Thursday, September 22, 2005

Oh! Carol (apologies to Neil Sedaka)

Note: the author is a conservative who has never belonged to the Reform party or the Canadian Alliance, and came to support merger only after the PCs were reduced to 12 seats in the 2000 election.

I volunteered to be the interim secretary of the GTA Presidents’ council when Brett Snider founded it last year. When I was asked – repeatedly – to stand for the position of permanent secretary, one of the reasons I declined was the involvement of Carol Jamieson, who in recent years has been slowly destroying her enviable reputation as a political organizer, replacing it with a reputation as a political wing nut. My decision was vindicated when she reportedly appeared at the party’s March policy convention, flogging buttons attacking Stephen Harper. Now she has come out publicly calling for Harper’s resignation.

Carol’s claim that Peter MacKay magnanimously declined to run for leader because he believed the new party needed a new face is laughable: MacKay didn’t run because he knew he couldn’t win, and the same likely applies to whatever contenders Carol is referring to who were scared off by Harper. But if the first rationale is what MacKay wants people to believe, then it is a rationale that creates an obstacle to him running for leader next time, unless he wants to be accused of another Orchard-style flip-flop. His campaign-in-waiting should really be a little more careful about these things.

Carol and the others who promoted Belinda Stronach as a viable prime minister (come on down, Mike Harris and Bill Davis!) bear a good deal of the responsibility for elevating her to a position where she (1) eclipsed the many smarter and better-qualified MPs in our caucus (e.g. Peter Van Loan) and (2) gained the profile to inflict serious short-term damage on the party she herself helped found – damage which she gave little thought to inflicting.

Tony Clement was his usual astute self when he observed that Belinda sucks all the oxygen out of a room. Sadly, little of that oxygen seems to reach her brain stem. I suspect that the main reason Harper hired none of Belinda’s acolytes is because accommodating their pay demands would first require the firing of multitudes. (I wonder whether Carol thinks that now that Harper has fired multitudes, he should still hire Belinda’s people.)

Then Carol undercuts all she has just written, with her view that “the new Conservative Party of Canada had no chance of convincing the Canadian electorate that it was any different than the Canadian Alliance once it picked Stephen Harper as its first leader.” So Carol never supported Harper from the get-go and everything that has happened since has served to confirm that view. So where’s the news here?

I did not support Stephen Harper for leader, but I am frustrated and mystified at why so many in the media and even in our own party are so quick to conclude that he is to blame for the opportunism, venality and incompetence of others. Harper does not strike me as a man who has been plotting and scheming his entire adult life to live at 24 Sussex (unlike the current occupant), but who has reluctantly stepped forward on occasions when he looked around and saw the alternatives were no better qualified or staffed than he. I suspect that the antics of the Carol Jamiesons of the party do little to alter that view.

9 comments:

scott said...

Peter reason for not running was the fact that he would have to double dip into the same pool of donators in a shoet period of time. he wasn't willing to go that root so he released his campaign team over to eventual girlfriend Belinda.

The things you'll do for love.

Paul MacPhail said...

Thanks for the background info Joan. Your post seems rather matter-of-factly versus harsher tones that others ( myself included ) sometimes use.
Good Stuff.
And by the way, I'm not selling any cars, viagra, prescription meds or diet pills.

Anonymous said...

You go, Joan! I think you have said it better (and way more candidly) than any of us would have or could have ...

And oh, by the way, someone should ask our candidates how they feel about Carol after what she has done, let alone before she did it.

Anonymous said...

"Note: the author is a conservative who has never belonged to the Reform party or the Canadian Alliance, and came to support merger only after the PCs were reduced to 12 seats in the 2000 election."

So basically, you are all but admitting that there really is no place for Red Tories, Moderates And PCers in Stephen Harper's party.

The merger is a farce. It was one party canabalizing another to try and steal (unsuccesfully) a brand name "tory" from the PC.

Great.

You do realize that you are more than making Jameison's point, by the way you try to use her membership in the TRUE tory party of Canada as some sort of criticism of her.

Why don't you folks just go ahead and called yourself the Christian Heritage Party, and get it over with?

Anonymous said...

anon...

The author is quite clearly referring to herself, not Ms. Jamieson. I am sure that Ms. Tintor is not the only former Progressive Conservative party member to be dismayed by Ms. Jamieson's recent actions.

Perhaps you could take a minute and read the post again, just to be sure that you understand what she is saying. You might then be able to make a constructive contribution to the discussion.

Christian Conservative said...

I came in from the PC side too... and I supported Stephen Harper.

Anonymous said...

Joan -- great post; I concur almost 100%, but I'd go a lot further. A lot.

Carol Jamieson is a festering symptom of larger problems the party is facing, number one being that we are consistently failing to set the agenda with a clearly defined vision and philosophy: It seems we chucked out our moral compass along with the tiller some time ago.

Thus, we leave ourselves open to internal dissent. We shy away from our critics instead of charging them boldly and leaving no shot unanswered. Carol is able to throw mud because we have failed to build bulwarks.

A recent column in the National Post stated that, policy-wise, you'd be hard pressed to fit a metaphorical credit card between the CPC and the Liberals today.

Quite true, IMHO.

Until we define who we are as a party, definitively, we can't move forward. In my estimation, if we're truly a conservative party, then we need to excommunicate Carol Jamieson and her ilk and say that there is a party for them: The Liberal Party of Canada.

Until then, we'll continue to bear the slings and arrows of our outrageous misfortune.

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