Intrate Parati Tory

Preston prepares the troops:

Located in a heritage building in downtown Calgary, the Manning Centre officially opened on Wednesday. It’s a considerable departure from the townhalls, ice rinks and converted churches that were once the staple meeting places of prairie politicians. The centre boasts a lecture hall with plush leather chairs, screens that drop down from the ceilings and a strategy room that allows political trainees to compare poll-by-poll results against a map showing the latest Statistics Canada demographic profiles.

We tread carefully here. 

This is a wonderful idea that can be very easily turned to horrible purposes. Politics, the old cliche goes, is warfare by less honourable means. For decades right-wing politics in Canada was a pathetic farce. Ramshackle ground games, poor media relations and weak candidate screening processes caused untold headaches for party leaders. Both Brian Mulroney and Preston Manning had to deal with repeated Bigot Eruptions, white supremacists and assorted cranks who would sneak through the nomination process. For all their many sins at the game of politics the Golden Age Liberals were professionals and everyone else was a bunch of amateurs who could win by fluke.

One of Stephen Harper's signature accomplishments is the professionalization of the Conservative Party. High-tech war rooms, mostly well run riding associations and a disciplined cadre of full time operatives keeping everybody on message. All of which is being underwritten by the most sophisticated and successful fund raising operation in Canadian political history. To use an analogy that the PM would likely appreciate, he took the party from a middling OHL team and transformed it into the 1976 Montreal Canadiens.

To many an embittered ideologue, such as yours truly, this is kind of a so-what thing. Stephen Harper & C0. have made themselves every bit as ruthless and spin obsessed as the Chretien-era Liberals. If you measure politics by these low standards that's a sort of accomplishment. But shouldn't politics be about ideas and values? About making Canada a better place. For our children and our children's children?

Yes it should be about that. The UN should also be about resolving conflicts and promoting Human Rights. But North Korea and the Sudan keep showing up on the Human Rights Council. We live in a fallen world and politicians have fallen further than most. Combined with an apathetic and disengaged public we find ourselves with the uncomfortable reality that much of modern politics is about free stuff. When the odd good idea floats up, like getting rid of the wheat board, it must compete for time and attention with the usual vote buying rhetoric.

A good product can be defeated in the marketplace by bad salesmanship. A marginal product can be successful in the marketplace with good salesmanship. A professional political operation can allow parties with thin platforms to win elections. For most of their modern history the Liberals have been about getting and keeping power in a remarkably single minded way. They would steal whatever electorally viable ideas they could find from the CCF-NDP and the Reform-Tories. Because they were the professionals they could get and keep power using other people's ideas.

Now the Tories are the professionals. Thing is that they've run out of ideas. I predicted in mid-2011 that a year after winning power they'd run out of steam. So they have. Note the blizzard of pork barrel announcements, some of which have been covered on this blog, that is now the Conservative Party's substitute for actually governing. Admittedly they suffer from a serious strategy disadvantage: They have no one to steal ideas from. The NDP is hell bent on becoming old-style Liberals with better union connections. The Liberals are currently erecting altars to honour Justin Trudeau's luscious locks. 

Canadian politics today is a hall of mirrors filled with pragmatists reflecting off each other's vacuity.

The Tories have a formidable machine. Now Preston Manning has established a state of the art centre to train operatives for that machine. The question is how will that machine be used? The point isn't the process it's the result. An iPhone wielding version of the Chretien-era Liberals, with a worse fiscal record, is not an improvement.

Intrate parati to be disappointed. 

Comments

[nomdeblog]

“Stephen Harper & C0. have made themselves every bit as ruthless and spin obsessed as the Chretien-era Liberals.”

It has to work that way for a reason. We have low information (LoFo), non-engaged voters. Only a little over half even bother to vote federally. Conservatives have to raise money to pay to advertise their ideas because the MSM is a propaganda arm of the progressives. Therefore if some “bigot eruption” happens or more likely a comment that abortions might not be a good idea, then that has to be countered by huge effort, energy and campaign funds when the MSM plays the eruption over and over on the nightly news.

“We live in a fallen world and politicians have fallen further than most.”

But that’s the effect not the cause. That’s like saying we aren’t accountable for our actions because life ain’t fair and some are born with a silver spoon and some born into a household scrounging. We are accountable for our actions to try and overcome our circumstances and that includes trying to be informed enough to hold politicians accountable and not let the media simply brainwash us into choices based on charisma versus ideas.

“Combined with an apathetic and disengaged public we find ourselves with the uncomfortable reality that much of modern politics is about free stuff”.

Exactly. Or “We have met the enemy and he is us". - Pogo author, Walt Kelly.

Ezra interviewed Preston last night about this. It was sad to watch, although true. They were basically saying that once a politician gets into campaign mode there is no longer time to formulate ideas and political philosophy , they are too busy in the heat of battle through the election and then in Parliamentary committees. The philosophy has to come first and then it is more or less set forever. It’s a bit like the jaded but accurate comment by Kim Campbell: “an election is no time to discuss important issues.” That’s because politics is downhill from culture and culture changes slowly with economic tides and thus politics can only be influenced over long periods of effort as proposed by the Manning Centre.

We have a flat economy. There won’t be much change until the economy can grow at about 4% like it was in the “Chretien-era Liberals”. Canada is not attacking business the way Obama is, our federal tax on corporations is 15%, it’s about 35% in the USA. Bring the Liberals back under Justin and you’ll wish you had a flat economy again.

[Cytotoxic]

"Conservatives have to raise money to pay to advertise their ideas because the MSM is a propaganda arm of the progressives."

The Cons have no ideas to advertise.

Our politics isn't bad primarily because of LoFo voters. That's always been the norm. A bigger factor are mindless partisan drones that will support The Party no matter what. They will, for example, highlight how important it is to hold politicians accountable and then a paragraph later tell us that politics flows from culture, so don't even bother with expectations.

"Bring the Liberals back under Justin and you’ll wish you had a flat economy again."

Classic ND. Get back in line prole or you'll wish you never questioned the party!

The real problem with politics is Conservatism. Conservatism is an intellectual wasteland. It is a trick and a dead end that consumes energy and resources without a hint of success. The Conservative movement has been a half-century failure and there is no reason to believe that will change. A sustained statist rollback requires that conservatism be discarded into history's fail-bucket.