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If
Prime Minister Stephen Harper deserves credit for uniting
the Conservative Party of Canada, he must also take
the blame for dividing the conservative movement.
And
make no mistake, Harper's deliberate strategy of diluting
conservative principles and moving the party to the
left has split the movement into two factions.
The
members of one faction, who might be dubbed the "Tory
Partisans," support the Prime Minister as they
would support their favorite sports team. Ideology doesn't
necessarily matter to them. What matters above all to
Tory Partisans is winning.
The
other faction, which might be called the "Principled
Conservatives," are horrified with what Harper
is doing; they believe the Conservative party must actually
stand for certain values and ideas.
In
other words, the Principled Conservatives want the Conservative
party to be truly conservative-- that is, a party which
stands for free enterprise and less government.
As
for me, I am firmly in the Principled Conservative camp.
As
a conservative activist for more than 20 years, I have
always believed in the importance of linking principles
with politics. What's the point of electing a Conservative
government if it will act no differently from a Liberal
government?
Or
to put it another way, Canadians need a true choice
when it comes to selecting their governments -- they
need an alternative to the Liberals.
And
to be blunt, the Tories have simply not delivered.
They
have failed to cut back on the size of government, failed
to control spending and failed to introduce broad-based
tax cuts for both individuals and businesses.
Of
course, the Tory Partisans have counterarguments to
all this, which they trot out to defend Harper's "centrist"
approach. Yet they are not so much arguments as myths.
And
for the sake of Canada's conservative movement, we need
to examine and debunk these myths once and for all.
So here we go:
MYTH
1: CANADA IS A LEFT-WING COUNTRY
Both
Tory Partisans and left-wing pundits propagate this
myth, which claims that Canadians are too socialist
to elect a truly conservative party. Too socialist?
Tell that to Don Cherry. Tell that to Albertans. Tell
that to the Ontarians who live in what the media likes
to call "Harris Country." Or tell that to
the Quebecois who live in a province where two of the
three main provincial parties are right of centre. The
fact is there are enough votes for a truly conservative
party to win an election in this country. Somebody just
has to go after them.
MYTH
2: CONSERVATIVE IDEOLOGY IS TOO SCARY
One
of the oldest myths out there. Remember when pundits
and media "experts" dismissed the electoral
chances of conservatives like Ronald Reagan, Margaret
Thatcher and Mike Harris. They were all considered "too
right wing" or "too scary." Yet they
all achieved great success. Why? Because they stood
for something. They had values. And there's nothing
scary about promising to get government out of people's
lives.
MYTH
3: MOVING LEFT IS JUST A TACTIC TO ENSURE A MAJORITY
IN THE NEXT ELECTION
Three
problems with this myth: First by moving to the left,
the Tories are actually hurting their chances of winning
a majority. Second, even if they do win a majority they
won't have a mandate to implement a conservative agenda.
Third, once you start making government bigger it's
hard to make it smaller. As Reagan once put it, "No
government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size ?
a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal
life we'll ever see on this Earth."
MYTH
4: PRAGMATISM TRUMPS PRINCIPLE
Former
Conservative campaign manager Tom Flanagan is the chief
promoter of this myth. He recently wrote: "Too
many years out of power have given conservatives an
anti-government mentality. The whole point of merging
the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives
was to create a political party that could win control
of the federal government." Flanagan's wrong. The
whole point of conservatism is to make government smaller.
We are supposed to have an "anti-government mentality."
I
do not seek to cast aspersions on Tory Partisans. They
are right when they say that winning elections is important.
But Tory Partisans must remember one key fact: They
can't win elections without principled conservatives
at their side.
Gerry_nicholls@hotmail.com
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