Rétrospective on the CPC, redux

[jsburbidge]

The record of the CPC over the past several years frequently had me scratching my head in puzzlement: so much of what they did seemed ham-fisted, guaranteed to alienate the voters in the middle whom they would need for re-election; and so it proved in the end, with an election showing the clearest marks of strategic voting I have ever seen

Comments

[chickenfeet2003]

The Harper base has always been there, in all the industrialised countries. It's the base that Fascism appeals to. Post 1945, for decades, it was political suicide to appeal directly to to that base (see Powell, E) so big C Conservative parties perpetuated a sort of Whiggish politics with a strong element of noblesse oblige. Once it became possible to be (euphemistically) "crudely populist" it, inevitably I think, began to be used. Naturally this happened first in the USA where there was no real folk memory of Fascism but it spread. I think what's interesting is that, unlike the 1930s, this movement has been entirely captured by corporate capitalism so the rhetoric is populist, libertarian and small government but the reality is a massive transfer of wealth and power to corporate interests. The real winners are not small farmers but Monsanto and, especially Serco, G4, Blackwater and the like who make fortunes out of "services" that are still paid for by the taxpayer but are delivered by for profits

[dewline]

I would say, based on observations by Australian friends and acquaintances here, on Facebook, and elsewhere, that Abbott took it much further in several respects Down Under than Harper got away with up here. In particular, I think of the horror stories making their way out of Manus.

[chickenfeet2003]

I don't disagree. I'm a fairly close observer of Australian politics and comparisons are tricky, not least because Australian Labour is such a peculiar beast. Abbott could play the race card much more easily than Harper because, frankly, Australian society is much more racist. In other ways there are lots of similarities; from climate change denialism to a weird insistence on the trappings of Monarchism. The main difference, I suppose, is that in Australia it's all too easy for a party to ditch a leader mid term.

[dewline]

Michael Chong tried to bring Canada into line with Australia with his legislative proposals re: getting a strongly unwanted party leader out of their corner office. I wonder if it was watered down too far.

[chickenfeet2003]

I'm actually not at all sure I would go the Australian route. It puts far too much power in the hands of the caucus to the exclusion of the rest of the party.

[jsburbidge]

That base has probably literally always been there, at least since the transition from relatively stable material conditions to relatively accelerated change somewhere between the beginning of the 16th and the end of the 17th Centuries. But it wasn't a base for appeal until the late 19th Century (at least in the English area, since the Third Reform Act; for the Americans you might push it back to Jackson) because political power was narrowly rather than broadly based in the population

[chickenfeet2003]

My exposure to Clement was when he was Minister of Health in Ontario. Now Ontario Ministers of Health rarely have much of a grip on their portfolio, and to be fair it's a complex one, but Clement showed every sign of having no interest in at all. He also had the general disdain for anyone who was not of his tribe that characterised the Harris government. Remember the meeting where Harris turned his back on Richard Schabas during a meeting about Walkerton? Clement cut the CEO of Cancer Care Ontario dead when they met accidentally at Windsor airport. Usually politicians tend towards the smarmy glad handing end of the spectrum. (You should have seen Bernard Trottier at a work reunion last year. Ugh! He didn't show up this year) but Clement, like Harris and Harper, seemed to want to show he was above everyone else. Most unpleasant. It rather makes one wonder if the Harperites could have invented uniforms for themselves what might have happened.

[resonant]

Clement also didn't respond to letters from voters when he was health minister. I got semi-personalized responses from everyone else I wrote to, but he didn't even get an intern to do that.