OTTAWA (CP) - Conservatives are trying to turn Prime Minister Stephen Harper's principled stand on the Middle East conflict into a money-maker for the party.
Using the Lebanese turmoil - in which hundreds of civilians, including at least nine Canadians, have been killed - to make a fundraising pitch has drawn the ire of at least one Liberal leadership hopeful...
Gerard Kennedy called the ruling party's latest appeal for donations "crass" and "offensive."
"We have people dying and families being displaced on both sides of this conflict and meanwhile Stephen Harper is allowing his foreign policy to be used as a partisan fundraising tool," Kennedy said Friday.
"This crosses the line."
However, Kennedy called on Harper to "repudiate" Donison's pitch "in the strongest terms possible."
"The implication it makes is that this is just another political issue to make hay out of. That's got to be offensive to people on all sides," Kennedy said in an interview.
"It's crass and unacceptable and we would expect much, much more from the party in power . . . They're wanting to collect on the position that they've taken."
Of all the leadership candidates, Kennedy has done the best job defining the Conservative agenda as nothing more than a "marketing strategy". Kennedy's latest assault is consistent with this idea, once again highlighting the hyper-politicism of this government, which apparently sees no bounds to partisanship. IMHO, Kennedy's approach offers the Liberals their best hope to derail the government's slick campaign. If you can raise doubt as to motive, the battle is already won, no matter how "attractive" the policy.
7 comments:
Hi Steve V,
Thanks for the post. I wonder how you feel about Kennedy. Do you like his ideas? And how do you think he'll do in the race?
tarheel
I do like Kennedy, very much in fact. I haven't decided who to support yet, but its between Kennedy, Dion and Rae.
You?
Hi,
It's still to early, but I like Kennedy as well. My fam thinks I'm craZy. But I think it's time for someone younger. I also like Iggy/MI, and I think that he tends to get a bumb wrap. But who knows...my mind may change and I can be persuaded.
"Admit it," Donison says. "Moral clarity feels a lot better than the endless equivocation we found with our previous government."
Riiiiiight, the moral clarity of supporting collective punishment against civilians, the destruction of the infrastructure of Lebanon, the mass exodus/cleansing of close to a million civilians while bombing runs continue to destroy bridges and roads, and supporting an action wildly out of proportion to the original incident, an incident which may have not occurred the way Israel claimed as in the capture of their soldiers may have occurred in LEBANON!!!
I would not have believed it if I had not seen it with my own eyes! What's worse is that this is being done while the damned offensive is still in full swing in Lebanon and a day or so after a Canadian peacekeeper was killed by Israel's so called precision targeting. Thanks Steve for finding this, I will have to write a post on it myself, or at least reference it in one I will be doing over the weekend on the conflict and how our "decisive" PM betrayed the last few decades of Canadian foreign policy of evenhandedness from both Liberal and PCPC governments.
Then there is this paragraph:
"But Donison observes that "not everyone is grateful" for Harper's "strong, clear direction," particularly not the country's opposition parties which "are only interested in maneuvering for party advantage" and are "blindly determined" to topple Harper's minority government."
Right, the Liberals have yet to pick a leader and somehow are still madly desiring to topple the government?!? I have to wonder at the wisdom of insulting the intelligence of these CPC supporters he is pitching this to, although given the quality of the thinking of most of their online brethren I suppose they might actually buy it. I don't see the Libs bringing down Harper before their leadership race is over, at least not unless it is clear the country is so outraged by what the Harper government is doing on a particular issue that they will want to see the government fall.
This is truly disgusting Steve, and it only continues to show the parallels to Bush, because this feels just like the use for fundraising by Bushco of the pics of Bush on Air Force One during the 9/11/01 crisis despite having promised to do no such thing weeks after the event if that long. I keep getting told by some posters that I overstate the dangers of this government and to what depths it will go to gain and hold power. Well this is yet one more piece of evidence to show that if anything I may be understating the dangers of this government.
Thanks Steve for bringing this to mine and everyone else here's attention.
This story is all over the media now.
it's showing their true colours -- purely cynical and vote driven. However, they don't realize that those people who supported liberal gov'ts for the last 13 years did so because their values were about playing the role of peacekeeper, a mediator in a troubled world, an oasis where people from all cultures can find an escape from the black-and-white dealings of the neo-cons... When bush didn't insist that democracy had to be in Saudi Arabi -- the kiln that created most of the 9/11 terrorists -- I became convinced of the 'money mantra' and corporate chauffering that neo-cons do.
By the way, I'm a big Rae fan and feel he is the one who can step in and be the leader to beat Harpor one-on-one, while uniting a fractured left-centre. I also like Dion and Kennedy, tho.
"Strong, clear direction" translates to inability to see the world beyond black and white. Harper's viewpoint mirrors Bush's simplistic approach to world affairs- and what a disaster this has been.
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