Valid criticism

Every time I hear the Conservatives championing the status quo on health care, I cringe. Same when they absently recite the 'us too, only better' line when speaking of daycare with the provinces. When they agree to honour every deal, every committment, every promise that Paul Martin makes -- I want to shake them and say 'WHY?!'

The public doesn't care who writes the cheque. It may just as well be the Liberals as the Conservatives if their outlooks are so much the same.

The Supreme Court decision on health care insurance was the perfect opportunity for them to take a bold stand and say 'enough is enough. We have to find new ways of looking at old problems'. Instead, they stood in the House and dredged up years old news about cut transfer payments leading to the current crisis. Not a winning strategy.

Chantel Hebert has a must-read in the Star today about this very issue.

I loathe the personal attacks that have been heaped on Harper. They are a distraction from the real issues. Charming manners and smooth patter might make a person fun company, but it doesn't make them a leader and it doesn't mean they're a thinker. That said, assessing his strategies is valid.

In an effort to appease his critics, Harper has allowed to the party veer left, and as Hebert points out -- it doesn't work on him.

It is hard when the Prime Minister is running around offering money here and there and everywhere, to say 'no', to some of these special (and one might argue, deserving) groups. It is easy to wonder if they did that, might they still have a chance of being elected. Rather than take the risk, Harper has decided to play along. It's a game he can't win. It alienates the base, and gives fodder for those who sense the party's weakness and then exploit the follower mentality.

Harper and his MPs have to take a bold stand on contentious issues. Same-sex isn't enough. It might please the social conservatives, but it is not enough to bring over those who would shrug at the issue. Most people are not going to look big picutre on this one -- it will take a few Supreme Court decisions undermining religions before people realise the damage this bill can impose.

The Conservatives must be ready to uphold Conservative principles. If they are going to say 'we'll honour' government agreements -- let them be prepared to say -- we will honour the government's committment to funding, but we will do so without the prohibitions and restrictions they have placed on Provincial discrection' -- in other words, the gas tax can go to build roads and fix bridges, child care provisions can go to support families who make choices other than government run institutions.

They have fought so loud and so hard against the NDP budget, but instead of stating the obvious -- that Paul Martin has no intention of ever putting money to most of the programs on on this bill -- they allow themselves to be painted as 'against post secondary education, against the environment, against affordable housing.' From the beginning they should have been saying that this bill is not important because it isn't worth the napkin it was written on. Liberals like John McKay and Ralph Goodale keep giving business the nudge and wink -- 'it's all contingent on economic performance and suplus and paying down deficit -- hinting that these targets will never be met -- at least not within this mandate. The Conservatives have kept the public thinking that this money is going to start flowing in July. Instead of treating it with the incredulity it deserves, they have raised its public perception, and when the money fails to flow -- they will be blamed or it will be remembered that they didn't want it to flow anyway. They will lose their 'right' to expose the Liberal fraud because they have played it as though it were a real deal instead of a sham.

Jack Layton can't stand up and say he's been played for a fool, but if the Conservatives start to treat this as a 'who cares -- it's never gonna happen' issue -- people might start to pay attention to all the 'ifs' in C-48.

If politics is all strategy, you have to learn to pick your battles. So far, the Conservatives have been too afraid of dropping in the polls to do that.

A lot of good it's done them.

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