I understand why the government is bereft of ideas. The entire focus has revolved around the idea of moving towards majority. Despite the denials, it was embarrassingly obvious that the Tories wanted a spring election. Whether it be war rooms, spending sprees, ad campaigns, etc, everything moved as one towards the singular goal. The fly in the ointment, all the initiatives and manoeuvres didn't pay dividends, the Tory stuck, then falling in the polls.
I view the apparent lack of new initiatives as further proof that the brain trust was obsessed with an election. If not, then why was there no forward thinking in maintaining a steady stream of ideas? You have two choices, either the timetable was a function of election planning, or you don't really have much to offer Canadians.
Thirteen years, as we are so often reminded, to develop policy for the day the Tories took the helm. There is a strange irony in calling yourself "new", while simultaneously needing to re-shape your agenda. A mere 15 months in and you're already tapped out? Truth be told, Canada's "New" Government should be awash in ideas, bursting at the seems, fighting the clock, to get out the comprehensive agenda. Apologists would argue that the Tories are the victims of their own success, but I would hardly call the skimpy 5 (or 6) priorities an ambitious agenda.
The Conservatives are already in the "what now" phase of their mandate. If we do see an extended summer recess, it really is a striking development, given the circumstance. New meets stale, in record time.
14 comments:
Truth be told, Canada's "New" Government should be awash in ideas, bursting at the seems, fighting the clock, to get out the comprehensive agenda
I would argue that they probably are Steve. The problem is, they aren't ideas that Canadians want and they know it. They'll save those for when they dream they'll get a majority.
I have to agree with knb here, but then I expect that comes as no surprise given what my views on what Harper and the CPC really represent are. It is also interesting that to this day we still have no overarching theme/vision for how Canada would be changed/evolved under a CPC government, unlike what we used to see from both Lib and PCPC governments in the past. Now, I do not believe that dearth is accidental, I believe they do have a vision, the same vision they tried unsuccessfully to sell to voters as the Reform/CA and CPC in the 2004 election. They know this vision is not shared by enough voters to even get them to a minority let alone majority so they have to pander with as Coyne called them policiettes.
If they take this long a break they undercut their argument as being a government working for the people. They have put themselves in a really awkward position, either they are bereft of policies/ideas and had to close Parliament early for that reason, or they are lazy and don't want to work very hard, or they are running away from all the hard questioning and bad news that the last few weeks of QP have provided them. None of these three explanations/options though is a good one for the CPC. It will be interesting to see how an early break and a long summer one will be rationalized by the CPC government and its supporters if this is what they do.
Scotian.. when are you going to start making that blog of yours more current? You've got enough good long comments and replies to people that you could easily be posting such stuff on your own blog. (Not criticizing you for your long replies.. I'm just saying you'd have a quality blog with daily thoughts if you could replicate on there what you do on here)
Let's take this from the other side.
First time in Canadian history the government fell on a vote of confidence.
Ran a campaign on five priorities. This was supposed to last for the breadth of the Parliamentary session. One year at most.
Expected to call an election in a year. Low polls and Harper's intuition says not yet.
Not suggesting that Harper has reached the critical point of Martin in the summer of 2005. Liberals fighting for dear life despite budget passing with NDP support and Belinda's defection.
A new throne speech needs to be written. CPC government may fall sometime in the fall session. Harper can still decide whether he wants to be the next Diefenbaker or the next Arthur Meighen.
Who does Stephen Harper think he is, Ralph Klein?
As for my thoughts.. I think the long break would be also to try and cool down all the negative publicity they've been getting with Afghanistan and the Green Plan II - the Sequel.
Ottlib.
My answer is the one above.
He checks into hotel rooms under many alias. Ralph Klein, Mike Harris, John Diefenbaker, R. B. Bennett, Brian Mulroney, Arthur Meighen, Nicolas Sarkozy, John Howard etc. All I know is that he has never used the pseudonym Charles Joseph Clark.
When all your energy is spent pretending to be what you are not, forcing you caucus to be what it is not, at the same time as trying to sneak your real agenda in the back door - one can understand a certain inability to burst with fresh new ideas!
They can't do anything more because they would have to unveil their real agenda, which they were hoping to save for a majority. People may make fun of the hidden agenda thing but it was right on the mark.
I guess this story is proof that there is a limit to how long a political party can campaign, including one as hyper-partisan as the Harper Conservatives.
By my calculations they have run out of gas after about 24 months of continuous campaigning. (They began about 9 months before the last election after a brief respite following the 2004 election).
It was an impressive run nonetheless. Now they find themselves unable to sustain a campaign and hopelessly unprepared to govern. No wonder they want a long vacation.
Scott Tribe:
I wish I could give you a good answer, but I simply haven't felt like posting anything at Saundrie recently, except for the detainees issue and on that one I wanted my blood to stop boiling as furiously as it has been because of that issue before I posted something. I suspect that by the end of this week I will finally have something on that issue there, and I will be doing a two year anniversary of the Grewal fraud and Harper's getting away with it to date.
However, I prefer reading to writing, and I also tend to prefer joining in active conversations over writing at my own blog. I hope that helps explain things for you.
I'd get out of Dodge too if I had to face my opponents on this.
That is outrageous knb.
I think the problem why the Tories don't have much of an agenda is unlike when we came to power in 1993, Canada is generally doing well on pretty much every front so there really wasn't much that needed changing. This contrasts heavily from when the Liberals took power in 1993 and much change was needed. If anything we left the country in such great shape that no party could make any dramatic changes without plunging in the polls.
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