Canadian Cincinnatus

Canada’s Lesson for the Republican Party

Here is an interesting article about the collapse of the Progressive Conservative party and the rise of the Reform Party in Canada. The author, Neil Flagg, hits the nail right on the head. Prime Minister Brian Mulroney had a so-where-can-they-go? attitude with regard to his party’s right-wing. Well, in 1993, he got his answer. They formed a dynamic new party that energetically courted the hearts and minds of conservative Canadians. The ensuing vote splitting in ridings all across the country ensured that Mulroney’s party went from 169 seats in Parliament to two, while the upstart Reform Party went from one seat to 54.

A result like that can’t be blamed on Mulroney’s hasty replacement, Kim Campbell. (Like a rat, Mulroney had deserted his sinking ship barely four months before the election). She was little more than a populariser of dumb blonde jokes, but one hapless boob can’t construct an electoral catastrophe that complete in such a short time period. For that to occur, the rot had be deep.

While this resulted in “13 years of corrupt and aimless Liberal Party rule” (as Flagg says), I think it can also be said that the result was worth the cost; the old Progressive Conservative party had to be destroyed in order to be saved. The 1993 federal election was the first time that I, and many other Canadian conservatives, voted for somebody. 

To be sure, the Republican Party of 2012 is in far healthier ideological shape than the Progressive Conservative Party was in 1993, but GOP big-wigs are making a big mistake if they think there the old Progressive Conservative Party’s fate contains no lessons for them.

The most important lesson being: don’t take your core supporters for granted. Not ever.

Costa Concordia disaster: “this is what a feminist looks like”

The best comment I have yet read about the Costa Concordia shipwreck comes from the Vox Populi blog (via Instapundit): 

Those big, burly crewmen shoving aside women as they prioritized their own escape should have been wearing t-shirts that said "this is what a feminist looks like".

Heh.

 

The Telegraph: “Eurozone’s ‘big bazooka’ bail-out fund us left in tatters by S&P downgrade”

According to this article: “Plans for a €1 trillion "big bazooka" to stem the debt crisis were crushed on Monday night as Standard & Poor's stripped the European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF) of its AAA credit rating.”

Why was this completely and utterly predictable? Except of course by the highly credentialed, EU bureaucrats.

Don’t say I didn’t tell you so.

GOP should not ignore Ron Paul voters

It is easy for conservatives to dismiss Ron Paul. He holds a number of positions that are well outside of the conservative mainstream: isolationism, drug legalization, and a general anti-government stance that is too pure to be sellable to the electorate at large. So therefore the Republican nabobs think: he’s a nut, his people are mindless zombies, he’s got a low glass ceiling in the primaries, let’s forget about him. Big mistake!

As Dick Morris points out in this lunch-time video, the Reagan coalition is a three-legged stool: national security hawks, social conservatives and fiscal conservatives/libertarians; each faction is important because you need all three to achieve a majority. Right now, Ron Paul is the only Presidential candidate who actively courts the last leg of the stool: the libertarians. In the past 15 years, this group has been largely taken for granted by GOP Presidential candidates: by Bob Dole, by George W Bush, by John McCain and potentially now by Mitt Romney.

That so many Republican voters rally behind somebody who believes America was responsible for 9/11, and whose past views have bordered on the anti-Semitic conspiracy kook fringe, shows how this faction of the electorate is sick and tired of being taken for granted and is eager to find somebody – anybody - to represent them.

Ron Paul’s strong second place in the Republican race is a wake up call for the Republicans. If the GOP ignores the libertarian wing much longer it will face of a third party challenger from the right, if not from Paul then from somebody else.

To beat Obama in 2012, the Republicans must take a page from former Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s fourth electoral triumph in 2004. His National/Liberal coalition gained substantially in the popular vote even though the popular vote of his Labour Party rivals did not decline much. Where did the votes come from, if not from Labour? From the minor single-issue conservative parties. He adopted enough of their issues (like immigration restrictionism), that those who had drifted away from the Liberal Party over the years came back home. Had he continued to ignore these voters, saying in effect “where can they go?” those third parties would have continued to grow at Howard’s expense.

To win, Romney or whoever beats Romney for the nomination must provide the voters with enough libertarian policies so that the small-government people feel welcome again in the Republican Party.

Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry are shooting themselves in the foot with attacks on Bain Capital

As Dick Morris has pointed out, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and Rick Santorum are vying to win the conservative semifinal round – the winner of which gets the privilege of going up against the establishment candidate, Mitt Romney, in the GOP finals. This means that their voters are, by definition, conservative. Their strategy is - or should be - to prove to the conservative primary voter that they are the ‘real conservative’ in this race.

So what do they do instead? They attack Mitt Romney for actions he took while working for Bain Capital. Basically, for those who don’t know, Bain Capital is a company that buys companies that are poorly managed or that are on the verge of bankruptcy and either turn them around, by getting rid of their deadwood (i.e. by firing people), or liquidate their assets.

There is nothing wrong with this. It is an entirely salutary exercise that saves (some) jobs while preventing precious capital from being spent to unproductive uses. In other words, outfits like Bain Capital are required for the efficient functioning of our economy. The problem for Gingrich and Perry is that the conservative voter understands this. Left-wing populist attacks on capitalism (which the anti-Romney ads are) are the kind of thing that conservative voters hate. Conservatives expect nonsense like this to come from left-wing politicians like Barack Obama (Bain Capital will be a problem for Romney in the general election), but not from anybody courting them.

In their strategic stupidity, what Gingrich and Perry have in effect done is to transform Mitt Romney from the establishment candidate to the conservative candidate. Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh spent considerable on-air time defending Bain Capital (even though he doesn’t like Romney) while heaping blame on Gingrich and Perry for their anti-business rhetoric. So if Romney is now the ‘conservative’ candidate, where does that leave Perry and Gingrich? 

Answer: the unwanted, looser candidates.

P.S. If they have any sense, Gingrich and Perry will fire their idiotic campaign strategists. Another case of playing checkers when you should be playing chess.

Sharia Law enforcement in London, England

This news clip from London is about a bunch of Muslim clerics who are now starting to enforce Sharia law on the streets in neighbourhoods with large Muslim populations, complete with signs declaring “Sharia controlled zone” and street-level enforcers of Sharia law.

At 1:11 of the clip, you can see a one of these enforcers comes with red hair and fuzzy red beard. In other words, he is not a Muslim by birth but is a native Briton. If there is one category of people I despise it is traitors. Islamofascists are at war with the West and England, and this twit takes their side against civilization – his civilization. He belongs to the same tribe as Winston Churchill, Sir Isaac Newton and William Shakespeare and he renounces his heritage for third-world barbarism. Fie.

Of course, when guilt-addled anti-west multiculturalism is taught in western schools, the danger is that some of the schoolkids will actually believe the claptrap.

On a more positive note, the last third of the clip depicts Londoners fighting back against the barbarians in their midst, from the police to ordinary citizens. I think as time goes on, the average people of the UK will be taking an increasingly tough line on this kind of nonsense.

 

 

The best description of what is wrong with the welfare state that I have yet read

By Brendan O’Neill in the Daily Telegraph:

"The Left won't thank him for it, but in the Guardian Liam Byrne has tried to kickstart a potentially interesting debate about the welfare state.”

“Byrne's mistake is that he seems motivated by a narrow desire to save the state money. The financial cost of social welfare is "simply too high", he says, and we should "bring down [the] benefits bill to help pay down the national debt". That is a Scrooge's approach to the problem of the welfare state. The really terrible cost of ever-expanding welfarism is measured not in cash, but in the impact welfarism has on working communities, on those who have been made increasingly reliant upon the charity, largesse and therapeutic meddling of the massive and monolithic welfare machine. Relentless financial and therapeutic intervention by the state into poor people's lives has, not surprisingly, had a pretty devastating impact both on social interaction and individual aspiration.”

O’Neill highlights a mistake that conservative critics of the welfare state often make: taking the “Scrooge approach”. As O’Neill points out, the real cost of welfare is the human cost. By sticking to dollars and cents issues, conservatives are try to stay away from controversy but what they are really doing is playing to type: mustachio twirling cardboard villains out of central casting who only care about the bottom line, vs. compassionate crusaders who care about the People (i.e. the liberals).

"When people come to be more reliant on the state than they are on each other, community bonds fray and social solidarity falls into disrepair. When the struggling mum looks to the state for help, rather than turning to family, friends, neighbours, the end result is that she becomes more isolated from her community. When a 17-year-old school student short of cash turns to the state for a weekly handout, he never really develops skills of self-sufficiency or dependency on friends and neighbours. When young men looking for work know that the state will sustain them for long periods of time, especially if they make a performance of being "ill" or "depressed" at the dole centre, then their instinct to work becomes frayed. The old healthy working-class habits of pulling together, "getting on one's bike", offering one another work and advice have slowly but surely – and tragically – been replaced by the "helping hand" of the ever-watchful state. People start to rely less on their own wits and mates, and more on the faceless keepers of charitable cash.”

To roll back the welfare state, we need to start making arguments like this. Conservatives instinctively avoid this kind of talk because it is controversial. And they are right. It is controversial. The liberals will scream. But they scream because they realize that the opponents of the welfare state are getting to the heart of the matter, and challenging the welfare state’s raison d’etre. The financial arguments are important but they leave the legitimacy of founding principles of welfarism intact, allowing “have-you-no-heart!” appeals to continue to be made.

“The radical Left once believed in the power of the working man not only to hold down a job but also to remake society and the future – to watch them now fight tooth-and-nail in defence of the idea that much of the working class is pathetic and weak and in need of permanent care by the welfare state is genuinely depressing.

It is always those with ample cash and cushy jobs who rush to defend the welfare state. That's because they have no idea what living under the welfare state is like, and how harshly it impacts on community life and the individual soul.”

“Community life” and “individual soul”, those are the kinds of words that need to be on the lips of welfare state critics more often.

 

Mitt Romney underperforms yet again

In yesterday’s Iowa caucus Mitt Romney beats Rick Santorum by a whopping 8 vote margin. He spent $10 million, campaigned 4 years and was unable to crack the 25% mark. Meanwhile Rick Santorum, the man who was polling in the low single digits barely a month ago and who only spent $500K in Iowa, pulled off a photo finish. Tell me again money matters in politics.

And tell me again that Mitt Romney should be the Republican nominee because he is the most ‘electable’ candidate.  Electable – based on what? It was the same story in Iowa back in 2008. He spent almost 4 years, $10 million and all he managed to do was to increase his popular support from 22% to 25%. He likes to tell Newt Gingrich that, unlike Newt, he isn’t a career politician. What he doesn’t say is that he is not a career politician for lack of trying. He has been trying to get elected to something since 1994 when he lost a senate race to Ted Kennedy. All he has to show for his effort was one term as governor of Massachusetts. When he left he was the 48^th most popular governor in the nation. Admittedly, Massachusetts is a tough state for Republicans, but still, where’s the proof he’s electable?

Furthermore, there is a huge peril in being the ‘inevitable’ candidate. The problem is that if that is all you are, and your inevitability gets pricked by an unexpected loss or even a Pyrrhic victory, all of a sudden you have nothing. The emperor has no clothes on. If you don’t believe me, look at Prime Minister Paul Martin. Less than a decade ago he bestrode the Canadian political landscape like a colossus, but after Stephen Harper held him to a minority, the Martin balloon quickly deflated. Behind the inevitability myth, the Paul Martin phenomenon was just hype. And Paul Martin came with a serious achievement under his belt – balancing the federal budget. What corresponding political achievement does Mitt Romney have? Romneycare?

Aside from the Romneycare millstone around his neck, I think it is the reputation for being a flip-flopper that cause so many people to mistrust Mitt Romney. The reason Mitt can’t shake the charge is that it is true. In deep blue Massachusetts he had to say and do many things that are heresy to the conservative voters he is now wooing. Fine. You have to do what you have to do. But now, when it is most expedient for him to be a born-again conservative, that’s exactly what he is. So do you believe him? Me neither. How will he do when he is President and the really hard spending decisions must be made to balance the budget? Don’t hold your breath.

Conventional wisdom says that his flip-flopping is only a liability in the GOP primaries, but that if he gets the nomination, his moderation will make him an easier sell to the general electorate. Wrong! This is a complete misunderstanding of the moderate voter. As I have pointed out in the past (here, here, here, here and here), we political junkies completely misread the motivations of the people who inhabit the mushy middle: we ascribe our value system to them and this is false. We appraise candidates by examining where they stand on the issues and assume the non-political voter does the same. Jettison a few ‘extreme’ issues and move towards the ‘center’ if you want the independents. Big mistake. Because the moderate non-political voter doesn’t think like that. He doesn’t care about issues. At all. To the extent that he thinks about politics, he cares about personality and leadership. And when he sees a flip-flopper like Romney, he doesn’t see a ‘moderate’ who isn’t ‘extreme’, a guy like him; he sees weakness. He sees a lack of leadership. And when he sees him failing to inspire his own side - the people who know him the best and who make up his team – all he sees is more weakness. This is why it is often the case that politicians who are either on the right end of the acceptable political spectrum or the left end of the acceptable political spectrum are the most successful with the non-political ‘middle’ voters.

For an example look at Ronald Reagan, a man well to the right of the average American voter - and considered eminently electable by them. And for an example from the left, look no further than Barack Obama. He was far to the left of the average American voter in 2008 but he was charismatic and he had his base fired up into a state of religious rapture. As a result, the non-political people wanted to follow Obama, not John McCain, who was 2008’s GOP cod liver oil candidate (“hold you nose and vote for him, it will be good for you”). The non-political independent voter wants a strong leader, not a wishy-washy ‘moderate’ like himself.

Another example of an electable GOP moderate looser? Take Thomas Dewey. Read Zachary Karabell’s Last Campaign: How Harry Truman Won the 1948 Election. Dewey comes across like 1948 version of Mitt Romney. And like Romney, his primary virtue was considered to be his inevitability. And famous headlines aside, we know how that turned out.

 

Once again, our right to self-defense is under attack by the Province of Ontario

In March of this year, Ontario’s crown prosecutors persecuted Ian Thompson of Welland for the crime of defending himself against multiple armed attackers who assaulted his house in the wee hours of the morning. Mr. Thompson’s sin was that he used a gun to defend himself and his property (which was being firebombed). I wrote about it here and here. The result was a legal nightmare for Ian Thompson, that I had thought he had won, thanks to public pressure that gun rights activists had brought to bear on this case.

But I now hear from Mr. Thompson’s lawyer, Ed Burlew, that the persecution still lingers to this day. According to Mr. Burlew, “The charges of weapons dangerous and careless use were dropped. However, the crown is still prosecuting Mr. Thompson on the charges of careless storage of the firearms and a two-day trial is scheduled for January 30 and 31.”

If you know anything about Canadian gun law in, you will know that careless storage is the catchall charge that the cops use to go after gun owners if they want to get them when they haven’t done anything wrong. Any reasonable prosecutor would have dropped the matter completely when the careless use charges were dropped. Of course, any reasonable prosecutor would not have pursued this outrageous matter in the first place. What is happening is that an obstinate persecutor is going after Mr. Thompson out of spite.

His lawyer, Ed Burlew, is appealing for donations again, as Mr. Thompson is (or was) unemployed and is therefore not wealthy. I have mailed in my cheque. To see how you can help Mr. Thompson (and help protect our right to defend ourselves), please call Ed Burlew’s office at 905-882-2422.

 

One way to trim the Toronto Transit Commission budget without cutting service: automate the subway ticket booths

In 2005 I was in Washington DC for a conference and had occasion to take their Metro. What a contrast between Toronto’s filthy subway system: light-years cleaner and with features our subway would only receive much later (such as a display giving the ETA of the next train). What I also noticed was that every Metro station was unmanned. Every single one. No ticket takers in sight.

What each Metro station has instead is an automat that dispenses magnetic-stripe cards, with the amount of money you deposit into the machine electronically recorded on the card. When you go through the turnstile and swipe your card, the fare is subtracted from your total. If your card runs low, you stick it in the machine and top it up using cash or a credit card; if you want to minimize this ritual, you load up your card; if you lose your card, you buy another one. Dead simple and absolutely convenient.

In Toronto, in contrast, you have to buy a ticket or a token from the guy in the booth, you drop the ticket into a slot under his watchful eye. Needless to say, being a ticket taker for the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) is not a minimum wage job, not by a long shot (and that’s not counting their generous benefits). And to add insult to injury, even though the booth is manned by a person, I don’t think he can even take credit or debit cards! (At least I have never seen it done.)

When I saw the Washington setup, I thought: my God! our system hasn’t changed since I was a kid. I recalled taking the subway with my mother in the late 1960’s when the arrangement was exactly the same. Since that time, the only significant ‘improvement’ is that tokens these days are bimetallic, like the toonie. Back then they were a simple aluminium stamping, but that changed when it was discovered that they were being counterfeited en mass in China. With all the advances that have been made in recent decades in access control technology, there must be a thousand ways to improve and automate this antiquated process, the Washington DC solution being just one of the ‘better ways’.

Why doesn’t the TTC management suggest one to help deal with Mayor Rob Ford’s TTC cuts?

Answer: I think, because they can see with perfect clarity that it would work all too well in cutting costs and improving customer convenience. And we can’t have that now, can we?