Posted by littleharbour on 6/29/2004, 4:22 pm, in reply to "conservative party is usa's fifth column" Live Free or Die!
Gallant DID get elected in Ontario. So did Scott Reid. So did Gord Brown. So did many other social conservatives. And more importantly, so did a significant number of very socially conservative Liberals. I've asked it before and nobody had given me an answer: why can the Liberals have very hardline pro-life, anti-gay marriage MP's like Tom Wappel and Dan McTeague, who have actually introduced legislation in Parliament, but we somehow have to purge these people from the Conservative party? We got 30% of the vote. I can safely predict that 2/3rds of those voters share those pro-life, anti-gay marriage views. Are you seriously suggesting we expel these people from the Conservative party? That we muzzle them? That is a recipe for a new Reform/PC split which, if it occurs, will never be healed. It's time for the voices of "tolerance" to practice what they preach and actually tolerate the voters who make up the bedrock support of this party. Oh please. The fact is that Harper kowtowed to the Red Tories who convinced him that this was a winning strategy. They were not able to deliver any significant seats to the Conservative result and actually turned off some of the Alliance support from the last two elections. The results don't lie. Those "extremist" so-cons you like to vilify delivered socially conservative MP's in at least 85 of the 99 seats won last night and helped to elect the softer MP's who won the other 14 (do you think Belinda could have won without so-con support). The so-cons held their nose and supported Harper, despite his attempt to wear the loose fitting "progressive" clothing supplied by his central Canada handlers. In your effort to win the 55 more seats needed for a majority, all you will end up doing is disaffecting the core supporters that we already have. Why is it acceptable to have the Liberal party full of pro-life, anti-gay marriage MP's like Joe Volpe, Don Boudria, Tom Wappel, Dan McTeague, Paul Zed, etc., but abhorent to have them in the Conservative Party? The only reason the comments of Reid, Gallant and White made news, was because Harper's team had left a vacuum in the campaign. After the debate we basically just coasted, hoping we could hold onto our poll numbers but doing nothing to secure them. The Conservative ad campaign was atrocious. It did not expose Paul Martin's lies. It did not expose Liberal party hypocrisy. It did not sell our key issues. Where was an ad showing the actual helicpter carrier next to the fraudulent aircraft photo shown on the Liberal ad? Where was the ad exposing the Liberal handgun segment as a total lie? We just didn't deliver our message. The Bloc did and it garnered them 54 seats. We let 20 seats and our minority government melt away in the last 4 days of the campaign, because the National campaign was too timid to take a stand on anything. This is Red Toryism at its worst and it cost us dearly. If Harper doesn't realize this and he loses touch with his caucus, he'll suffer Stockwell Day's fate in spades.
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