Canadian Cincinnatus

Conservatives depoliticize Canadian Museum of History

From the National Post:

“The release of the Canadian Museum of Civilization’s first research strategy … has revived the age-old debate over the politicization of Canadian history.”

“With Canada’s 150th birthday approaching in 2017, and the bicentennial of the War of 1812 just passed with unusual fanfare, the public’s appreciation of Canadian history is ripe for revision, and not just because some of the flagship national museum’s exhibits date to the 1990s, not long after it was renamed from the National Museum of Man. From the rewritten citizenship guide that undid years of Liberal ideological dominance, to the renaming of Canadian military units to honour the monarchy, history is increasingly the lens through which the country sees itself, and a ripe target for those who wish to change it.’

This is true. Harper is trying to undo the quiet Liberal rewrite of Canadian history. He is doing that by bringing the narrative of Canadian history once again to the fore.

Now that the words “critical understanding” have been struck from the museum’s mandate, however, critics fear that history without criticism becomes propaganda.

In academia, the phrase, ‘critical theory’ is a code word for left-wing indoctrination.

‘Mr. Blais said he has heard criticisms over the years about topics the museum should display with greater prominence, such as the Acadian expulsions. But those complaints never coalesced into a single theory, until the recent efforts of federal Conservatives to put their own stamp on Canadian heritage, led by former Heritage Minister James Moore. 

The museum’s new mandate is “to enhance Canadians’ knowledge, understanding and appreciation of events, experiences, people and objects that reflect and have shaped Canada’s history and identity, and also to enhance their awareness of world history and cultures.”

‘Ian McKay, professor of history at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., said the Conservative government is “definitely politicizing history, and are quite candid about it.”’

Contra Professor McKay, the politicization of Canadian history has been going on for quite a while - by the left: basically by de-emphasizing the historical narrative and replacing in with left-wing victimology. He who controls the past, controls the present.

Professor McKay here implies that Stephen Harper is rewriting history to make the Tories look good. How putting more emphasis on the Acadian expulsion, he leaves as an exercise to the reader.

He said they take an anachronistic “Victorian” view, dominated by militarism, monarchism, imperialism, and all-round Britishism. The motivation, he thinks, is nothing so crass as vote-buying or simple politicking, but an effort to redefine the country.’

Hey, we can’t have that! People might think that Canada was a former British colony. 

“I think there is, in contemporary Canada, a strong attempt to create a pervasive climate of fear, and something like a war panic environment,” he said. 

There’s a climate of fear alright, but it is among the museum curators who are being increasingly called out for their biases.

Former Museum of Civilization CEO Victor Rabinovitch similarly called the new mandate “narrow and parochial” and feared that its research will become “a form of enhanced journalism that is aimed at popularization,” according to a CBC report.’

Mr. Blais was also dismissive of the suggestion of political meddling. “I’ve been in the museum for 25 years almost. I can testify personally that I was never pressured for selecting one topic over another,” he said.

There is a clear military slant, however, to the topics flagged as important by the standing committee on heritage, which is examining how history is taught across the country. These include “pre-confederation, early confederation, suffrage, World War I, with an emphasis on battles such as Vimy Ridge, World War II including the Liberation of Holland, the Battle of Ortona, Battle of the Atlantic, the Korean conflict, peacekeeping missions, constitutional development, the Afghanistan conflict, early 20th century Canada, post-war Canada, and the late 20th century.”

Andrew Cash, deputy heritage critic for the NDP who sits on that committee, said the government has spent “a lot of money on getting Canadians hyped up and excited about specific historical events.”

I.e. the events that defined the country.

“It’s been a bit of an obsession,” he said. He also said there is a tendency to meddle in supposedly independent institutions.

In other words, publicly funded bureaucrats are being subject to scrutiny by their democratically elected bosses. Where do they think they live – in a democracy?

“They’re trying to do something more long term,” Prof. McKay said. “They’re trying to change our vision of the country…. If it starts to take on the flavour of an exercise in propaganda, that’s when line is crossed. With this regime, I’m not sure I’m fully trustful of their scholarly, intellectual probity in putting forward a museum of Canadian history.”

Actually, this is true. Since Trudeau, the Liberals have been trying to remake Canada in their own image. One way he did that was to control the presentation of Canadian history. Harper is fighting back. He wants to resurrect are the small-l liberal values that the country was founded on.

Eric Raymond: “Preventing visceral racism”

Eric Raymond wrote a level-headed, rational article on the biological origins of racism. Such an achievement, in an age where people are driven into a hysterical tizzy at anything remotely relating to the topic of race, is unique enough that it must be pointed out.

While his article is autobiographical in character, he comes to the basic truth: ‘racism’ is not so much a psychological pathology as it is a normal reaction to people who are not like you. Human beings spent most of its existence as small tribes of hunter-gatherers. To survive, unit cohesion was vital. For this reason, we are programmed to divide people into two groups: ‘us’ and ‘them’. This programming is not conscious but is one of the many subconscious algorithms that form a part of who we are:

“Your brain is a pile of kluges messily wired together by evolutionary selection.”

How these groups are defined is left for the higher centers of the brain to decide, using our experience of the environment around us as a guide. One obvious way is through racial groups. ‘We’ are one racial group; ‘they’ are the other. 

This much is, or should be, obvious. What is interesting is Raymond’s advice on what you should do about it. 

“As hard as you try to be rational, it’s going to glitch on you sometimes. When it does that, the right thing to do is notice that you are not the Robot and the glitch is not you. 

I’m not saying guilt is entirely useless. It can be a valuable form of self-regulation when you make a conscious decision that causes unnecessary harm. But that’s not what we’re talking about here; you don’t decide to experience weird apparently-sourceless revulsions against some minority X, it’s just a thing that happens when the dice come up snake-eyes. You’re responsible – and guilty – only if you let the Robot run you.”

While our semi-autonomous neural network modules, that Raymond terms ‘kluges’, are a part of us, we must understand they are not all of us. We also have built into us rational and moral faculties that can, by force of willpower (another innate quantity), overpower our innate, hindbrain self. In other words, we do not have to be a slave to our urges and desires; we can overcome them.

“People fall into the Uncanny Valley reaction, don’t realize they have a wetware glitch, and then accrete layers of rationalization and hatred around that reaction. It’s much like the way primary mystical experiences make people vulnerable to capture by insane religions.”

“We actually have an implicit cultural prescription for dealing with circumstances like this. It begins with feeling guilty. What you’re supposed to do, especially if you’re white, is transvaluate that revulsion into a sense of mortal sin, then expiate it with huge amounts of compensatory behavior like canonizing Trayvon Martin and hating anybody who even questions affirmative action, minority set-asides, or any other feature of our government-mandated racial spoils system. 

But this is exactly backwards. The last thing you ought to do with feelings of irrational revulsion, whether directed at racial groups or anything else, is emotionally entangle yourself with them and assign extra importance to the memories that involve them. Doing that just invites additional self-damage to no good purpose.”

He is right. Understanding who we are and what we aren’t avoids a lot of trouble. If Americans did that more often, a lot of the more irrational and dysfunctional features of the modern United States (the US is too hung up on the white-black race divide), would disappear. America is still profoundly affected by the shadow of slavery. 

This also suggests a more profound limitation on society in general: modern, liberal society is predicated on individual autonomy and the equal treatment of individuals. The fact that we are programmed to draw us-vs-them distinctions - and react to them, possibly violently - suggests that natural limits exist on the amount of multiculturalism and multiracialism that a liberal society can tolerate while still remaining liberal.

Theodore Dalrymple on the uses and misuses of stereotypes

Noted commentator, Theodore Dalyrmple has an illuminating article on the much misunderstood and much maligned concept of stereotypes: 

“The man who walks out of his house with a mind devoid of stereotypes is like the man who goes to the Antarctic without having inquired about the weather. But there is no such man: for even to know that the Antarctic exists is to know that it tends to be cold there. Our minds are necessarily full of stereotypes and we could not negotiate the world without them.”

One of the aspects of stereotypes that ‘anti-racism activists’ repeatedly overlook is their usefulness.

“In other words, they were appealing to stereotypes, which brings us to an important but often overlooked point about stereotyping: that many, perhaps even most, people want to be stereotyped. Indeed, they do their best to ensure that they are, for, unlike the detractors of stereotyping, they appreciate something deeply embedded in human nature — namely, that man is a creature for whom symbolism is as inescapable as breathing.

It may be, of course, that we usually don our clothes as second nature, without thinking. But that does not mean that they symbolize nothing. For me it is as natural to put on a tweed jacket as for a youth of a certain kind to don a hoodie or a baseball cap sideways; neither of us gives much thought to the matter on any individual occasion, though both of us convey a message thereby.” 

This, I think, is a really important point. Unlike what the ‘anti-racism activist’ would lead you to believe, people embrace stereotypes as often as, or even more often than, they struggle out from under them. As Dalrymple points out, man is a creature of symbolism.

“Now it is obviously true that not all young men who dress in, say, hoodies are thugs; but if you were walking down an inadequately lit alleyway and a young man in a hoodie came toward you, it is likely that you would experience a greater frisson of fear than if he were dressed in a tweed jacket. And that may be precisely what he wants, even if he has no intention of attacking anyone. He wants you to stereotype him.”

Dressing as a criminal has certain advantages – you are thought of as dangerous, and sexy. This has an undeniable charismatic appeal in certain quarters.

“In England, young people who have committed so many crimes that they are sent to reformatories often tattoo an Indian-ink blue spot on their cheek, in the same way that Old Etonians wear ties. This marks them out after their release as people not to be trifled with. But among my patients were a number of young men who had never been in trouble with the law who tattooed themselves with the blue spot. They did this for one of two reasons, or for both: Breaking the law sufficiently frequently to have been sent to reformatory carried a kudos in the area in which they lived, evil in those areas having become the new good; or they wished to appear more aggressive and violent than they were, as certain butterflies mimic poisonous varieties so that birds will not eat them. If you want to be left alone, look dangerous.”

Unfortunately there is a down side:

“Attempting to look tougher than you are, or more aggressive than you are inclined to be, has its dangers. I had a patient who had the words “NO FEAR” tattooed prominently on the side of his neck, supposedly to convey the message that he was, despite his less-than-great size or muscular development, of ferret-like ferocity, and likely to attack at any moment for no reason. Unfortunately his supposed fearlessness was taken as a challenge by those who like to think of themselves as bad bastards, and he was four times landed in hospital by unprovoked or prophylactic attacks on him when he entered pubs. Removal of the offending tattoo was beyond his means.”

The other, more commonly pointed out, downside is that respectable people (who you are trying to annoy with your manners) will consider you unrespectable, with all the consequences that follow. The bohemian bourgeois press blames this entirely on the snobbish prejudice of those holding middle-class shopkeeper values. And undoubtedly this is partly true. But it is true only to the extent that they intuit the fact that somebody is deliberately insulting them. This is why I have absolutely no sympathy for, say, some punk rocker who gets turned down for a job because of his dress. He is simultaneously trying to be “stereotyped … while avoiding the negative consequences of that stereotyping (that is to say, having your cake and eating it).” 

“Are stereotypes generalizations drawn from experience of actual behavior, or is that behavior a response to the stereotypes?”

I would say that it is a bit of both. Stereotypes are visible traits consistent with certain behaviour patterns, while people like to advertise (and exaggerate) who they are with visible symbols. 

“Stereotyping is inevitable in complex societies in which not everything can be known about every individual. It is a kind of mental shorthand, and like shorthand can be either accurate or inaccurate. The stereotype can be wrong in general or wrong in a particular case. Moreover, most people are apt to forget that from the mere fact that most a’s are b’s, it does not follow that most b’s are a’s — that is to say, from the fact that most people who get lung cancer smoke it does not follow that most people who smoke get lung cancer, any more than it follows from the fact that most white criminals are tattooed that all white tattooed people are criminals.”

I would disagree with Dalrymple here. These days everybody has been indoctrinated since kindergarten to understand that most b’s are not a’s. What people aren’t taught, and are certainly discouraged from thinking, is that in spite of this truism, noticing patterns is still useful.

For instance, it has been shown that black New York cabbies discriminate against black fares almost as much as white cabbies. Why? They want to get home safely. Their strategy helps them attain their desired goal because most a’s are b’s. The fact that most b’s are not a’s manifests itself in the harder time that New York blacks have in hailing a cab. Both sides have a valid point. It is just that the cabbie values his own safety more than the convenience of a stranger – even though he knows that he is probably not a criminal.

“It is not wrong to stereotype; it is wrong — foolish and sometimes wicked — to allow stereotypes inflexibly to trump evidence.”

All true, but the Salem witchhunt atmosphere surrounding the topic of race relations doesn’t allow modern man to draw the distinction between the first half of the sentence and the last. Both can be true simultaneously.

Hot off the presses: “the richest self-made woman in America” victimized by Swiss “shop girl”

The “richest self-made woman in America” is Oprah Winfrey, at least according to Forbes. And the self-described “shop girl” is the infamous sales assistant who apparently violated Oprah’s civil rights:

“Winfrey was in Switzerland in July when she walked into the Trois Pommes boutique in Zurich looking for a handbag to match the outfit she was going to wear to old friend Tina Turner's wedding.

She claims the sales assistant refused to show her the black crocodile leather bag because - seeing a black woman - she automatically assumed she would not be able to afford it.”

Now the sales assistant is disputing Oprah’s allegations:

“I simply told her that it was like the one I held in my hand, only much more expensive, and that I could show her similar bags. It is absolutely not true that I declined to show her the bag on racist grounds. I even asked her if she wanted to look at the bag.”

“She looked around the store again but didn't say anything else. Then she went with her companion to the lower floor. My colleague saw them to the door. They were not even in the store for five minutes.”

“I don't know why she is making these accusations. She is so powerful and I am just a shop girl.  I didn't hurt anyone. I don't know why someone as great as her must cannibalize me on TV.  

If it had all taken place as she claimed, why has she not complained the next day at the wedding of Tina Turner with Trudie Goetz, my boss? She was there also at the Turner wedding as a guest. I don't understand it.” 

While all of this could be chalked up as another brou-ha-ha from an obnoxious, self-centred celebrity, it is Oprah’s insinuation of racism that piqued my curiosity.

Memo to Oprah: Switzerland in 2013 is not Alabama in 1963 and you are not some powerless girl told to leave the lunch counter just because of the colour of your skin. It is absolutely obscene for somebody who has been able to make $2.7 billion (at least according to Time) in The System, to plead oppression.

A month from now, you will have forgotten this ever happened. But a month from now, that sales clerk could find herself unemployed and unemployable. For normal people (i.e. not you), things like that are a major setback in life, and you precipitated it.

Perhaps you misunderstood and jumped to conclusions? Perhaps when she said, “No, it’s too expensive,” what she meant to say was not what it ended up sounding like to a native English speaker? One hint that this might have been the case was her heavily accented English.

Also, perhaps $2.7 billion buys you enough leisure time to avoid jumping to conclusions? Or provides you with enough of a cushion in your life that you can, as a default position, assume the best intentions in the people around you who are there to cater to your every whim - like a handbag more expensive than my car? 

Oh yeah, just one more thing: just because you are black and she is white doesn’t mean that she is automatically The Man and you are automatically a card-carrying member of the oppressed. 

To me this is just another sign of the nostalgic memories of the 1960’s civil rights movement fading away.

Barack Obama, Todd Aken and Jay Leno: “legitimate rape” verses an “unfortunately” low number of Americans being killed by terrorists

James Taranto, of the Wall Street Journal, makes an interesting comparison:

"The odds of people dying in a terrorist attack obviously are still a lot lower than in a car accident, unfortunately," President Obama told NBC's Jay Leno last night.

Wait, "unfortunately"? Does the president really wish more Americans were killed in terrorist attacks? Indeed, orders of magnitude more, since nationwide traffic fatalities typically run between 30,000 and 50,000 a year?

Of course not. Obviously when he deployed that adverb he was thinking of the unfortunate souls killed in car accidents, not the victims of terrorism. He simply misspoke--just as Todd Akin did last year when he used the unfortunate phrase "legitimate rape." But for some reason, the World's Greatest Orator and the most powerful man in the world is held to lower standards of verbal exactitude than a lowly congressman from Missouri.

This reminds me of a point that Ann Coulter never tires of repeating: Democrats always defend their own, but the Republicans tend to throw their own people to the wolves. While the Democrats defend their associates long past the point of expediency and morality (think Bill Clinton, Charlie Rangel, Al Sharpton, Eric Holder, Jon Corzine, Robert Menendez, etc., etc., etc.); it is nevertheless true that Republicans are prone to the opposite mistake: they abandon colleagues who are merely the victims of ambushes rather than perpetrators of malfeasances.

Take Todd Aken. Any fair-minded listener would conclude that he was referring to a rape accusation that had been proven to be substantive with his infamous phrase “legitimate rape,” not that he believed that the crime itself is legitimate. Aken was guilty of a clumsy choice of words, nothing more. He was also a victim of a Democrat ambush that seized on the inadvertent ambiguity in his phrasing. Not that I blame the Dem’s. They do what politicians do in an adversarial political system: they attack their opponents.

For escalating Aken’s misspoken words to a national scandal, I blame the Republican strategists who thought they could limit the damage by throwing Aken under the bus, instead of attacking the Democrats for slandering his good name. In reality, the act of abandoning Aken only ratified the Democrat charge in the mind of the voters. Why disown Aken if he said nothing wrong? Then, when the Democrats escalated their initial charge into a nation-wide condemnation of the Republicans’ “war on women,” the GOP brainiacs had nowhere to go. They suddenly found that they had painted themselves into a corner by pre-emptively agreeing with them.

As Ann Coulter also pointed out, who would want to work for these guys? They stab you in the back the moment you find yourself in a spot of bother. In the military, there is a general principle that you don’t leave anybody behind – even if the act of rescuing them create more casualties than the rescue can hope to save. In spite of this possibility, the principle is very popular with the troops. To see why, ask yourself if you would want to serve in an army that did leave people behind on cold utilitarian principles? Everybody would be looking over their shoulder during the fight, making sure that their comrades haven’t bugged out and left them dangling in the breeze.

But when Republicans recruit candidates, they are in effect saying, come serve in an army that will leave you behind.

Why Tim Hudak should not go

Yes I know: the performance of Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives in last week’s five Ontario by-elections was very disappointing. With the gas plant scandal metastasizing into the Ontario Liberal’s version of Adscam, as Rex Murphy pointed out, one would have expected a better showing of the PC’s than winning only one riding out of five. Especially as the riding that they did win, Etobicoke – Lakeshore, was due primarily to a star candidate plus the timely intervention of Rob Ford and his brother. As the Toronto Sun’s Sue Ann Levy pointed out, when they inserted themselves into the campaign, you could feel the momentum shift back towards the Progressive Conservatives.

Where was Hudak in all of this? He was invisible. You can’t blame a hostile media for burying him. They hate Ford a lot more than Hudak but Ford had no trouble inserting himself into the debate. And his comment, “voting for the Liberals is like giving a bank robber a gun and telling him to go rob some more banks” may not have been the best political slogan in the world, but it was pretty good. What did Hudak say during this time? I dunno.

But, having said that, forcing Hudak to resign, while Ontario has a minority government, would be strategic folly of the highest order. Think about it. First up is a leadership vote, one that follows a lead-up period of fratricidal warfare. Then, assuming Hudak loses that vote, there will be a leadership contest of at least several months. By the time a new leader is in place, 6 to 12 months have gone by.

This would be the perfect gift for Kathleen Wynn: all the time in the world to establish her premiership, allowing her to put maximum distance between herself and Premier Deadbeat Dad, Dalton McGuinty.  For as long as the PC leadership is up in the air, they will be in no position to bring down her minority government. She won’t even need to curry favour from Andrea Horwath’s NDP. She can do what she wants because she has been given an effective majority government by the anti-Hudak conservatives.

And when Hudak’s replacement is selected, she will give him a week or two – at most - to get acquainted with his job before she ambushes him with a general provincial election that she will have had almost a year to prepare for.

And, oh yes: what if Hudak survives the leadership vote, but with a John Tory-like ambivalent confidence vote? This scenario is even better for Wynn. What could be better than to have an opponent who has been weakened to the point of ineffectiveness, but is still strong enough to hold onto his job by his fingernails? 

So all you anti-Hudak types out there, think a little. Game the scenario you desire through to the end before you propose it. If you do, you will see that the least-worst path forward is to move ahead with the leader we’ve got, at least until after the next election. If Hudak loses it, then you can demand his head. That is the proper time, and I will join you.

Jay Cost to GOP: stop dancing to the Democrat’s tune on immigration

The ever-insightful Jay Cost on the immigration debate:

“In The Semi-Sovereign People, political scientist E. E. Schattschneider asked the question: Of all the potential political conflicts within society, why do only a few become active? His answer has to do with the power to set the agenda. He wrote, “Political conflict is not like an intercollegiate debate in which the opponents agree in advance on a definition of the issues. As a matter of fact, the definition of the alternatives is the supreme instrument of power. .  .  . He who determines what politics is about runs the country, because the definition of alternatives is the choice of conflicts, and the choice of conflicts allocates power.” 

A recurring theme on these pages is that one of the most important principles of political strategy is that he, who frames the terms of the debate, wins the issue.

“This is a point that conservatives would do well to keep in mind as the immigration reform debate rolls on. In particular, they should wonder why the range of alternatives has essentially been reduced to this stark choice: The Republican party can reach out to Hispanics by supporting the Senate immigration bill, or it can wander in the wilderness as a political minority for the next generation.”

The Senate immigration bill is a classic case of winning the issue by seizing the initiative and framing the terms of the debate. The concern to solve the problem of illegal immigration came out of nowhere after the 2012 presidential election. It was at best a minor issue during the campaign, and is - even now - considered the average American voter to be a low priority.

“Why exactly are the GOP’s electoral prospects so dependent on this one issue? In 2012, Obama bested Romney in one group after another. Romney did not win enough Catholics, or middle-aged people, or women, or working-class voters, or Midwesterners, or whatever.”

If Romney had inspired working-class white men, he likely would have won pivotal swing states like Pennsylvania and Ohio.

“Who has exercised the power to set the agenda here, and why have they set it in this way? Above all, we may look to the president, whose greatest asset in our political system is the power to set the agenda, to define the alternatives. Barack Obama is looking for a legacy item in his second term; seeing how far he stands from House Republicans on fiscal issues, immigration is his best opportunity.

After that, we have the national Democratic machine, which is interested in immigration reform because of the potential votes it could yield down the line, the union members it might add, and the activist fervor it will stoke."

“None of these groups necessarily has the best interests of the Republican party at heart. In fact, the interests of Obama and his party are perfectly inverse to those of the GOP.”

A good rule of thumb in politics is to not take advice from your opponents (or their dupes on your side). It sounds obvious stated this way, but it is amazing how easily the media can buffalo wooly-headed or weak-willed conservatives towards taking harmful advice.

“On the issue of immigration, conservatives are facing the same type of trap that Democrats have faced over the years when trying to pursue the ‘values voters.’ After every Democratic loss on the national stage since 1988, a range of pundits have highlighted the Democratic party’s deficiencies on issues surrounding guns, God, gays, abortion, and so on. But in most instances (gun control being a notable exception), the Democratic party has not really budged on the ‘culture war.”’  

Consistency is a very important political virtue. This is why widely unpopular measures such as gay marriage eventually won. The consistency of gun owners is the reason why the momentum is now on our side. (If we had heeded the advice of ‘politically savvy’ conservative moderates, we would be disarmed by now.)

“Democrats learned over time that there is no getting to the Republican party’s right on these culture issues. Instead, they have tried to appeal to these voters via other channels, like economic populism. The best example of this strategy is none other than Barack Obama. After the Democratic defeat in 2004, it was conventional wisdom that the party had to find a way to win over blue-collar guys driving pickup trucks, which meant blunting the GOP advantage on the culture war. Obama went in precisely the opposite direction. He refused to pursue those voters on the terms set by the Republican party, and instead formed a different coalition altogether.”

You can’t win by sticking a moist finger in the air. Your campaign theme and its slogans have to reflect your overall philosophy of government, otherwise they won’t be believed. You also can’t woo voters with a negative policy. In other words, the slogan, “vote for me because I don’t believe x (any more, and I’m sorry about the time I did)” is lame. 

“There’s a lesson in this. The constraints of the GOP coalition limit the party’s ability to make identity-based appeals to Hispanic voters (or any ethnic group, for that matter). The Democrats will always get to the GOP’s left when it comes to identity politics. In the case of immigration reform, the desire by most Republican voters to respect the rule of law will keep the party from offering an amnesty package to Hispanics as generous as Democrats can. The latter will thus pocket any concessions that the former provide, and then ask for more later.”

You can’t outbid the other side on their issues. They can always just raise the stakes because they have more headroom. Just as the Republicans can’t outbid Obama on amnesty, the Dems can’t outbid the GOP on tax cuts or gun rights. So don’t try.

“A winning Republican candidate will be one who can harmonize the interests of swing voters—be they Hispanic, Protestant, female, lower income, or whatever—with those of the party’s conservative base.”

This is a really, really important point. You begin with your most devoted supporters and work your way outwards to the less and less committed, until you corral the Low Information Voter a few days before the election. Done right, you achieve 50% plus one on election-day. 

The Red Tory/RINO way – throw your core supporters to the wolves while castigating them as ‘extremists’ in order to appeal to the ‘moderates’ – never works. First of all, you alienate your core supporters whose time and money you need. Second, you turn off the Low Information Voter, who you have misread to be a ‘moderate’. By and large, these voters don’t care about any issues at all. They base their decisions on more intuitive matters, such as leadership. Among the way they identify the latter is the degree to which each candidate is able to motivate his core supporters.

A good example is Obama and McCain in 2008. They saw the near-hysterical, cult-like following that Barack Obama generated and said whoah! This contrasted starkly to the cold mistrust and hostility that McCain inspired in conservatives. They concluded: Obama hero, McCain zero.

With Dalton McGuinty, the problem is his legal decisions

Scott Stinson, of the National Post, is in high dudgeon over recent revelations that Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty tried to improperly - and perhaps illegally – influence the speaker of the Ontario Parliament:

“Monday’s flashpoint came in the release by the opposition Tories that appear to show senior Liberals in the government of Dalton McGuinty attempting to influence Speaker Dave Levac last year into changing his mind on a contempt-of-Parliament ruling that had ordered the government to release thousands of pages of documents relating to the decision to cancel gas-fired plants in Oakville and Mississauga.”

“Tory MPP Lisa McLeod called the new revelation “appalling” on Monday. That isn’t hyperbole. The Speaker’s independence is sacrosanct. Sending an emissary from the Premier’s office to put him “on notice” is at best shockingly poor judgment and at worst an attempt to subvert democracy.”

When I hear people talk like this about the Ontario’s gas plant scandal, I cringe. The problem with Dalton McGuinty’s reign was not the illegal, process-related matters such as this, or the violation of e-mail archiving procedures. The real damage was done by his legal decisions. McGuinty’s MO was to spend taxpayer’s money to get re-elected - and when other people’s money ran out, to call it a career. That is the real scandal. That is why I christened him Premier Deadbeat Dad. 

All the matters relating to the cover-up such as the lost e-mails and, now, the maneuvers against the speaker are just legalistic, picayune, process-oriented, small-ball crap. Leveraging these to hurt the Libs is all well and good, but only so long as you use them to illuminate the big picture: that big government is essentially corrupting, inefficient and ineffective. 

Here is the thing: none of his truly disastrous policy decisions were illegal. If McGuinty wanted to close the gas plants to assuage the NIMBY’s in Oakville and Mississauga, he is perfectly entitled to do that. It is not a subversion of democracy– it is democracy, in its rawest and basest form. As was his decision to buy the loyalty of the teachers, firefighters and other civil servants with generous contracts. It is perfectly legal to soothe the public with public money, even if it bankrupts the public treasury.

In fact, you could even say that buying off the voters with taxpayer money is not just a part of democracy, it is a central flaw in democracy. The only problem: the champions of small government in Ontario – the Progressive Conservatives, aren’t making this argument. They are too busy being “appalled” by McGuinty’s parliamentary strong-arm tactics.

You might also complain that McGuinty’s decision to close those plants was political. Well yes it was. But guess what? Dalton McGuinty was a politician. That’s what politicians do; they make political decisions. Duh. Perhaps if electrical generation weren’t a function of the Ontario government, none of this would have happened in the first place. Unfortunately, again, nobody is making that argument either. Everybody is in the weeds studying e-mail trails. 

If one looks at the political heroes of small government, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Mike Harris –none of them rose to power via their predecessor’s scandals. How many people can even name the British Prime Minister before the Iron Lady? They won office, and became legends, because they made the case for small government in a compelling way. Part of the way they did this was to show how their predecessor’s incompetence was not just an isolated case of personal venality, but a symptom of big government failure. Each made his election a struggle between competing visions, not a petty squabble between competing candidates. That’s why these people are remembered and revered (and of course hated by all the right people).