Wednesday, May 18, 2005
STRONACH
No time to blog, as usual. A few quick comments.
I find my self arriving in my hometown of Newmarket on the very day that the riding's MP becomes a Liberal. I haven't had a chance to talk to too many about the floor crossing, although opinion seems split. Apparently there was quite the angry crowd at her riding office yesterday, but this in only from third hand reports, and even then it was probably just the hard-core conservatives of the riding, raising the question, "can you have a Conservative riot?"
If there is an election in the near future, my guess is that Stronach will win the riding by about the same narrow margin she won it by last time.
I don't buy the argument that Stronach's defection was opportunistic. I think she left the CPC based on whatever her principles are. I was never very impressed with Stronach as a Conservative, and now moving to support a Liberal government that is corrupt and refuses to acknowledge its loss of confidence damns Stronach in my opinion even more. But I'm unlikely to vote either Conservative or Liberal in the next election.
There are a lot of truly awful words being thrown at Stronach, particularly in posts, or comments to posts, on blogs of the Blogging Tories and some Red Ensigners. Its really unfortunate when political debate amongst citizens descends to a level of name calling below that generally seen in the House of Commons.
Read or Post a Comment
Agreed, no MP should deserve to be called a Klansman, Dipstick, whore or prostitute (http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1116429952346_14/?hub=Canada)...though I'm not certain if Paul Wells is confusing the Liberal Caucus' focus on those particular epithets with general criticism of Stronach in this post (http://weblogs.macleans.ca/paulwells/archives/week_2005_05_15-2005_05_21.asp#001345) or whether I'm missing something based on the CTV article.
Ok, petty below the belt invectives, of course they should not be used. However I disagree with you saying this was not opportunistic. This is the definition of opporuntistic. Just last week she voted to take down the government and now claims that taking down the government goes strongly against her principles. That is a direct contradiction. However, consider that in combination with the cabinet post. If she really was concerned about the budget not passing why not cross the floor as a backbencher? Going from shadow cabinet directly to cabinet smacks of opportunism, indeed it seems apparent that this was part of the deal, that she wouldn't leave for anything other than a cabinet position otherwise why would Martin offer it?
H. Jones,
1. I'm not saying I agree with her principles, I certainly don't (just making that clear)
2. Perhaps it was opportunistic, but if all she was going for was opportunity, she could have played it so much better. Why do it at this point? Why not kill the government get re-elected as a Conservative (wouldn't be a problem in this riding) and then go to the libs?
Opportunistic or not, I can't support anyone going over to the Liberals at this point, knowing what we know about them.
Matthew, I don't want to get too tit for tat but I still don't get what you're saying: "why not kill the gov. get re-elected as a Con. and then go to the libs?" because that scenario presents uncertainties, in crossing when she did she was assured a cabinet position: it couldn't realistically get sweeter for her than that. I disagree that she could have played it better from an advancement point of view.