I'm not going to bother linking all over the place on this, I'm just going to say I am extremely disappointed that the best the Conservatives can come up with is a bit of obfuscation and admitting that an unspecified offer was made.
Paying people to vote is wrong. Offering any kind of assistance in exchange for a vote is wrong. And if Mike Duffy is correct and Cadman voted for the Liberal budget because he was concerned he'd lose his HoC life insurance, that is wrong also. What the hell is with politicians that they can no longer tell right from wrong? I expect nothing from our "nuanced" "shades of gray" Liberals as they have shown time and again that ethics and policy are not what drive them, only power. But please, if I can't vote clean Conservative and I won't chance dirty Liberals, and I can't stomach socialists no matter how clean, and the Greens are just plain flaky, and Christian Heritage scares me, what do I do? Short of suicide, any suggestions?
Friday, February 29, 2008
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Cadman as wake up call
I got up this morning, had a nice nice cup of coffee and then went to work. I think I should have stayed in bed.
Who the hell is the brain surgeon that thought offering Chuck Cadman a million dollar life insurance policy in exchange for a vote against a Liberal budget was a good idea? Cadman's loss of the Conservative nomination was embarrassing enough but this is utterly disgusting. Cadman was a Reformer and maybe some people in the current Conservative Party of Canada had better remember why Reform was so successful in the West. We must not allow the corruption, dirty tricks, and unethical behaviour of the old PCs (or the Liberals, for that matter) to creep back in to this party. I, for one, want a clean government, one that wins or loses based on policy and on effective communication of that policy. Frankly, the communication strategy of the CPC leaves me frustrated but I will allow that maybe I'm just not the master strategist and the CPC knows something I don't. What I won't allow is this kind of crude bribery. If this is the new CPC I will look somewhere else to vote.
Clean this mess up, now.
A quick update:
I read Jeff Jedras' post and aside from the hypocritical criticism of vote buying I was especially shocked that the pride some Liberal supporters take in their party's ability to do this kind of disgusting crap with finesse. I responded to one comment and re-post it below.
"...as they might have not been so dumb as to crudely offer money. Geez just because the Tories have a proclivity for being ham-handed and dumb doesn't make it the industry standard.
Yeah, the Liberals are much more discreet in their offers of "comfy fur". All one need do is look at the Blonde Bimbo becoming the Minister of "complex files".
What was offered to Cadman is utterly disgusting but I think we Conservatives can handle it without too much advice from the party of Shawinigate and Adscam. In fact, I am kind of tickled that such skullduggery is so foreign to us new Conservatives that we don't have the skill to do it with Liberal finesse and nuance. I am also very proud that a Reformer stuck to his ethics in the face of his own death and told the bastards to get the hell out. That's the kind of party I supported in Reform, something I don't thing many Liberal MPs would have had the balls to do. If we need to clean up some of the old guard, we will. We've done it once already.
Who the hell is the brain surgeon that thought offering Chuck Cadman a million dollar life insurance policy in exchange for a vote against a Liberal budget was a good idea? Cadman's loss of the Conservative nomination was embarrassing enough but this is utterly disgusting. Cadman was a Reformer and maybe some people in the current Conservative Party of Canada had better remember why Reform was so successful in the West. We must not allow the corruption, dirty tricks, and unethical behaviour of the old PCs (or the Liberals, for that matter) to creep back in to this party. I, for one, want a clean government, one that wins or loses based on policy and on effective communication of that policy. Frankly, the communication strategy of the CPC leaves me frustrated but I will allow that maybe I'm just not the master strategist and the CPC knows something I don't. What I won't allow is this kind of crude bribery. If this is the new CPC I will look somewhere else to vote.
Clean this mess up, now.
A quick update:
I read Jeff Jedras' post and aside from the hypocritical criticism of vote buying I was especially shocked that the pride some Liberal supporters take in their party's ability to do this kind of disgusting crap with finesse. I responded to one comment and re-post it below.
Yeah, the Liberals are much more discreet in their offers of "comfy fur". All one need do is look at the Blonde Bimbo becoming the Minister of "complex files".
What was offered to Cadman is utterly disgusting but I think we Conservatives can handle it without too much advice from the party of Shawinigate and Adscam. In fact, I am kind of tickled that such skullduggery is so foreign to us new Conservatives that we don't have the skill to do it with Liberal finesse and nuance. I am also very proud that a Reformer stuck to his ethics in the face of his own death and told the bastards to get the hell out. That's the kind of party I supported in Reform, something I don't thing many Liberal MPs would have had the balls to do. If we need to clean up some of the old guard, we will. We've done it once already.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
A Liberal finally gets it!!!
It's a funny thing how history shapes politics. Canada is such a huge country that the experience of someone in BC or Alberta is totally disconnected from the experience of Ontario or Newfoundland. My dad tells me how his family, a prominent family in the coastal pulp and paper industry in the early to mid 20th century, were very strong Liberal supporters. And he tells me how Trudeau changed that. We have known the utter disdain of Eastern Canadian politicians, the bigoted slurs towards Western rednecks, and the corruption and greed in both the Liberal and Progressive Conservative. Where we voted PC in '88 we just couldn't stomach the corruption of Mulroney and his coterie, nor his pandering to Quebec interests despite a strong Western base of MPs. We tossed him. The Liberals have never seemed to understand that the death of the PCs wasn't brought on by Reform, and it wasn't necessarily policy based, it was mostly a reaction to the rot, the pork barrel, the patronage, and the disdain with which Eastern politicians treated the grass roots in the West. We rebuilt a party from the bottom up because of that. That's why I am still proud to support the new Conservative Party.
It looks like the Liberals may finally get it. At least one has:
"The problem is, we rushed into a leadership race after the election defeat without ever really acknowledging the deep rot that has set into the Liberal Party, let alone doing anything to fix it. We created this rot, this sickness through years of Chretien/Martin civil war, preceded by years of Turner/Chretien civil war, going back who knows how many generations. A rot worsened by years of majority government with noses bellied-up to the trough, by self-important organizers that put winning and position before policy and what's right, by a deep sense of entitlement, by a bloated party machine dependent on big corporate donations."
Sure, he's not espousing Conservative policy and that's fine with me, I think we need policy choice. We certainly need an alternative to the Conservatives that is principled and clean. As I have often mused, I could support a clean Liberal Party under someone like Ignatieff or Manley. I'm not an ideological conservative so much as I want to vote for someone who does what they say they will do and won't line their own pockets while doing it. Maybe the Liberal Party will reform now that guys like Jeff have their blinders off.
It looks like the Liberals may finally get it. At least one has:
"The problem is, we rushed into a leadership race after the election defeat without ever really acknowledging the deep rot that has set into the Liberal Party, let alone doing anything to fix it. We created this rot, this sickness through years of Chretien/Martin civil war, preceded by years of Turner/Chretien civil war, going back who knows how many generations. A rot worsened by years of majority government with noses bellied-up to the trough, by self-important organizers that put winning and position before policy and what's right, by a deep sense of entitlement, by a bloated party machine dependent on big corporate donations."
Sure, he's not espousing Conservative policy and that's fine with me, I think we need policy choice. We certainly need an alternative to the Conservatives that is principled and clean. As I have often mused, I could support a clean Liberal Party under someone like Ignatieff or Manley. I'm not an ideological conservative so much as I want to vote for someone who does what they say they will do and won't line their own pockets while doing it. Maybe the Liberal Party will reform now that guys like Jeff have their blinders off.
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