[Riverdale Rink Rat]

Good point! The broadening of the caucus from western based to a wider national one will influence the party and bring pressure to trend it more to centre. Toronto may finally get a voice and a view at the federal level which it hasn't had for decades.

While I think the widening of the Conservative base to include more of Canada is a good thing overall, so they won't play as much to regional interests, I don't think it'll move them to some mythical 'centre'. If anything, a majority will enbolden the Conservatives to try to implement more of their party platform. Which, quite frankly, isn't a bad thing, either. It's what the country voted for -- including the GTA.

To me, this election was a great result -- a majority so the Conservatives will get to show how they would like to govern, an energized Official Opposition with a clearly different political viewpoint, the BQ put out to pasture, and Ignatieff finding out you can't just parachute back into Canada and become Prime Minister. I also like the fact that the Greens got their leader elected, so we get to find out whether they're for real or just gadflys.

Call it the 'Put up or shut up' election.

 

[Tewder]

There is a line of thinking that believes that Harper was more 'beholden' to further extreme right elements all the while the party was more regional based. Now that it is more national in scope he will need to rely on these elements less which will facilitate him taking the party more to the centre. Still conservative, but closer towards the centre and less interested in any social platform.

 

[LAz]

Delete your own post.

I don't see where the delete button is.

Harper may be cold and impersonal, but he is extremely educated and well spoken.

Which is absolutely irrelevant, when social disparities increase, national debt bloats, and more and more people suffer as a result of his free market mania.

Free market fanatics always ruin what they have. They always do. They never fail at ruining.

 

[Tewder]

Anything to the extreme fails, which is why it is good we have more than one party and ideology to choose from. They mitigate each other.

 

[CDL.TO]

I don't see where the delete button is.

Click "Edit Post", click "Delete".

It's that easy!

 

[kEiThZ]

I agree. I was living in the States for several of the Bush years, and as much as I'm not a fan of the man, Harper is miles ahead of Bush on the smarts front. With Bush, you always got the idea that Rove and Darth Cheney were the ones calling the shots, whereas Harper seems to be pretty canny and speaks in sentences that make grammatical sense. I don't think he's an oaf at all, and he's infinitely preferable to the current crop of US right-wing "leaders."

+1

Seriously. Harper = Dubya? Yeah right. If there's anybody that Harper would be like in the US, it'd be Nixon.

But what can you expect from Heather Mallick. She's so off the deep end, that now that all the left-leaning media in Canada cant stomach her, she has to go overseas to get an outlet for her vitriol.

Calling Harper dumb is both naive and non-sensical. The man is the third Conservative PM in history to have 3 winning elections back to back. He's savaged the Liberals (the so called "natural governing party") and decimated the Bloc. The idea that he's a moron is laughable. He's Machiavellian.

 

[LAz]

+1

Seriously. Harper = Dubya? Yeah right. If there's anybody that Harper would be like in the US, it'd be Nixon.

But what can you expect from Heather Mallick. She's so off the deep end, that now that all the left-leaning media in Canada cant stomach her, she has to go overseas to get an outlet for her vitriol.

Calling Harper dumb is both naive and non-sensical. The man is the third Conservative PM in history to have 3 winning elections back to back. He's savaged the Liberals (the so called "natural governing party") and decimated the Bloc. The idea that he's a moron is laughable. He's Machiavellian.

Bullocks. Harper is no Nixon. You see, Nixon was not a neoliberal. Harper is. This group was once called the lunatic fringe. Take out the fringe and that's where we are. The free market with no regulations or anything impeding the wants of the private sector always fails. Always. Their retarded logic is against city planning for crying out loud!!!

 

[Urban Shocker]

Calling Harper dumb is both naive and non-sensical. The man is the third Conservative PM in history to have 3 winning elections back to back. He's savaged the Liberals (the so called "natural governing party") and decimated the Bloc. The idea that he's a moron is laughable. He's Machiavellian.

Mostly, what he did during his minorities was neuter the lost boy Liberals by temporarily moving to the centre - which enhanced the NDP as the de facto official opposition and sets us up for real choices in the next election. The defection of Bloc suport to the NDP had nothing to do with Harper.

 

[Hipster Duck]

Calling Harper dumb is both naive and non-sensical. The man is the third Conservative PM in history to have 3 winning elections back to back. He's savaged the Liberals (the so called "natural governing party") and decimated the Bloc. The idea that he's a moron is laughable. He's Machiavellian.

Harper is incredibly smart. Actually, the leaders of the four main parties probably the brainiest of any that I've ever seen in a Canadian election. Oc course, all 4 were smart, but only 2 were shrewd.