures may win votes for the Conservatives.
The Harper Conservatives have extended free trade and managed public finances well in difficult times. They have done many stupid things, from the plethora of silly tax credits to the overhyped criminal legislation, which will make little difference once it makes its way through the courts. They have been best for what they have not done: raise taxes, embark on big new spending, enlarge government.
The opposition parties are all threatening to bulk up government one way or another. And they are all coarse, proudly unprincipled and cynical, to use John Robson’s words on Harper. But Harper is the devil we know.
All modern politicians try to give the voters what they want. What the voters want depends on how they understand things, and that depends on the state of public debate, which is not led by politicians, but by the universities, the media and the chattering classes.
What Harper has done wrong he has done because it plays well in the present state of public debate. To steer him, or any modern politician, right we have to steer the public debate right. Something John Robson and I try to do.
But when it comes to voting, we have to take them as we find them and decide.
Original Article
Source: news.nationalpost.com/
Author: John Pepall
No comments:
Post a Comment