Odd they endorse change given this paragraph in the election editorial today:
It is hard to endorse him [Stephen Harper] and his party unreservedly. We worry about his seeming indifference to the need for a strong central government in a country so replete with runaway centrifugal forces. We worry about him teaming up with the Bloc Québécois to weaken the federal government's tax-raising capacity and its advocacy of national programs. We worry that he might have to strike retrograde compromises with social conservatives in the party's midst. We worry that he may prove heavy-handed in wielding the considerable powers of a prime minister.To that might be added the very real fear that the Conservative Plan is actually not a plan at all. It is merely the tissue paper cover over the real plan that will only be seen once the conservatives are in power. Consider the number of twists and turns we have seen in the conservative "Plan" already, all designed to tweak the wording to match with what the right number of voters are looking for.
The vote is what counts; the policy comes after, and only after the Consdervatives have four years to do as they wish from a comofrtable majority position.
Once safely seated at 24 Sussex, likely with a strong majority by current polling numbers, the Conservatives will discover the country's finacial picture is now much bleaker than originally forecast.
An outside firm will audit the books and - predictably - declare the Liberals to be manipulaters - do the work.
Expect to see someone like Mr. Gourley of PriceClubWaterHouseCoopers, well known to Newfoundlanders and Labradorians for his mockery of accounting integrity two years ago, brought forward to twist and distort the numbers to make the situation look much worse than it appeared. To produce the report the government asked for saying what it wanted said.
And suddenly there will be no base in Goose bay. No troops for Trenton.
No money for child care.
Suddenly the focus will shift to the $30 billion in reallocations.
Call them program cuts, to be more accurate.
And the tax cuts will carry forward since they benefit the wealthy, in any event. The ghost of Mike harris and the mess of Ontario after his tenure is long forgotten, as is the mess left by the last Conservative government under Brian Mulroney.
The Globe editorialists try to erase their logical contradictions by trusting in the voters. That would be fine if party policy, such as the Conservative one, was not a moveable feast of pork and verbiage. A voter might well chose today based on one thing only to find that in truth, the policy actually had changed to something else. Stephen Harper cannot be held to account since he has said dofferent things at different times, all within the same election.
It's one thing to campaign from the left and govern from the right when you are basically somewhere in the middle anyways.
But when you campaign from the far left and you are really from the far right, perhaps the results won't be so pleasant.
Maybe, just maybe, the people who wish so desperately for a change, people who can recall the folly of Bob Rae and Mike Harris, these same people should be careful what they wish for.
