Liberal Lite or the Long View?
March 20, 2007 · By Shane Edwards
36 hours after the 2007 budget is tabled, and the buzz in the blue blogosphere seems decidedly negative. Our own Joel has commented about his disappointment in the budget, and his has been one of the more positive perspectives. Many others have absolutely blasted the government for being more liberal than the Liberals.
It is good though that there are a few voices of reason in the Blogging Tories about the realities behind the budget. Jarret Plonka does a bang-up job of spelling it out in my mind.
Politically - this is politics, remember - Harper was in a bad spot. He’s seen as lagging on the environment, so he undertakes measures never undertaken by the Grits, though everyone agreed with them. All of a sudden, he gets tagged on a whole slough of issues by people who really should be able to do better than merely quote Liberal press releases.
Like it or lump it, Harper delivered a political budget in an attempt to neutralize the left (on environment, tax exemptions), the middle class (RESPs, for example), decentralist bleus (equalization), conservatives (anemic tax cuts)… everyone.
I think we all need to take a pill and realize that, like Jarret says, this is politics. Like it or not, Canada IS NOT READY for a Conservative Majority yet. We are a minority government, folks, and that means compromise. Big time. It means that the only Tory colours that can be flown without shame are ethics and values.  Real change cannot come in a minority, and it will not come without a majority mandate given by Canadians on an express platform of real change.
So I say, cool the “liberal lite” rhetoric. Of course it is a budget of compromise. It never could be anything else. There would have been only one outcome of a real conservative budget - an election in May. It would have been blown out of the water, the government would have lost the confidence of the house, and we would be headed to the polls.
Mr. Harper kept his word again. He said he didn’t want an election. He proved he would not do the politically expedient thing and engineer his own government’s demise. He has proven once again to the Media and to Canadians that he says what he means and means what he says. That in the end will buy him more currency than anything he could have tabled in this budget. Once more, Harper has shown he is the better Prime Minister in the House. And when the opposition really does bring down the house, out of stupidity, the he will step forward and present to Canadians his offer - his ethics, his morals, his rule, shown to be demonstrably superior, and his ideas on a new, better Canada.
And then he will get his mandate, and we will get true, real change.
I think it will be very interesting to see the outcome of the Quebec election to see if Harper’s gamble pays off or not. If the PQ win the election, all of that extra cash for Quebec to fix the fiscal inbalance will have been for not, especially because Harper handed it over with no strings attached. Then what will Conservative federalists have to brag about in Quebec? Nothing.
We Conservatives don’t throw away our principles as easy as the Libs.
“We Conservatives don’t throw away our principles as easy as the Libs.”–Cash
Yeah and you have the electoral record to prove it as well. So I suppose congratulations are in order. Or should that more rightly be condolences.
Parties in a democracy exist for one of two reasons.
A. Electoral Success.
B. Ideological Purity.
These are almost by definition mutually incompatible goals. You can be successful or you can be pure. But you can’t be both.
Ideological Parties tend to die rather quickly or at best linger on in a state of half-life like the Old ‘Liberals’ in the UK before they finally dissolved. Or like the NDP in Canada if you want a much more germane example. Why do you think that Tony Blair invented ‘New labour’? He understood REALITY.
Sometimes I wonder about ‘conservative’ true-believers. Is the sun the same colour in your world ? And in that world what percentage of the vote do you usually obtain from your enchanted electorate? In THIS world it’s somewhere around 35% unless you ‘bend’ quite a bit to the prevailing winds. Bend or break— it’s entirely your choice.
Suceesful trees bend—– so do Political Parties.
One of the prime beliefs of Conservative supporters is that voters of other parties will consider the Conservatives to be more moderate as a result of this budget. Thus they are more likely to vote for the CPC in the future. Once the CPC has a majority they can then implement more conservative policies.
Does anyone seriously believe that Liberal, NDP and Bloc voters don’t realize that Harper is only tabling a ‘liberal’ budget because he has a minority and is try to get a majority? And if these voters of other parties like the budget why would they want a conservative majority? They get what they want with conservative minority after all.
A principled stand would have been far more effective. Harper should have called the Bloc’s and Liberals bluff, instead he folded.
If you wish to govern you abandon principle.
First, thanks for the link, Shane.
I agree that sweeping changes are hardly possible in a minority position. That said, budgets are an opportunity to at least begin to govern conservatively, even while in a minority situation. The very least the government could have done with this budget is leave spending where it was and shuffle priorities within those guideposts, rather than increasing it by 7%.
Andrew Coyne said it best in the National Post: We have all the Liberal fat and 7% more.
We can all excuse the spending increase for any of the reasons you’ve mentioned. But there is no way to square it with sound conservative fiscal policy. Nobody can look at the budget and honestly declare it to be conservative. Heck, Mr. Harper himself today said that it would have made past NDP leaders proud.
On another note, many BT writers seem to be saying that they’re okay with the party operating like liberals as long as we’re in a minority. Frankly, I think that line of thinking is a pile of crap. The party needs to begin to shift the thinking of the nation on all matters of public policy, both socially and fiscally, not put budgets out there that could well be written by the Liberals or NDP. A budget that halted spending in its tracks would have been a start.
Another point to consider is how the electorate would perceive a marked shift in fiscal and social policy if they elected a CPC majority. My sense is the country would feel they had been deceived if the party flip-flopped into a conservative policy position after playing 2-3 years as blue liberals in a minority. It speaks to the issue of trust.
I, for one, do not want to see the CPC elected to a majority on the expectation that it will govern like an ethical liberal government.
Let the country elect us to a majority as conservatives or not at all.
I was pretty appalled by all the reaction the media focused on - the “what’s in it for me?” seems to be the only question asked of a budget.
It so completely reinforced the idea that we all, as Canadians, simply expect the government to give us stuff. That if they don’t, then it’s a “bad budget”. Give me give me give me. What? You didn’t give me anything new? You’ve therefore done NOTHING for me!
Gee, I wonder where my kids get this attitude from?