Friday, September 03, 2004
Inadvertently or not, the Vancouver Sun has continually run stories and columns that have painted Harper as a moderate. This is the latest from columnist Barbara Yaffe (July 22, 2004 unfortunately you need a subscription.) “An Alberta-based Christian group keen to become more involved in the political process could be the helpers-from-hell for the Conservative party. At a time when Conservatives are hoping to foster a more mainstream image, Concerned Christian Canada Inc. is preparing to step up efforts to make its influence on the national scene. … The prime goal of the group, with 400 members is ‘to insure (sic) that the new Conservative party does not become another mushy middle Liberal party.’ …. His group [( the leader Craig Chandler)] wants action that will strengthen the family, end taxpayer supported abortion and lower taxes for families. Predictably, the group opposes gay marriage and gay adoption as well as Bill C-250 aimed at protecting gays from hate crimes. This has to be the worst news the party has received since MP Randy White’s outrageous diatribe against the courts surfaced before the June 28 election.”
Yaffe may want the Conservatives to foster a more mainstream image and maybe even to become more mainstream, but as Bentham said about “natural rights”, hunger is not bread. Conveniently for Yaffe and the rest of the media though, so long as the Conservative Party supposedly strives to present a more moderate image, the more newsworthy the comments of Conservative’s such as Randy White’s become. Indeed, without the move to the center narrative in place comments such as White’s could be dismissed as more of the same rather than an as MP breaking ranks, in other words news. On the flip side of things, with such a narrative in place, old sins become less relevant. After all, as far as the media is concerned, it is no use Harping on past sins when the guilty parties have implicitly acknowledged their guilt by explicitly trying to Reform.
The Conservatives, of course, oppose Bill C-250 and least two Conservative MPs (Gallant and justice critic Vic Toews) have said that its passing would open the doors to the Bible being banned! Good humor. In all, only 2 Conservative MPs voted for Bill C-250, former torries Peter MacKay, Gerald Keddy. It goes without saying that the CCC and the Conservatives are of like mind when it comes to tax cuts. The same goes for gay marriage. Not one Conservative MP voted in favor of gay marriage. (4 PC MPs did but they did not join the new party.)
The abortion issue is a little trickier. While many Conservatives MPs favor banning abortion, Harper seems to have settled on saying he would not table legislation, but if a private member’s bill came before the house he would allow MPs to vote as they saw fit. (At one point earlier in the campaign, he had said that as a health issue the provinces should be able to decide. However, he said nothing about the subject again and his suggestion for having free votes on private members bills speaks against it.) Needless to say, this is not the type of bellicose rhetoric that warms of the hearts of CCC members. As for the adoption issue, I do not have enough information to make a comparison. May those in the know share their knowledge. All in all, Harper and the CCC are of like minds when it comes to the direction they think the Conservative Party should take.
How do I know? Harper has said so repeatedly, but no more eloquently or explicitly than in June 2003 edition of Report Magazine. (Yaffe would do well to notice that a Christian group reprinted the article.) http://www.ccicinc.org/politicalaffairs/060103.html On December 12 2000 Harper said the following. "Much about the Canadian Alliance is worthy of support, and a large number of Canadians do support it. But the CA will be under considerable pressure to rid itself of any tinge of a Western agenda or Alberta control. This we must fight. If the Alliance is ever to become a party that could be lead by a Paul Martin or a Joe Clark, it must do so without us. We don't need a second Liberal party." He began Rediscovering The Right Agenda by echoing those thoughts. “The Canadian Alliance wrapped up its leadership race a little over one year ago. At the time, the chattering classes told us the race was about the so-called "unity" issue - the question of whether we should have one "conservative" party or two. But I asked the 100,000-plus members of our party a different question: do we actually stand for something, or don't we? I posed this question because what Alliance members feared most was seeing our agenda slipping away. Simply put, our members worried less about having two so-called "conservative parties" than about having no conservative party at all. I believe the majority of members supported my leadership bid for approaching the debate in these terms.” Subsequently he goes on to describe why conservatives of all stripes should embrace social conservatism. As Harper describes it, economic Conservatism has hit something of a bottleneck. “serious conservative parties simply cannot shy away from values questions. On a wide range of public-policy questions, including foreign affairs and defence, criminal justice and corrections, family and child care, and healthcare and social services, social values are increasingly the really big issues. Take taxation, for example. There are real limits to tax-cutting if conservatives cannot dispute anything about how or why a government actually does what it does. If conservatives accept all legislated social liberalism with balanced budgets and corporate grants - as do some in the business community - then there really are no differences between a conservative and a Paul Martin. …. The truth of the matter is that the real agenda and the defining issues have shifted from economic issues to social values, so conservatives must do the same. … This is not as difficult as it sounds. It does not require a radical redefinition of conservatism, but rather a shifting of the balance between the economic and social conservative sides that have always been there. … we need to rediscover Burkean or social conservatism because a growing body of evidence points to the damage the welfare state is having on our most important institutions, particularly the family.”
Where Harper differs from the CCC and others of their ilk is he wants to take a more gradual approach. “we must realize that real gains are inevitably incremental. This, in my experience, is harder for social conservatives than for economic conservatives. The explicitly moral orientation of social conservatives makes it difficult for many to accept the incremental approach. Yet, in democratic politics, any other approach will certainly fail. We should never accept the standard of just being ‘better than the Liberals’ - people who advocate that standard seldom achieve it - but conservatives should be satisfied if the agenda is moving in the right direction, even if slowly.”
Yaffe may want the Conservatives to foster a more mainstream image and maybe even to become more mainstream, but as Bentham said about “natural rights”, hunger is not bread. Conveniently for Yaffe and the rest of the media though, so long as the Conservative Party supposedly strives to present a more moderate image, the more newsworthy the comments of Conservative’s such as Randy White’s become. Indeed, without the move to the center narrative in place comments such as White’s could be dismissed as more of the same rather than an as MP breaking ranks, in other words news. On the flip side of things, with such a narrative in place, old sins become less relevant. After all, as far as the media is concerned, it is no use Harping on past sins when the guilty parties have implicitly acknowledged their guilt by explicitly trying to Reform.
The Conservatives, of course, oppose Bill C-250 and least two Conservative MPs (Gallant and justice critic Vic Toews) have said that its passing would open the doors to the Bible being banned! Good humor. In all, only 2 Conservative MPs voted for Bill C-250, former torries Peter MacKay, Gerald Keddy. It goes without saying that the CCC and the Conservatives are of like mind when it comes to tax cuts. The same goes for gay marriage. Not one Conservative MP voted in favor of gay marriage. (4 PC MPs did but they did not join the new party.)
The abortion issue is a little trickier. While many Conservatives MPs favor banning abortion, Harper seems to have settled on saying he would not table legislation, but if a private member’s bill came before the house he would allow MPs to vote as they saw fit. (At one point earlier in the campaign, he had said that as a health issue the provinces should be able to decide. However, he said nothing about the subject again and his suggestion for having free votes on private members bills speaks against it.) Needless to say, this is not the type of bellicose rhetoric that warms of the hearts of CCC members. As for the adoption issue, I do not have enough information to make a comparison. May those in the know share their knowledge. All in all, Harper and the CCC are of like minds when it comes to the direction they think the Conservative Party should take.
How do I know? Harper has said so repeatedly, but no more eloquently or explicitly than in June 2003 edition of Report Magazine. (Yaffe would do well to notice that a Christian group reprinted the article.) http://www.ccicinc.org/politicalaffairs/060103.html On December 12 2000 Harper said the following. "Much about the Canadian Alliance is worthy of support, and a large number of Canadians do support it. But the CA will be under considerable pressure to rid itself of any tinge of a Western agenda or Alberta control. This we must fight. If the Alliance is ever to become a party that could be lead by a Paul Martin or a Joe Clark, it must do so without us. We don't need a second Liberal party." He began Rediscovering The Right Agenda by echoing those thoughts. “The Canadian Alliance wrapped up its leadership race a little over one year ago. At the time, the chattering classes told us the race was about the so-called "unity" issue - the question of whether we should have one "conservative" party or two. But I asked the 100,000-plus members of our party a different question: do we actually stand for something, or don't we? I posed this question because what Alliance members feared most was seeing our agenda slipping away. Simply put, our members worried less about having two so-called "conservative parties" than about having no conservative party at all. I believe the majority of members supported my leadership bid for approaching the debate in these terms.” Subsequently he goes on to describe why conservatives of all stripes should embrace social conservatism. As Harper describes it, economic Conservatism has hit something of a bottleneck. “serious conservative parties simply cannot shy away from values questions. On a wide range of public-policy questions, including foreign affairs and defence, criminal justice and corrections, family and child care, and healthcare and social services, social values are increasingly the really big issues. Take taxation, for example. There are real limits to tax-cutting if conservatives cannot dispute anything about how or why a government actually does what it does. If conservatives accept all legislated social liberalism with balanced budgets and corporate grants - as do some in the business community - then there really are no differences between a conservative and a Paul Martin. …. The truth of the matter is that the real agenda and the defining issues have shifted from economic issues to social values, so conservatives must do the same. … This is not as difficult as it sounds. It does not require a radical redefinition of conservatism, but rather a shifting of the balance between the economic and social conservative sides that have always been there. … we need to rediscover Burkean or social conservatism because a growing body of evidence points to the damage the welfare state is having on our most important institutions, particularly the family.”
Where Harper differs from the CCC and others of their ilk is he wants to take a more gradual approach. “we must realize that real gains are inevitably incremental. This, in my experience, is harder for social conservatives than for economic conservatives. The explicitly moral orientation of social conservatives makes it difficult for many to accept the incremental approach. Yet, in democratic politics, any other approach will certainly fail. We should never accept the standard of just being ‘better than the Liberals’ - people who advocate that standard seldom achieve it - but conservatives should be satisfied if the agenda is moving in the right direction, even if slowly.”
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