Let's see if my post was "designed to sway the uninformed." Your question: "Please explain to me how this gives Trudeau any more legitimacy than the left accorded Harper." First, to declare a personal interest, I didn't vote for Trudeau; never voted Liberal. I vote NDP and Conservative, this time NDP which came third.
Numbers rarely tell the whole story. Harper was a conservative aberration. He ruled, as distinguished conservative author and celebrity Conrad Black wrote, like a "sadistic Victorian schoolmaster." His government was "rotten," editorialized the conservative owners of the Globe and Mail, Canada's flagship newspaper. Sadistic and rotten isn't the traditional Conservative Party of Canada.
Two thirds of the country may be progressive while at least two thirds of the media is conservative-owned; most endorsed Harper's re-election. (Something for Americans to consider when they blame similar " mainstream media" for their election outcomes. )
Canada voted against Harper's culture-shift away from its moderate values. Canada ended Harper's right-wing experiment in political re-engineering. Atlantic Canada's four provinces didn't give him a seat; the Liberal tide rose for first time in decades across the entire country from Atlantic to Pacific to Arctic seas.
Trudeau's astonishing victory and legitimacy is more than win-some, lose-some. The population generally restored their idea of Canada as a big tent of moderate governance. Harper's skilful cultivation of the ethnic vote collapsed as "old stock" and newcomers recognized his negativity and mean-spiritednness.
I doubt Trudeau is beyond the pale of 60 per cent of voters, as you claim. "No one, even diehard Conservatives, doubted that Stephen Harper deserved to lose," wrote the Globe's conservative columnist Margaret Wente yesterday. My Conservative friends, all progressives whom Harper swiftly marginalized from the party, are smiling and celebrating with the rest of us. Canada won a big one.
You and I haven't experienced such magnanimity in our lifetimes. I haven't heard anyone blaming or vilifying the CPC. Harper said Canada would be unrecognizable when he was finished with it. Canada said no after nine years. Trudeau's win had greater legitimacy than Harper's coming to power on a promise of greater accountability. It conformed to our national character of moderation.
Where's my hypocrisy, James?
I am so pissed because I was almost finished typing a very long rebuttal and my computer shut down and I need to do it all over again. Piss me off!
First, how you personally voted has nothing to do with the hypocrisy I referred to. But you knew that.
Harper a conservative aberration? I think not. He is the product of a political movement, Reform, that swept 1/3 of our country and transformed the PC party of old into the CPC. That's no aberration. An aberration is much more the apparent dilettante scion of a wealthy family, who, because of his personal attractiveness and his last name, is vaulted into the big leagues without the normal proving that politics demands. THAT is an aberration. You knew that.
Conrad is reminiscing about his boarding school days, at our alma mater Trinity College School, when he uses terms like that. Harper's government rotten? Probably, at this point in time. Much like Chretien's, Mulroney's and Trudeau's after 10 years. It's not a function of Harper. It's a function of holding the levers of power for too long. Happens to them all regardless of which side of the aisle they come from. But you know that.
Media endorsements once every four years, a week before the election, are largely meaningless to the average voter. What is way more important, and influential, is the constant barrage of spin, both of the choice of story and the content, that happens every single day of the four years between elections. And the vast majority of reporters have a left leaning slant. That's just a fact. But again, you knew that.
Harper's right wing "experiment" hasn't been cut short. It's been accomplished! He reduced the power and size of the federal government, relative to our population and GDP, significantly by ceding or returning power to the provinces. That won't be able to be reversed by Trudeau. And it ends the real experiment....that one started by Trudeau Sr., gathering power to the federal level at the expense of our provinces, trying to change us from a "Confederation of Provinces" (Sound familiar King?) into a federal state ruled from Ottawa.
The Liberal tide?? Let see....the Liberals won all 30 Atlantic seats, about 40 out of Quebec from the 75 up for grabs, 80 in Ontario out of about 120. And only 20 out of 100 in Western Canada. That may be a breakthrough for his party since his father told westerners to "[censored] off" while prime minister but it's still not "sweeping the country". You knew all that.
Trudeau's victory is astonishing, I'll grant you that. He had to come from a long way back in the field. But he did it and should be congratulated for pulling it off. But the return of big tent politics? I don't think so. The hard core NDP continued to vote for the NDP, back at their historical 20% level. Jack Layton was the aberration. The CPC stayed steady with their real number of voters from the last election and scored a typical opposition percentage of 32%. The "big tent" continues to be the CPC for the time being, keeping a much more diverse and fractious group headed in the same voting direction than either of the other two parties. Harper's vote in no way "collapsed" with any segment. What happened is that 1.5 million more people voted in this election....and they voted Liberal. That's not a collapse of Harper's CPC. It's an astonishing increase for the Liberals. You knew that.
"You and I haven't experienced such magnanimity in our lifetimes." Huh? Have you read any of the on-line comments from average citizens in The Globe or The Star or even that bastion of Conservatism, The Post. The Harper/CPC/Western Canada bashing continues unabated.
As you know, I'm conservative and a supporter of the CPC, MUCH LIKE 32% OF VOTERS IN THIS MOST RECENT ELECTION!
Trudeau's stated platform DOES NOT CONFORM TO MY IDEA OF OUR NATIONAL CHARACTER OR ANY TYPE OF MODERATION.
King, please accept that your views are your views. They don't represent me. They were formed by you being part of the Laurentian axis of power in Canada. I have told you this many times. The West is different. Not an aberration... different! To describe our way of thinking as an aberration or to say our way of thinking means we are bad Canadians is so insulting and condescending you can't credit it. That, in a nutshell, is exactly WHY the West has a problem with the East. We have run out of patience for being schooled by the Eastern schoolmarms and scolds about what it means to be good Canadians.
