Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Message For Conservatives

I know old habits are hard to break, but Conservatives need to change their mentality. Every time I read a blog entry that is critical of Conservative policy, it is generally accompanied by some retort about the former Liberal government. Commenters do the compare and contrast and the discussion of past records, which successfully distracts from the issue at hand. The former government is the convenient crutch to deflect criticism.

I don’t care if the Liberals failed, the Conservatives are now the government and their policies should be judged on their own merit. Was the gun registry mishandled? Probably, but the question now is whether or not you support the policy. Did the Liberals fail on meeting Kyoto targets? Yes, but this government still has six years left to do something, so the question is still do you support the targets or don’t you? Did the Liberals fail to get an agreement on softwood? Yes, but that doesn’t innoculate the Conservatives from criticism of their agreement. In other words, the Liberals are yesterday’s news and are no longer the easy target for Conservative venom.

Interesting to remember that the Conservatives election platform, outlined in the bluebook, criticized the Liberals before it offered any policies. The Conservatives have received a lot of mileage in trashing the Liberals, but this mindset doesn’t wash anymore. What are you doing? How do your policies affect Canadians in their own right? The Liberal scapegoat is gone, standup and be accountability. If you are backing out of Kyoto it is because the Conservatives don’t support Kyoto, not because Paul Martin didn’t do enough. If you want a closer relationship with the Americans, it is because you agree with their government, not because the former government didn’t see eye to eye. Present your ideas, and let people judge them, without falling back on the old government for cover.

8 comments:

Michael Fox said...

Funny, I don't recall many Liberal bloggers being critical of the Liberal government when they were in power.

Steve V said...

Feel free to scan back to my posts during the election.

Michael Fox said...

Will do.

In the meantime, I think Conservative bloggers have been better at holding their own government to account than the Liberals were, on average. We've critiqued our party on many occassions.

Steve V said...

TT

You're pretty fair.

Anonymous said...

In the meantime, I think Conservative bloggers have been better at holding their own government to account than the Liberals were, on average. We've critiqued our party on many occassions.

That's because you were only trolling the Liberal bloggers who said positive things about the Liberals.

Anyway, this is hilarious. In response to a post suggesting the Conservatives stop using "Yeabbut...the Liberals did it too!" as a response to everything, Toronto Tory basically says "Yeabbut...the Liberal bloggers did it too."

Sheesh. No wonder everyone hates politics...and hates talking to Conservatives.

Anonymous said...

That's what we should start calling all the conservative trolls who trot out the old favourite stanby's like "liberanos", "adscam", etc... they don't listen to reason or equally disturby Conservative boondoggles like the softwood deal, outright lying about so-called "ethics", appointing unelected campaign managers to cabinet, etc... so we'll just call them all the YABBUTS!

Its Yabbut season, get your shotgun, your unregistred one.

ottlib said...

Alberta Report that is brilliant.

I wonder if there is a way to change the identities in the comment section of the blogs so that "Anonymous" is replace by "Yabbut". It would be a nice gesture towards our shy Conservative friends.

gfdgfdfd said...

Great post, Steve. I'm be arguing this very same thing in many Conservative-supporting blogs, but it seems to be falling on deaf ears.