“We made a decision — and I take responsibility, I am the leader of the party — we decided to play safe, not to lose, and we ended up doing so. It was a campaign focused on saying what’s wrong with the other path without saying clearly what our alternative was going to be.”
So Mr Hudak, why did it take you a year to apologize for what happened? Quite a few of us spent the whole of 2011 practically screaming at you to say something substantive. We harangued you to speak and act like a conservative. Again and again you were told that in order to win power as a right of center politician you needed to be about something, not merely against someone. The Liberal Party can coast on its image of ersatz compassion and ethnic vote bribery. The Tories need to project a vision of the future of Ontario. You didn't do that. Not even close.
But you ignored us. The mouth breathing, knuckling dragging and unreconstructed Harrisites that you pandered to in the leadership campaign and then betrayed once elected. Ah, you were a professional politician and we were just crazy fanatics, unaware that "Ontario had changed" and we needed to change with it. You and your clever friends in the party HQ looked down on us ordinary right-wing folks, so crude and unsophisticated. We told you that defeat would be the reward for cowardice.
On behalf of many millions of my fellow Ontarians: We Told You So!
Now the Ken Doll of Ontario politics wants a second chance. He's promising that this time he'll be about something. He won't just wait for the Liberals to implode under the weight of their own lies and incompetence. No, he'll actually campaign! Perhaps, if he is feeling really frisky, as an actual conservative. Not just the pretend-Tory who mutters silly nonsense about chain gangs cleaning streets. He even vows to take on the public sector unions.
John Tory said the same thing after 2007. He failed to deliver. I don't have much hope for Timmy Hudak.
Dalton McGuinty was the lamest of lame duck premiers. This should have been an easy campaign. Remind the voters of what a lying spendthrift buffoon this guy has been, then present Ontarians with a moderate conservative vision for the future. Nothing too radical. Just a gradual reduction in spending to keep it in line with inflation, some red tap cutting and killing the Green energy boondoggles. You didn't even have to go that far to the Right. Just a gentle lean.
But you didn't.
The problem here is not so much Timmy Hudak himself, it's the phenomenon of the career politician. The bright young thing who goes into politics at twenty-two and expects to start collecting a pension before they hit fifty. They know nothing beyond the game. They are terrified of the real world and its deadlines and objective metrics. Having talked their way into a decent income and minor fame, they loath the idea of going into the obscurity and irrelevance of private life. Delivering a power point presentation doesn't have the same adrenaline rush as fighting through a media scrum.
In order to win you need to take risks. That includes the real possibility of losing. Can Timmy bear to lose? That's the question he needs to ask himself. If he can't bear losing, he won't have a chance of winning. Should he lose again more than his political career will be toast.
“The Liberal Party can coast on its image of ersatz compassion and ethnic vote bribery. The Tories need to project a vision of the future of Ontario. You didn't do that. Not even close.”
That’s right because those are cultural, social areas where a tribe can indeed be led by a liberal chief. But in areas of economics, if a conservative leader believes in free market capitalism, then by definition the people can’t be led. Instead they need to have faith that free market capitalism is the best path to prosperity and let the waters flow down the path of least resistance. All a conservative leader can do is spell out the state of the nation and then make it clear that the paths will be cleared for the waters to run. There is no end game, only constant adaptation.
So forget pandering to the liberal cultural tribes and the eco-fanatics, they want to be led by a Pied Piper and conservatives don’t do that, instead focus on the path to prosperity.
“Delivering a power point presentation doesn't have the same adrenaline rush as fighting through a media scrum.”
But that is what is needed on the economic front. It’s boring but even Romney won that part of the battle. Where Romney lost to liberals was on the cultural issues, the pill, abortion, gays, Hispanics...those are areas PMSH has managed to take off the table; especially social issues and then he put Jason Kenny on the road to deal with the ethnic issues. The GOP took no risks on the cultural or ethnic file and lost. Timmy took no risk on the economic file and lost.
With Timmy’s new agenda for economic growth (the number one problem in the Western World) he has finally hit the target. He now seems to have a plan for flexible labour, energy, transportation etc. This agenda is called The Paths to Prosperity with details on the PC web site. Had that been in place he might have won the election.
The question is: can we delete the bad memory: “of having been knuckling dragging and unreconstructed Harrisites that (Timmy) pandered to in the leadership campaign and then betrayed once elected.” ?
Posted by: nomdeblog | Friday, November 30, 2012 at 07:41 AM
Being from Manitoba, I know what it's like to be stuck with a moribund Conservative party that practically concedes the election to the government before the writ is even dropped. We've been through this scenario first with Stu Murray, then with Hugh McFayden, and now it looks like we're condemned to repeat history with the present dud of a Tory leader Brian Pallister.
Posted by: Dennis | Friday, November 30, 2012 at 09:30 AM
"He now seems to have a plan for flexible labour, energy, transportation etc. This agenda is called The Paths to Prosperity with details on the PC web site."
Which he will promptly bury and kill upon dropping the writ. Forget even his lack of spine: this guy couldn't sell crack to addicts. Hudak is a weird alien-looking thing with eyes that are too close together. Nobody likes him. Like Romney but without the hair.
I've started to realize that most conservatives, like Nomdeblog, enjoy losing. It lets them indulge in their persecution complex. That partly explains their adherence to the religion of centrism/incrementalism. They don't care that it doesn't work. The point is to show what a good 'team player' you are by not believing in anything other than The Team.
Posted by: Cytotoxic | Friday, November 30, 2012 at 01:47 PM