Tom Flanagan is full of crap

As a so-called "red meat conservative", I find the shenanigans that our current "Conservative" government is engaged in dismaying. Supposedly acting on the advice of Tom Flanagan, the Harper government has taken a sharp turn to the left in the belief that by behaving like Liberals, they will be able to engineer a majority mandate following the next election.

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Only problem is that history has proven that school of thought to be less than credible, as successive Conservative governments that drifted to the left during their mandate have gone down in flames. Brian Mulroney, who was elected with the largest mandate in the history of Canada, managed to alienate not only conservative supporters, but paved the way for the Conseratives' long exile. While clearly, his mandate was to reduce government spending as well as the size of government, Mulroney ran up deficits and spent money like the proverbial drunken sailors. Moreover, while he was critical of the patronage appointments that the Liberals made while in office, Mulroney turned out to be somewhat of a patronage king himself in appointing his cronies to government jobs. Finally it was under the Mulroney Conservatives that the hated GST was imposed on hapless Canadians. Similarly, Ontario's Ernie Eves couldn't distance himself fast enough from Mike Harris's Common Sense Revolution when he became premier of that province, opting instead to give the voters a healthy dose of Liberal style government spending, which resulted in a huge deficit. Naturally, the voters tossed Eves out on his ear opting instead for the real Liberals under the leadership of the shifty Dalton McGuinty. Currently the government of Alberta is nominally Conservative, but you wouldn't be able to differentiate the Alberta Conservatives from the Ontario Liberals, judging by Premier Ed Stelmach's policies. Stelmach is even outspending the Ontario Liberals as he plans to take care of Albertans from cradle to grave. His plans to pay for his largesse include heavily taxing the energy corporations that brought Alberta its wealth to begin with. Give Stelmach a few years and we will see him preside over the death of the Conservative Party in Alberta. So what do all these people have to do with Tom Flanagan you might ask? The Harper strategy to remain at the reins of government and eventually gain a majority is based on the premise that Canadians don't really want a conservative government; that they have gotten so used to Big Government and government largesse that to reduce the size of government and to curtail government spending is a fatal error. Hence the budget brought down by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty last March contained the biggest increase in government spending in the history of Canada. It also contained a minimum of tax relief and a massive growth in government through the hiring of a gazillion environmental enforcement officers. Clearly what the conservatives are doing is tailoring their programs to suit what they perceive to be the desires of Canadians and since Canada has just come off a 13-year Liberal binge, the perceived wisdom (if you can call it that) is that Canadian voters are hooked on government and all that it purports to do for its citizens. A much better and more honest approach to attaining a majority is for the Conservatives to have a clear vision of how they see Canada being a better place under their guidance and like Mike Harris and Ralph Klein, sell that vision to the voters. It's the only way that things in this country will ever progress from where they are today. And Tom Flanagan's approach of incrementalism and moderation isn't helpful, to say the least. Rather than help the Conservatives reach a majority through their own programs, they are merely borrowing from the Liberals to further their (the Libs') agenda. While it is true that for the first time Harper is looking at the possibility of a majority, it isn't because of Tom Flanagan's brilliant strategy of behaving like Liberals. It's because Stephane Dion is such an inept leader that he makes Harper look good. If Harper were facing another Liberal leader, say Ignatieff, his numbers wouldn't be nearly as good. But that's for history to affirm. For now the Conservatives are continuing to sell short their principles and their core supporters by following the shabby advice proffered by a guy who's full of crap.