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February 8, 2006

Memento mori

Platitudes are principles without power
Profligacy is power without principles.

I've been wondering whether my displeasure at certain Harper Cabinet appointments is due to moral outrage or realpolitik disappointment. I've come to the conclusion that I've been particularly incensed about it all because of both reasons.

First off, I should make it clear that I'm not against party switching per se. I subscribe to the trustee model of representation, not the delegate model, and I believe that MPs should have a certain degree of freedom to exercise their own judgment when serving in Parliament, and that includes the possibility of switching parties. However, the key word to the trustee model is trust, and by moving to the Tories within a fortnight of re-election, after campaigning for two months against that very party, David Emerson hardly commands any trust from anyone in his riding, whether they be Liberal, NDP or Conservative voters. Essentially, everything that David Emerson said during those two months was a sham, a big load of bull so that he can get elected and then take a Cabinet post with whoever that's in government. I am certain that Kanman Wong is wondering why he'd bothered to raise the money and made the effort to run in Vancouver Kingsway as the Conservative candidate, considering that his main rival got a Cabinet post by running against him. This also goes against the spirit of the party executive forcing candidates onto riding associations, an explicit Conservative campaign promise.

While I think that the David Emerson case reflects worse on Emerson himself than the Conservative Party or Stephen Harper, the Michael Fortier appointment runs directly against the key principles of clarity in government that brought people to the Conservatives on January 23. The revolutionary but moderate notion of appointing only Senators that have been already elected by the people received widespread support. The unelected appointment of a party apparatchik to both a Senate seat and a Cabinet post threatens to obliterate that support.

What I'd like to point out here is that this is not an issue of party ideologues ranting and raving over a decision that was necessary from a realpolitik perspective. This is distress by the party faithful that is shared by the public at large. If flushing our principles was a step necessary to consolidate power, I think the response would've been a lot more muted. But this is a compromise of our greatest strengths, for no real gain. I do not see how a Senate appointment that does not place Mike Fortier in any actual Commons riding would help him build a base in any particular part of Montreal, and flipping the Liberal MP in the riding that elected Adrian Dix and David Chudnovsky is only going to mean at least one Cabinet minister is going to be defeated in the next federal election.

For a while, a lot of us in the Tory camp have watched with some degree of awe and delight as the party political machine, oiled by old-timers from the Mulroney era, reversed the fumbling and bumbling ways of the past and deliver the first Conservative government in over a decade. But they are not the only people in the party, and they are only human as well, and I fear that what has happened is a serious misstep that not only upsets the party faithful, but threatens all that progress as well.

This is not a call to arms. In the past ten years, Stephen Harper has done more for conservatives in Canada than Jean Charest, Joe Clark, Preston Manning, and Stockwell Day, combined. For conservatism to win an enduring victory in Canada, sacrifices must be made along the way, and we cannot pick all our fights at once. But this is a wake-up call, a reminder to us on the Right that we can win while holding on to our principles, that we can put those principles aside but never throw them away, and that we diminish our greatest strengths at our own peril. We do not seek to punish victory, but merely to march beside it and whisper in its ear, “Respice post te! Hominem te esse memento!”

Posted by Kelvin at February 8, 2006 8:04 PM

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