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February 12, 2006

Tell A Fellow Tory You Love Her (or Him)

The conservative response to the Harper cabinet has seemed to coalesce into two camps: the Kool-Aid drinkers, exemplified by this SDA post, and the raging righteous rightists, who Damian B has been cataloging quite thoroughly. Both sides seem completely convinced that they're right and the others are a bunch of sellouts.

It's starting to piss me off.

First off, koolaidists are convinced that the Emerson and Fortier appointments were works of genius. No they weren't. Sure, the National Post poll says that people, in the end, aren't hung up on them, but they're not responding with glee. And to go this far for urban representation (a bad idea to start off), there better be results. Good results. And I just don't see those coming directly from the appointments, in the short or long term.

And stop justifying this by saying that the Liberals have done it, or that everyone else in Canada has done it. This is Prime Minister Stephen Harper, not Prime Minister John A. Macdonald. I don't care how many Senators the last twenty-one Prime Ministers have appointed into Cabinet: none of them were saying that they would only appoint elected Senators. And oh, I'm well aware that there's always a Cabinet post for the Government Leader in the Senate, but that person's not Michael Fortier.

Koolaidists have also become quite fond of putting comments on Andrew Coyne's blog, urging him to, effectively, shut up and stop selling out. What they fail to realize is that AC is his own man, not a Tory mouthpiece, and he's mainly pointing out that the delusion that this will be a one-day affair is, well, a delusion.

But at least koolaidists seem to be not so freakin' obnoxious and certainly a lot less destructive. Ragenistas, on the other hand, seem to revel in the chaos that they've created.

For example, would these people stop venerating Garth Turner? Here is what he said after his second caucus meeting, after blogging about his disapproval of the Emerson appointment (emphasis is mine):

Did this mean I thought Emerson should be thrown overboard? Was I demanding the new minister resign? What was I planning to do about it? Would I stand up in caucus and insist Stephen Harper reverse himself? How could I campaign for months to get elected as a Tory in a tough race, and then accept this?

Fair questions and, I thought, respectfully asked. As I blogged here a few hours ago, constituents had the same ones.

That very night, he goes on to write:

Speaking of offices, after today I’m expecting the Whip will be assigning me a renovated washroom somewhere in a forgotten corner of a vermin-infested dank basement in Ottawa. That should go well with my seat in the House of Commons that will be visible only during lunar eclipses.

In other words, he got asked, in an obviously emotional charged atmosphere, a lot of questions about words that obviously were aimed directly at his own party, a situation that even he found reasonable. Then he goes home and concocts this melodrama about how he was going to get cruxified next to a urinal in West Block. Seriously, doesn't anyone see the inherent contradiction in this?

And this is exactly a “have you stopped beating your wife” type of statement: if he does get punished he'll be able to further martyrize himself, and if he doesn't he'll just say that it's because he pre-emptively spoke out against it.

Then there's the general chorus that “Harper sold out,” “we didn't vote for this,” and “what have we wrought” type of statements. I should remind you folks of what Stephen Harper first said when he became party leader:

Harper, a 42-year-old economist and former Reform member of Parliament, must now run for a seat in Parliament. He wouldn't say when that might be. He says his first priority will be to establish a transition team in the next few days, based on the view that the Canadian Alliance is a "permanent political institution, here to stay."

Yah, I meant that party. And then the rest is history, history approved by a 96% vote. I'm not dismissing moral outrage, and of course this whole thing is a matter of principle, not just a matter of with what logo those principles should be advertised. I'm just saying that any realistic assessment of the past few years is that we've had to put aside some of our less achievable objectives for the more achievable ones, and it's hypocritical to talk like a bastion of moral justice (like, erm, Garth, who was in the muck a lot longer than the rest of us).

Plus evidently we've deluded the other side to think that they're actually going to return in a blaze of glory (via Neale and Bourque). Now, in the real world, this would be laughable and probably make them lose their guard, but Canada isn't part of the real world, which kinda worries me. Even after that NP poll.

Now that I got all the anger out of my system, I ask me fellow Tories: can't we all just take advantage of the time of the year and kiss and make up?

PS: me? No I didn't drink the Kool-Aid. I did inhale when I had some in a water pipe though. I hightly recommend the experience.

Posted by Kelvin at February 12, 2006 7:40 PM

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