Preston Manning, Reform’s Judas from the Get-go

Don’t know whether Sun News Media star Ezra Levant would could consider Yours Truly, too far down on the ‘Anybody Important List’ as a colleague, but because we are two in the tiny handful of news types touting conservative viewpoints, I consider Levant mine.

Levant, who used to work as an Assistant, is openly “disappointed” with former Canadian Reform Party Leader Preston Manning’s big switcheroo on global warming/climate change specifically with the Reformer of old now trying to con Canadians with a carbon tax that he is pretending is not a tax. So Machiavellian has Manning (in another era the byword for bland and boring) become, he suggests that scientists rather than politicians should shill the carbon tax that’s not a tax to an unsuspecting Canadian public. As shrill in his own reedy-voiced way as any Greenpeacer, Manning also now advocates the banning of plastic! Levant, left in shock by his one time mentor, takes his viewers down a path of nostalgia to the days when Manning made the best speech ever rendered from Parliament on the same greenhouse gas emissions that made people like Al Gore and Canadian Maurice Strong so fabulously rich. Back in those days Manning was still the wrongly trusted leader of the Reform Party. Now he’s the well-heeled advisor at a Think Tank called Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission, where the gas and oil barons who pay his keep, get to watch their star boarder protégé become an absolute turncoat.

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With all due respect, I think my colleague Ezra Levant is missing what talk-show radio host Rush Limbaugh would call a “teachable moment”. Preston Manning is Textbook 101 proof of the cut-throat politician. He campaigned as a folksy small-c conservative, promising to return commonsense to mostly Lib-Left Canadian politics, a tough call even way back then. It’s not only in Canada where politicians make illegal u-turns after getting themselves elected. Look to the U.S., where Republicans elected to turn the tide on the destructive policies of the President Barack Obama-led Democrat Party are already jumping into bed with them after the voters put the Republicans in charge in unprecedented Midterm numbers. Look at how many Tea Party-sanctioned candidates, who would have gone nowhere without it, dumped the Tea Party after getting elected. The first time that Preston Manning let his country down did not happen only recently. Long before he went off to the ivory tower known as Think Tank life, long before he pulled the Global Warming/Climate Change Judas switcheroo, Manning was already in full-fledged morphing mode. One of the biggest planks of his1997 election as Canadian Reform leader was his promise to never move into the Prime Minister’s official Opposition residence at Stornaway. Manning broke that promise right after election.

“OTTAWA -- Reform Leader Preston Manning says he will move into Stornoway against his personal wishes because of massive public demand. To cries of "hypocrite" from his critics and some former allies, Manning said he is reluctantly abandoning his long-time promise not to use the $2-million, 34-room, tax-funded mansion because the public have written, faxed and called to insist he do so. Manning said he was amazed to find that people felt he was showing disrespect to the office of Leader of the Opposition and to tradition by refusing to move into the mansion, which he has repeatedly cited in the past as an example of politicians living high on the hog. The Reform leader could give no figure on the number of calls and faxes the party has received and was reluctant to produce any letters from the public demanding he move into Stornoway. Manning said he will not offer to pay any rent for Stornoway, will continue to take the $21,000 housing and living expense allowance given to all MPs, and will probably hire the housekeeper and three government servants that go with the mansion. He previously said he will take the government limo and chauffeur that go with his new job. "We're taking whatever the compensation package is, and I believe it to be helpful to us in discharging these official duties (as Opposition leader)," Manning said. Manning said he will keep his family home in Calgary and he and wife Sandra will "balance out time between the two as we see fit, based on the demands of our office and the family." Manning said he believes the public has changed its mind since the 1993 election, when they were angry and wanted the perks of power cut back. Now they see Reform as a possible government and want it to act like a proper official Opposition, he said. “Manning tried to make light of the decision, saying he only intends to keep the place warm for Prime Minister Jean Chretien to move back into after the next election. He ridiculed the media for treating his decision as a "weighty issue of state," but his critics disagreed. Gerry Nicholls, spokesman for the National Citizens' Coalition, which has long seen Reform as its main ally in its campaign to cut government perks, said: "Preston Manning has contracted the Ottawa disease -- he promised one thing and is doing the opposite." Tory Leader Jean Charest said, "he's a hypocrite and this will stick with him for the rest of his career."

After reneging on his never-move-into-Stornaway promise, Manning, and Reformer candidates who campaigned against MP salary increases, voted themselves in on it. The point here is that there is nothing more devious, nothing more dishonest than the latter day politician of any stripe, because the main party stripe of the politician could be identified as “Me, myself and I”. In days of old, politicians who pulled off the double-cross after being able to add the word ‘Honourable” this or that to the name their Mamas gave them, were soon finished off by voters in the very next election. In time, politicians, intent on being able to go on feathering their own nests, moved out of voter accountability becoming far out of the range of ordinary citizens. How did so many miss the real Preston Manning? The duplicity of Preston Manning was helped along by a mainstream media who kept poking fun of the nerdy looks that came from his purposely preacher-like hair styles and glasses, the same way the duplicity of up-and-coming wannabe Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will be buried because of his blow-dried, sprayed-in-place hair, youthful good looks and air of celebrity as late Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s eldest son. The left and their cult of celebrity are on a roll in most western nations, and as long as they’re elected, defectors joining them from the other side will be legion. What’s going on in the cut throat business of politics is much bigger than Turncoat Preston Manning. Unless voters come up with surefire ways to keep politicians masquerading as small -c conservatives from being elected, western society as we have come to know it is a lost dream. Meanwhile, plastic is a million times more useful and durable than the Preston Mannings who get to con the political world.