Hard times for the hard right

Can Harris Tories morph into Bill Davis-style centroids?

The Straight Goods Cyber Forum
with Larry Solway

Commentary:

  Shake hands and come out fighting. Echoes of sportsmanship rang out at the Tory convention when Ernie Eves was crowned. Flaherty "took it like a man." Such baloney passing for politics. Sportsmanship. The Playing Fields of Eton. Blah. Blah. Blah.
  With a kind of good-old-boy bonhomie, Flaherty saluted the premier-elect after the results came in. With a kind of good-old-boy bonhomie, Flaherty buried the hatchet. His homage to the new Tory leader may not be enough to get him out of the wilderness. But to compare a political battle to a hockey game is not only ridiculous, it is fatuous and juvenile." Quote Flaherty: "As an old hockey player, I learned a long time ago that you play the game with all you've got, but when the final buzzer sounds, you shake hands with your opponents and celebrate a hard-played game."

Politics is about people and governing, and caring. You don't pack it away in a duffel bag and go home for a good night's sleep

  Rubbish! Hockey is a finite event. It is not a battle laced with rancor and ideological chasms. Politics is about people and governing, and caring. You don't pack it away in a duffel bag and go home for a good night's sleep.
  Jim Flaherty stood for the Hard Right. If the Tories want to continue to govern they will have to turn their backs on that narrow, selfish, doctrinaire approach. The Tories need a gentle Elizabeth Witmer, not a body-checking Flaherty.
  Well they didn't get Witmer, who, along with Tony Clement, fled to Eaves to make sure they would at least make Cabinet. Hoping not to be saddled with the stigma of the get-em-off-the-streets-and-into-jail-where-they-belong campaigning of their righter than right wing wannabe premier (interesting memory: Tony Clement, who seems now to paint himself as a negotiator, was the Young Conservative who, in company with Tom Long, burned Bill Davis in effigy for proposing extension of separate school status to Grade 13.)
  But that's all bombast under the bridge. For better or worse, Ernie Eves will take his non-style into Queen's Park. But the sportsmanship, the shake hands after a tough fight crap, it was too much.
  If the Tories have any hope to govern, they will have to do as Bill Davis did (wasn't anyone listening?) and occupy the political center. If they don't, it could be the Liberals. Who can see the difference between 'Blue Lite' McGuinty and 'landslide' Ernie Eves? (Remember, he was called "landslide" because he beat Richard Thomas in the Parry Sound Muskoka Riding by 6 votes.
  When it comes to hockey, Howard Hampton is probably the best. But he may be, sadly, a spectator when election time rolls around.

TALK IS CHEAP - PATRIOTISM IS SHALLOW - an afterthought.
  I was gratified to read that Merrill Lynch will be returning to the New York Financial Centre. President Bush sent them personal congratulations and praise for their patriotism. Many of their people will stay uptown, but some will go back to Ground Zero. As for all the other, patriots through and through, the ones you saw standing with bowed heads and hands over their hearts, proclaiming their everlasting remembrance of that terrible day, they are moving out. Like the people who cry loudly at funerals, there is something hollow in proclaimed and exhibited patriotism. When it comes to putting action where the emotion is, they fall short. Thousands of financial offices will not return to Lower Manhattan. In spite of New York begging them to stay; in spite of the plea that they can show their concern in tangible ways - they chose to vote with their feet. Off to Connecticut, to New Jersey, to Westchester - but not to, ugghh, Ground Zero. Patriotism? Uh-huh.

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