I’ve laid down the same sentiment a dozen or more different ways over the years, and this week I fumbled my way through it yet again with this effort, scratched out in an entry regarding a recent SES poll showing the Conservatives making no headway in the polls (don’t worry, I’m not awarding myself the big prize). I said:
…And this poll was done before the Mulroney inquiry news on Friday and Tuesday (yesterday), which has of course wrongly, purposely, been portrayed in the liberals’ media as a Harper/Conservative negative (note how handy it is that notwithstanding the stark differences, the liberals’ media decided to call both the old Progressive Conservative Party —which Harper hated so much he helped start his own party just to take them down— and the new Conservative Party …“The Tories”? Handy! Way to go liberal media! Another big win! Fabulous work! And a big hat tip to “The Tories” for constantly bending over for the liberals’ media!)…
Today, brilliant columnist Lorne Gunter makes it all so much clearer than I could have, in his good column at the National Post:
…Those who love to saddle Mr. Harper with his past in the Reform party—which they contend is proof of his far-right hidden agenda and unsuitability to govern—should remember that when they try now to tar him with the Mulroney brush: One of the reasons Mr. Harper was front-and-centre in Reform at the time of the Schreiber-Mulroney relationship was his disgust for the, um, ethical lapses of the Mulroney Tories.
Granted, since he united the right three years ago, Mr. Harper has often sought Mr. Mulroney’s political advice, particularly on winning in Quebec. That means the current PM gets to squirm a little for the former PM’s alleged judgmental drift.
But Mr. Harper is hardly part of the party or culture of the Mulroney-era Tories…
He’s no more a part of the Mulroney-era “Tories” than Dion is to the Chretien-Martin Adscam sponsorship Shawinigan Grand-Mère Canadian Steam Ship Lines HRDC gun registry Oil-For-Food military-decimating Kyoto-lying scandal-soaked “Grits”. You want things both ways? Fine. Make my day (another great quote).
Liberals had all the same public knowledge about this affair as Conservatives and Progressive Conservatives and New Democrats did, and that knowledge was scathing enough. Yet almost nobody seemed to care about this. Perhaps they all know there’s a lot more to know about this than we know. And if that’s the case, they’re ALL in exactly—precisely—the same boat. And they should all be sunk, and a public inquiry is long overdue—and now possibly too late.
And as for that “Tory” or “the Tories” moniker: its quaintness has more than sufficiently worn out for me, as I’ve alluded in the past (well before this debacle was even on the radar). It was a mistake to accept the appellation when they did during the Canadian Alliance/Progressive Conservative union. Moreover, as a result of that mistake, it is now simply used by the liberals’ media—I think nefariously—as a bridge to somehow specifically connect the famously unpopular Mulroney with Harper in abject negativity (fabricated or otherwise, mostly the former), as if they are and were of exactly one and the same party.
I do like “Grits” for liberals, since the word refers directly to dirt. So at least they’ve got accuracy going their way.
Note: Edited several times
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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