“Anonymous” got it right when s/he guessed at the reason for my hope for a Conservative minority as the result of the election on Monday:
holding pattern to keep things
moderate until they get their collective acts slightly more together. A
Tory (that’s “Conservative Party” for my non-Commonwealth readers)
minority would punish Liberal arrogance, and the Tories couldn’t
successfully pass any socially conservative legislation if they had a
bare plurality of seats. A chastened Liberal party would come back and
win a majority in 18 months and would Do Better.
I strongly believe that reasoned compromise and moderation is one of the best ideals of the National Character:
between English and French, between ties to the countries from which we
came and the country we adopted, between free markets and socialism and
yes, between being like and unlike our neighbour to the south. I think
that a Conservative minority allying itself with the Bloc (who would
agree on decentralization and granted more powers to the provinces,
which works given Canada’s vast size) and an opposition alliance of the
Liberals and NDP would’ve been a workable solution and would’ve given
the Liberals the “time out” that they so richly deserve. At the very least, it would result in Paul Martin’s ouster.
I also believe that repairing some of the damage to the US/Canada
relationship is in order, and I think that the Tories are probably
better able to do that than the Grits. We may not necessarily agree
with everything they do (my own stance on the Iraq war is that they’re
invading the wrong country), but as anyone who’s made it even part-way
to adulthood will tell you: friends can disagree and remain friends. I think we make a pretty good Simpsons to their Flanders.
“Anonymous” also says:
While I find a good chunk of their social agenda repugnant (and I’m
sure that for at least some of them, their Canada does not include
Accordion Guy), I’m of the “I don’t have to like you to work with you”
school of thought — hell, anyone who’s been to any of David Janes’
“poliblogger” get-tyogethers knows that I’m even of the “I don’t have
to agree with you to have a friendly beer with you school of thought”.
They can do their job and keep the government running and the swindling
down, and I can do mine, which is making the Internet go. A minority
position would forve them to curb their retrograde social enthusiasms.
I won’t go to
their barbecues and they don’t have to attend my hot tub parties.
I live in the Trinity-Spadina riding, where the race was between
current MP Tony Ianno and the challeneger Olivia Chow. David Watters,
the Conservative candidate, is a non-entity in this riding,
“non-entity” being defined as “not being able to get more than twice
the votes for the Green Party, around whom I can’t even sustain a straight face, never mind the environment“.
Given that I wanted to give the Liberals a time-out and the fact that
Olivia had the best shot at usurping Ianno and since she was probably
the candidate with whom I could actually buttonhole for a half-hour
over coffee (she once tried to recruit me to play accordion at an event
she was hosting), I held my nose and voted NDP.
(By the bye, Ianno won, but by just about 1000 votes)
It may have been madness, but there was a method.
One wonders what the Colbinator (who wrote a good piece on why one should vote Tory) and Judy Rebick (who co-wrote a predictably finger-wagging piece on why one should NDP) would think.
(Truth be told, I’d gladly have a beer with Colby, who seems like the
sort of fella with whom one could imbibe many fine brews and discuss
just about any topic under the sun. On the other hand, I would probably
avoid ingesting anything — even air — with Judy. It’s not from any
political disagreements I have with her; it’s fear of catching The
Shrill.)
A wag at Tucows noted: “The maritime provinces voted to keep getting
handouts, and Ontario voted to keep giving handouts to them.”
