I find this, reproduced here, from today’s
Globe and Mail, under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act, interesting,
plus ça change and all that:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070512.TORIES12/TPStory/TPNational/Politics/
GRASSROOTS
Disgruntled Tories consider rebuilding Reform Party
Harper's centrist decisions lambasted
GLORIA GALLOWAY
May 12, 2007
OTTAWA -- Somewhere in Kingston today, a small group of disaffected Conservatives will meet to discuss what would have been unfathomable in the heady days that followed the last federal election: refounding the Reform Party.
Organizers say they have room for just 30 people, but that this weekend's event is a mere prelude to a much larger meeting later this month.
"It's now or never," the online invitation says. "This new party will never be infiltrated by Red Tories, special interest groups or Quebec again."
In another part of the country, Link Byfield is writing columns for his Citizens Centre for Freedom and Democracy that criticize the policies of the federal Conservatives.
"Has Stephen Harper been 'Otta-washed?' " Mr. Byfield, a strong voice for small-c conservative Alberta, wrote on April 5. He went on to decry the March budget as a "massive spending splurge two or three times the rate of inflation [that] clomps big Liberal boots into all kinds of provincial responsibilities."
When the Conservatives were elected in January, 2006, the former Reformers were jubilant at the thought of finally having a voice in Ottawa. But after a series of centrist decisions by Mr. Harper, they are again lamenting their disenfranchisement.
Connie Wilkins of Kingston, who owns freedominion.ca, one of the most popular conservative websites in Canada, has been invited to the weekend meeting.
At this point, she says, reforming Reform is just a discussion.
"The idea is just to get together and to decide how it would be best for people who have conservative values - stronger conservative values - to make their voices be heard better and to be listened to," Ms. Wilkins said.
While it is impossible to gauge just how many on the right feel abandoned by the Harper government, she said Web traffic indicates their numbers are increasing.
Many were angry over what they see as the Prime Minister's capitulation on same-sex marriage. But it's not just socially conservative issues that upset the old Reformers, Ms. Wilkins said. "It's the fiscally liberal things that they have been doing lately that people have really started to get upset about."
The fury began with the luring of David Emerson from the Liberals to sit as a Conservative cabinet minister, and the naming of Conservative organizer Michael Fortier as unelected senator and Public Works Minister.
Then came a vote to declare Quebeckers a nation, the budget, a settlement with Maher Arar that many found egregious, a reversal on income trusts, and a complete about-face on the environment.
A Conservative policy convention scheduled for November - an opportunity for expression of the dissatisfaction - has been cancelled.
"It's not a huge issue in and of itself," Ms. Wilkins said. "But because it's piled on to so many other things, it's just one more indication to a lot of people that we've lost our grassroots feelings and that it doesn't really matter what the membership says."
Conservative Party president Don Plett says the convention was delayed because of the high potential for an election and because the party held a large election-preparation workshop in Toronto this spring. Because Elections Canada considers workshop fees and convention fees political donations, and because the maximum that anyone may donate to a party in one calendar year is $1,100, the party feared that two gatherings in 2007 could put members in contravention of election laws.
Gerry Nicholls, who was fired as vice-president of the right-wing National Citizens Coalition after he wrote columns that were unflattering of the government, said he has been deluged with e-mails and calls from people who are frustrated with the direction Mr. Harper is taking.
There have been major points of disagreement, Mr. Nicholls said, including about seeming small things such as the ban on traditional light bulbs.
"That light-bulb ban was just the final thing that broke open the dam for a lot of people," he said. "It's stupid, it's political correctness, it's nanny-stateism, it's everything that Conservatives of all stripes abhor about the Liberals or the NDP - telling us how to run our lives."
Not all of you will remember politics in the late ‘80s and the ’93 general election.
Many, possible most Canadians were sick and tired of a dysfunctional Ottawa. Brian Mulroney was a deeply unpopular politician – not, especially, for his decisions or his vision but, rather, for his personality – which did not ‘work’ on TV. He had endured two political misfortunes:
1. A global recession – he adjusted, a bit, and actually managed to balance the national government’s
programme budget* but our deficits remained in the
$40 Billion/year range because that represented the ever increasing interest on the out-of-control national debt; and
2. An
institutionally hostile media.
I personally recall the election night coverage in Sep 84 – we were just posted back to Ottawa, from overseas, and we watched the returns from what is now the
Marriott on Queen Street.
I think it was Pamela Wallin‡ (CTV) who said, roughly, “We [the media] will have to become the unofficial opposition – because John Turner’s Liberals are so weak, having been reduced to a 40 seat
rump.”
The media played
gotcha journalism – highlighting all of Mulroney’s personality failures and foibles. Canadians were invited to scorn his attractive wife and
Gucci loafers. His economic policies – which were an anaemic response to a crisis – were decried as cruel. He was, let there be no doubt, the author of his own misfortunes: we was a
smarmy, old fashioned,
Irish blarney politician type; his constitutional proposals (the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords) were ill conceived; and he and his staff never managed to ‘handle’ the media.
Added to a deeply unpopular prime minister was a circus like parliament:
• There was the infamous ‘Rat Pack’ – Sheila Copps, Don Boudria, John Nunziata and Brian Tobin – which managed, through its verbal and physical antics, to embarrass Canadians ad did more than Mulroney to sour Canadians to politics and politicians;
• There was the
kazoo incident when Liberal senators, led by Royce Frith and Gil Molgat, disrupted the business of parliament to try to derail Mulroney’s GST; and
• There was Mulroney’s incessant profanity, used even on the floor of the house.
Into this mix stepped
Parson Manning with his
Reform Party which promised, famously, to “do politics differently.”
In the ’93 general election the Conservatives were reduced to two seats and the new, separatist
Bloc Québecois became the official opposition. There was, however, no cry from the media that they should become the
unofficial opposition – presumably because safe, comfortable,
known, Liberal Jean Chrétien could be trusted.
The Reform Party brought many changes to Ottawa – including red neck buffoons like Myron Thompson and Darrel Stinson who were such perfect caricatures of all that was suspicious about Reform that they completely overshadowed solid MPs like Dian Ablonczy and Chuck Strahl. Despite Manning’s undoubted honesty and intelligence he could never overcome the Thompson/Stinson image and Reform could never become anything but a Western populist protest
movement.
In my opinion Manning, above all others, gave us 10 years of Chrétien’s bullying buffoonery.
Now sidelined, maybe
exiled and unrepentant Reformers like Connie Wilkins of
Free Dominion** fame want to revisit 1993 all over again and give us 10 years of Stephane Dion and Denis Coderre.
No thanks!,
from me.
Stephen Harper is not my favourite prime minister (that ‘honour’ goes to Liberal Louis St Laurent). I am non enamoured by all, even most of his policies but I regard him as infinitely preferable to
anyone on the Liberal benches today and,
sight unseen, anyone who will satisfy the political
lusts of
Free Dominion’s Wilkins.
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* Spending on
departmental programmes – defence, health, etc – but
not spending to service the debt
‡ Not a flaming Liberal partisan but, rather, like many (most?) of her colleagues (then and now) deeply suspicious of anything
conservative
** I am about 99% certain that there are some (at least one) Free Dominion senior members here on Army.ca. Understandably they might have different views, but my distaste for religiously based populism is boundless