Monday, July 31, 2017

Why the Conservatives in Ontario cannot win inside and outside their party

And here in Ontario instead of simply having a smaller, less intrusive and interventionist, government that allows people to live and let live while eliminating job killing regulations, one that makes life more affordable for a working middle class drowning in the deficit and debt while the rising cost of living, housing, food, taxes, on top of those skyrocketing hydro rates taking us further from an excellent quality of life citizens expect, we have a government that refuses to just focus on just managing governmental taxes, services, and spending properly, one that carefully supports reliable healthcare and quality education that links us to better job creation and stronger economic development, that makes hydro more affordable, jobs more plentiful, and with more opportunity for everyone here everyday in everyway on the matters that impact them directly by the decisions made by a government which simply put needs to just get out of the way of the business of its citizens. This is a dangerous set of policy idea framework politically that none of the Big Three parties at Queen's Park are neither actively supporting of nor committing towards making happen, as we move further into 21st Century and closer to a Vision 2020 for Ontario that blindly will be missed by the supposed leadership we have, mainly because this would reduce the size of the bureaucratic swamp we have created full of monsters we must starve of the never ending tax dollar it feeds upon to live and ever making governmental waste it creates as its only byproduct in life. Being a grassroots political analyst, consultant, and strategist, I know just what seems to be rankling for the grassroots rank and file membership of all the Big Three provincial political parties about the leadership that is lacking in their ideological political vehicle of choice at Queen's Park in Toronto, at the current right now as we speak all three inherently have an elitist disconnect with between each other so wide a chasm to cross allowing for disillusioned and disgruntled Kathleen Wynne led Ontario Liberal Party, Patrick Brown led Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, and Andrea Horwath led Ontario New Democratic Party members to look abroad, either going fringe, independent, or even just tiring off the same old status quo political situation and staying home to rest from the rust.

Brown and the Ontario Progressive Conservatives have an extra problem entirely different than both the Wynne and the Ontario Liberals or Andrea and the Ontario New Democrats, unlike both ladies and their members, Brown and the Ontario Tories more times than not do not see eye to eye on not just intellectual policy but also emotional personality, which at least the other two party leaders seem to jive together in somewhat of a coherent political beat from governance to campaign for a memorable partisan rhythm, Brown and provincial conservatives at that obligatory point of a critical level do not jive in Ontario.

Pat, and his Ontario PC leadership style and team, by apparently alleged actions such as those seen at the primary nomination level in electoral district ridings where undemocratic selection by the leader not democratic election of candidates of record by the membership has led to seeing fringe splinter parties from the grassroots popping up alround Patrick and the Ontario Tories, inspired by the likes of Preston Manning and the Reform Party of Canada exactly 30 years ago this October, all united on a fiscally conservative platform they see lacking in a Brown led Tory party that supports a carbon tax, but divided in areas in which their special interest group supported leadership have biased them closer to, where two special interest groups being the civil libertarian Ontario Landowners Association and socially conservative Campaign Life Coalition who previously endorsed Brown and the Ontario PCs now back the Ontario Trillium and Ontario Alliance parties along with other various grassroots factions within the small c conservative movement without a big C Conservative Party at the provincial level such as the constitutional nationalist, environmental conservationist, democratic reformer, or regional sovereignist out in the wilderness now wondering far and wide for their own. Quite obvious now, Brown never believed in the diverse, tolerant, and inclusive big tent party Patrick originally ran his leadership race and campaign on, along with many other promises Brown made to all those special interest groups for their endorsement, who all of which have now turned against him and created fringe splinter parties to siphon off as many votes as they can with their single issue causes, instead of apologizing for causing splits in the traditional conservative fabric, Patrick has decided to sew a whole different colour of patchwork to create a modern conservative flag none of these groups even dare ever recognize. Such a gamble for a neophyte leader who spent his whole political career on Parliament Hill in Ottawa amongst the other backbenchers, from a principled conservative who supported and voted for the most socially conservative legislation one could imagine as part of Team Stephen Harper to becoming such a pragmatic conservative who talked and walked a version of conservatism provincially even the most fiscally conservative supporter does not identify as anything close to such the conservative entity they voted for only two years ago federally, that is the kind of reverse dogwhistled cognitive dissonance Brown, an Opposition Leader pollsters say is still largely unknown substance can ill afford with a general election less than a year to go until his next race.

Wednesday, July 05, 2017

Conservative Futures means future victory for the Trudeau Liberals

And so it all starts, Members of Parliament, staffers, lobbyists from the Tory right of centre side are burning up the phone lines and the ears of those on the other side about how the Donald of Canada has now become Mad Max, that would be Maxime Bernier they are speaking of and his choice for Hillary Clinton is not Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau believe it or not but rather Tory Opposition Leader Andrew Scheer. The main point of contention I have been told is that Team Bernier believes the race was fixed as the party says there were 141,362 valid ballots were cast in the race, only 133,896 voters were accounted for on their electronic list, thus no record of who cast 7,466 votes as well as 10,429 spoiled ballots for reasons unknown, where Bernier had been leading Team Scheer with a healthy lead right into the and final round where Scheer won 50.95% to Bernier’s 49.05% thus as it was a weighted vote scheme and not a one member one vote system with no appeal to final results as few as 66 votes could have kept them separated never the polar twain shall meet. The original thought was that Maxime would just start , kind of like what Paul Martin did after his leadership race loss from 1990 to 2003 until he finally got his crack at being the Leader of the Liberal Party and Prime Minister of Canada which ended in 2006, but with Emrys Graefe, Alex Nuttall, and Brian Storseth starting up the Conservative Futures website and its nascent Freedom Club, obviously the war is on and it will not even start before the upcoming election.

With a red painted Ottawa and Toronto respectively federal and provincial, there is lots of reason to be feeling pretty blue if you are Tory today for at the end of the day, Conservative Futures means future victory for the Trudeau Liberals with even a victory by Patrick Brown over Kathleen Wynne being a Progressive Liberal one as Brown is becoming more and more what he said he was less and less of everyday in everyway he moves forward by going backwards.

Going by what I know have been the way grassroots populist movements usually start, this is exactly how they do beginning with one side being wronged for a reason that is totally apart from the real and true reason why the split is made, I absolutely believe this has less to do with supply management and milk politics specifically and more to do with the direction and future of the Conservative Party of Canada being not so much different from the Liberal Party of Canada in the mushy pragmatic middle which accepts same old status quo pro welfare state politics whereas this movement wants a brand new pro free market politics to challenge the system and change the way Ottawa does politics today. A fight has started amongst small c conservatives who had been Reformers that at the end of the day support populism, the people's interest agenda, and the grassroot citizens and big C Conservatives who had been and still are Tories who at the end of the days support socialism, the special interest agenda, and the elite lobbyists, only Stephen Harper can bring these warring camps together under a united big dark blue tent which he has since folded up and gone home with. Does this small dumpster fire potentially go up into a full blown party, this will depend on what the Tory backroom cowboys now running the Conservatives in Ottawa decide to do with Mad Max and his fellow road warriors on the Fury Road to Wasteland, my advice for Tories in Ottawa whatever it maybe worth is stop looking at Reformers worse than your supposed enemies across the floor and start treating Reformers with respect as the formidable adversaries who created the legacy party you are currently are enjoying which is not the same one that died only a decade and a half ago which John A. started.