Barack Obama’s 2008 voting base can be broken down into three main groups: “The Grad School Left”, who understood perfectly who the man was and what the codes he was speaking meant; “Democrat Tribalists”, who have a pathological hatred of Republicans and would have voted for the remains of Michael Jackson if that is who the Democrat Party nominated; and “Barackolytes”, the dreamy-eyed celebrity-obsessed masses who ignored content, context, and all concepts of common sense, and essentially laid supine saying “Lie to me, sexy!”
The Barackolytes who believed this oft-repeated applause line last fall:
Should watch this and finally say, “the right was right – he is what they said he is”:
John Tory, hoping to hand Toronto back to Miller again.
I am a Toronto homeowner. I am a small-c conservative and a big-C Conservative. I have seen the NDP’s union and activist-owned David Miller turn a mediocre city into a disastrous one over the past five years.
I have met John Tory. I like John Tory. I supported John Tory in 2003 when he lost to Miller, a socialist in disguise with zero public profile. I supported John Tory as leader of the Ontario PC party against Dalton “Not a Leader” McGuinty in 2007. I supported a massive failure both times, when the man snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
John Tory is a nice guy. Good businessman. Good husband and father. Good connections. Smart as a whip. Would love to play golf with him.
There are two men I can see who could galvanize the public against the leftist-unionist block that is destroying this city. If you think a Mel Lastman-style unpolished firebrand is best to advance a common sense agenda, support Councillor Rob Ford, Etobicoke North Ward 2. If you think a more polished, serious, hard-working potential media superstar with less small-c conservative cred, but who came from nothing and whose thinking always seems to start with individual citizens and local neighbourhoods, support Scarborough Centre Councillor Michael Thompson.
Listen: you can make a business deal with a smile and a pat on the back. You can solve corporate problems on the golf course. But you can’t win an election against leftists without fire in the belly. You can’t win an election against leftists without the instincts of a shark. You can’t inspire the people if the people can’t identify with you. The people can’t identify with John Tory, and they never will. John, get out of the way, stop sucking the energy out of the opposition room, and let a competent politician do what it takes to bring down the blood suckers.
Much has been said about the situation in Iran over the past couple of weeks. The images of peaceful opposition demonstrators, and the thuggery displayed by the Islamic Revolutionary rulers of Iran, speak for themselves. It was absolutely clear: the demonstrations were not about vote-counting fraud, or about the non-reformist “reformer” Mousavi. The demonstrations were about freedom. Handed an opening by Mousavi and his brave wife (who seemed to be the one pushing her husband far beyond where he ever expected to go in his opposition to the Mullahs), hundreds of thousands of fed up Iranians took to the streets and shouted “Down with the Dictator”. While many in the west took this as opposition to the psychopathic lackey Ahmadinejad, Iranians know this was a chant not against the apocalyptic holocaust denier, but against the Ayatolla and the regime itself. The vast majority of Iranians are fed up with Islamic revolutionary rule. The vast majority of Iranians want a new revolution.
Now, what Western liberal wouldn’t stand with freedom-yearning demonstrators against a tyrannical theocracy? Ten years ago, you probably couldn’t find one. And yet liberals throughout the Western world followed their new messiah, Barack Obama, off an amoral cliff, ignored their own instincts, and worked overtime to justify the US administration’s official policy: do not show any support for the Iranian opposition. “Don’t meddle”…”if we speak up, they will blame us”…”we don’t want to encourage them, in case they get slaughtered”…”we still have shame because of some 1953 coup”.
The cowardice displayed by most liberals over the past two weeks is the cost of the liberal tribalism of the past decade. Lefties everywhere spent eight years following orders: oppose, mock, and deride George W. Bush without hesitation. If it’s Republican, it’s wrong. If you’re part of the liberal tribe, you fall in line, and accept the new marching orders. Mockery of Bush’s freedom agenda, which aimed to support democracy and freedom anywhere and everywhere – a bipartisan agenda if there ever was one – was labeled “neo-con” and thus unacceptable. A principled position became Bush-bashing fodder for Democrat operatives and late-night television idealogues. Millions of Iraqis celebrating free and open elections joyously in the streets were ignored almost completely by the mainstream culture. A generation’s Berlin Wall moment was treated like it never even happened.
Liberal tribalism of this most heinous kind got Barack Obama elected. Unfortunately, it seems that the President not only accepts the anti-freedom-agenda as a tribal position, he takes it seriously. His absoulte abandonment of the young freedom protestors in the streets of Tehran led to the slaughter of many, the arresting of thousands, and the snuffing out of freedom at the hands of Islamo-fascist thugs. Would the crackdown have occurred anyway? Perhaps. But the message would have been sent: the free world supports freedom for all, and stands against thuggery everywhere. Now, we cannot say this, which is a travesty.
Now that the inconvenient little uprising is more-or-less over, Obama can return to negotiating with that “unclenched fist”. Hopefully, some of Obama’s tribal acolytes will have had their eyes opened, and understand that what has happened is an absolute moral tragedy that must never happen again. This shame cannot be washed off.
With an extremely busy and challenging few months ahead with my business, and a home life that includes raising two energetic little boys aged 1 and 3, I’m putting Flaggman’s Canada on hiatus until Summer 2009. I apologize to my loyal readers, and I look forward to returning later in the year. In the meantime, in this age of “Stimulus Spending”, read the timeless wisdom of the late, great Milton Friedman, and commit it to memory:
There are four ways in which you can spend money.
1) You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money.
2) You can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost.
3) I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch!
4) Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government.
When it comes to covering big-time political events, Winnipeg-based Charles Adler is every bit the equal to his talk radio peers in the US who command daily audiences in the millions (unfortunately, he’s not nearly as good on a day-to-day basis, but we take what we can get). Yesterday, he was at his best with this 12-minute monologue on Iggy, the Coalition, and the Conservative budget, titled “The Great Abandoner” (click on the arrow below to listen, and make sure you stick with it to the end – it gets better as it goes along). Tells you all you need to know about Michael Ignatieff, the new crown-prince-in-waiting of the Canadian media elite:
As long as Stephen Harper refuses to expand his PR image beyond “competent” and “safe”, he will fail to attain his much-desired majority government. If he can put forth a coherent, positive, aspirational vision for the country – whether it be with a hard conservative edge or not – he will get it. And now may be his opportunity, as he has once again combined strategic mastery with a bit of luck to buy himself at least another year as Prime Minister in a minority parliament, with an opposition in absolute disarray.
The latest work of strategic mastery? The 2009 budget, presented yesterday, unloved by everyone today. How can a document that has been panned across the ideological spectrum be considered a strategic masterpiece? 1) It pays lip service only to the irresistible force of the Keynesian “stimulus” nonsense fad dominating the world right now, projecting an inflated budget deficit that will never actually take place thanks to a neat poison pill (a provision that releases infrastructure funds only when matched dollar-for-dollar by provinces or municipalities – dollars that simply don’t exist) that will ensure most of the infrastructure billions announced will never be spent. This allowed Harper to gain Liberal support and earn NDP/Bloc wrath – wrath directed mostly at his true rivals, the Liberals, once again fracturing the left into little pieces; and 2) It avoids the “third rail” that conservative politicians must never touch – tax increases – and actually offers, in difficult times, small but tangible tax savings for most.
As for the luck? That happened in December, when the Liberal Party inexplicably decided to cancel its leadership race, and install “The Czar”, Michael Ignatieff, as its instant, permanent replacement for the hapless Stephane Dion. “Hey, he’s brilliant, he’s dashing, he’s worldly, he’s respected – he’s our Obama”, the pinheads in the party must have been saying. But what arrogant Liberals have failed to learn is: a coronation hands its recipient a poisoned chalice. The public at large will always be suspicious of a leader who did not earn his position. Paul Martin, Kim Campbell, and John Turner all learned this in the most humiliating way: each was utterly rejected by voters after being handed the Prime Ministership on a silver platter. I guarantee, the vast majority of non-political-junkie Canadians who watched the news tonight had the same opinion of this performance: who the hell is this guy, and who does he think he is, putting the government on “probation”?:
Iggy is everything the Liberals should have avoided: an arrogant-sounding, elitist, Toronto-centric, prickly, inexperienced, cold, humourless, hard-edged, bitter-looking opportunist, whose every public word makes him sound like an actor pretending to be a politician. While Stephane Dion had even worse flaws, at least he seemed genuine. As I have contended for two years now, there’s only one Liberal leadership candidate who was in the running that the Conservatives were scared of facing off against, and that was the very dangerous, very destructive Bob Rae. Further, there’s only one Liberal who could have peeled away the Conservative base and led them back to government quickly, and that would have been John Manley. But, as luck would have it, the Libs, panicked by their ill-conceived runaway-freight-train coalition experiment and their precarious financial position, took the worst possible choice in the worst possible manner.
Bad choices come with bad costs. Now, we’ll see if Harper can seize the opportunity, and move from being a competent caretaker to an inspirational leader.
I wish I had the time to dig into the Conservatives’ 2009 Budget released today. Here’s the link, if you’re interested. But, between my family vacation earlier this month, my 3-year-old-son’s tonsilectomy/adenoidectomy last week, and my ongoing efforts to keep my business strong during these bizarre economic times, my blogging has screeched to a virtual halt.
From what I’ve read and heard in the media coverage so far today, this budget is a puzzler, from both an economic and a political perspective. Economically, the infrastructure-heavy spending plans are anything but a “stimulus” (I hate that word). Infrastructure spending is slow-moving, and highly inefficient thanks to local political graft and massive union-controlled labour inefficiency. If the Cons intend to actually proceed with the spending they’ve announced, then I think they’ve gone nuts. If they have made these announcements as a PR exercise, and end up spending a fraction of the funds (which is what I suspect is the case), then I think they’re acting wisely in the face of a media-generated Keynsian hysteria.
If, however, Flaherty & co. wanted a true “stimulus”, they could have cut the GST again; they could have chopped payroll taxes; they could have reduced energy taxes. Instead, the personal tax reductions are miniscule, and the home renovation tax credit is good “bang for the buck”, but will be a significant spending incentive to only a small sliver of the population. Perhaps government tax revenue projections, thanks to the decline in the investment markets, are so poor, that there’s simply no room to significantly drop taxes. Either way, at least there’s no tax increases.
Politically, it’s a little less difficult to understand. This is a survival budget – a document that the Liberals could not possibly defeat. It has backed the Liberals into a corner – with the coalition idiocy now no longer an option, and the Liberals under Iggy with no ideas of their own, this will maintain the status quo.
The questions for 2009 will be: what will the Harper Conservatives offer to small-c conservatives to excite them to keep their grass-roots support? And when will Harper finally put forward a coherent vision of what Canada is and should be, in order to rally the country to give him a majority? It’s a make-or-break year; he can’t float along forever on simple competence and continuity. And, for Iggy and the Liberals, the question is: what can they do, beyond their typical demagoguic bluster, to differentiate themselves from the Conservatives, now that Harper is, essentially, leading as a Liberal minus the corruption and tax increases.
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