Typical Conservatives. The economy is tanking, in no small part due to their hopeless mismanagement (runaway spending, combined with ill-advised multi-billion tax cuts) and they’ve got not solution the problem short of madly flailing about, desperately hurling of billions of high-end tax cuts, mysterious tax credits and some pretend, one-off, use-it-or-lose-it, likely-never-to-be-seen matching funds for infrastructure projects at the problem. So, what to do… what to do? How on earth can they shore up their political base and distract everyone from the issues that really matter? Oh yeah… of course! Drag out every whacky, harebrained, crackpot notion from the extreme lunatic fringes of the party (especially seeing as they’re really pissed about their fiscal recklessness).
First up to bat… GUNS! It’s an issue that’s been pretty much happily dormant for the last three years, but now is the perfect time to fire up the culture war again over guns. And next up to the plate…CRIME! Especially that scary, nebulous, weird freaky kind that takes place over the Internets! Can ABORTION be far behind? Methinks not. Paging “Dr” McVety…
Red Tory v.3.0.3 
Sweet Jebus these freakin’ fascists are scum. So the question is, what will Iggy do?
I don’t agree with the registry, but sweeping powers of surveillance for the police? Screw that. Time to encrypt everything.
Is it any wonder why Harper is falling out of favour with Canadians?
Since some of his inner circle have left/or are leaving, I wonder if he’s now using a “Magic 8 Ball” to create priorities?
Whooee! The gun control issue resonated with small-c cons during the era when the right was uniting and gaining strength. They’re just going back to an old wedge issue that helped them before.
There’s a feller here in my little town has a sign on the back of his pickup: “More Gun Control – Use Both Hands”.
Interestingly enough, teh Cons promised to scrap the registry but have failed to do so or even make a half-assed attempt to do so. What they have done, however, is to essentially tell Canadians that they don’t need to abide by the law and register their long guns. This is typical for the Con gummint: Don’t like a law? Ignore it. With their lack of enforcement, they’ve told Canadians that it’s okay to disregard laws with which you disagree.
JB
Time to change the national anthem. True North Strong and Free just doesnt ring right anymore under the Reformafascists.
I thought Conservatives used to support individual rights and freedoms? What’s with these fucktwits?
Oh I see Peter Van Loan is involved with this. I was wondering when that fat slimy troll would creep out of his hole again
Ya and look just what Paul Wells found “hidden” in the budget.
(you know the one that is so bad that we have to support it for the good of the country, eh)
http://blog.macleans.ca/2009/02/11/the-conservatives-crowded-legislative-agenda/
All signs point to Yes
NPoV — I thought Iggy spent a whole day reading every page of the entire budget… (that’s what he said he was going to do). Did anyone really believe that?
no small part due to their hopeless mismanagement (runaway spending, combined with ill-advised multi-billion tax cuts)…
I was reading Why Conservatives Can’t Govern by Alan Wolfe. Though Prof. Wolfe is discussing the Bush years, his essay made me think of the folks up in Canada and it’s current government.
“Contemporary conservatism is a walking contradiction. Unable to shrink government but unwilling to improve it, conservatives attempt to split the difference, expanding government for political gain, but always in ways that validate their disregard for the very thing they are expanding. The end result is not just bigger government, but more incompetent government.”
Shades of Thomas Frank’s Wrecking Crew… I think the same dynamic is a running theme here. How can you successfully govern when you hold the fundamental belief that government is an inherently bad thing in the first place?
So let me get this straight:
It is wrong for the police to know who has guns, but right for them to know what we are saying on the Internet.
Good to know…
What a creepy bit of legislation, huh?
Gayle:
That sounds like a great line of attack for the Liberals going forward.
Placing the new internet legislation and the renewed effort to kill the gun registry beside each other and using that line of attack would be very effective IMO.
The Libs need to get with it and start using this creepy, weird stuff coming from the fringes of the Conservative Party as fodder to gin up their own fundraising efforts. Because you know that’s exactly what the Cons are doing with this. They’ve likely seen a drop off in contributions, so feel the need to turn the “culture war” dials in favour of the So-Cons and other key elements of their base that are usually quite free with their support but may have pulled back a little at the prospect of a $75 BILLION deficit black hole opened up by Team Harper to keep themselves in power…
I have a lot more faith in the Ignatieff Liberals picking up on these and doing something with it than the Dion Liberals would have. Or at least something with fewer words to express it
The Libs need to get with it and start using this creepy, weird stuff coming from the fringes of the Conservative Party as fodder to gin up their own fundraising efforts. Because you know that’s exactly what the Cons are doing with this.
If the Conservatives are governing for their base, the country deserves a right to know exactly what their base is like then. It’s funny, as much as the party heads like taking money from some of these people, they also seem to want to sweep them under the carpet.
It’s interesting to note at their own convention they seemed to want to muzzle or hide this element with closed-door policy discussions (what are you hiding there?), and having Harper give a speech where he told them to be “pragmatic” (ie. don’t embarrass me with your craziness).
Of course it’s difficult to reach out to minorities like , while at the same time having people like the five-feet of bile as passionate supporters.
It’s funny, as much as the party heads like taking money from some of these people, they also seem to want to sweep them under the carpet.
I believe the operating philosophy of the Conservatives when it comes to dealing with the shrieking loons, deranged crackpots, Christofascists, trolls, racists, homophobes, and bigots of all kinds that make up a certain part of their “base” is centered around the facts that:
a) these folks have nowhere else to go; and
b) “the other guys are much worse…”
I have said this in a couple places since the gun registry thing raised its head again. The fact is the registry, while a bloated expense, is a valuable tool.
For example, at least one of the two men convicted of the murder of the Mayerthorpe mounties was first investigated because one of the guns Rozko had was registered to his grandfather. He gave it to Rozko the night of the murders, and when he realized what Rozko did he and his grandfather came in to the RCMP the next day to report the gun stolen.
Of course there was other evidence gathered subsequently, but this was certainly a key piece of evidence very early in the investigation.