Also, 'The Way Forward', not to be confused with 'Stay the Course' shifts the strategy from 'listening to the generals', to 'NOT listen to the generals'.
Update: On the Job ... err ... t"W"aining
The previously failed Clear and Concede plan is to be replaced with Clear and Hold ... "Who coulda guessed ...?"
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"The Way Forward" should not be confused with "Which Way Forward?" or "A Long Ways from Forward" or "Forward: Its the New Backward".
Yes, but at least it is replacing the operational 'Malarky' of "Backwards Together", with more of the same ... err ... under another 'corner-turning name', anti-'Malarky', Malarky.
By the way, have you ever see anyone ... m-o-r-e c-h-a-l-l-e-n-g-e-d b-y
a t-e-l-e-p-r-o-m-p-t-e-r?
Where's Cheney's 'winning' ... ahhh ... personality, when you need it?
Snerd
your first spam!
your blog is all growed-up now....
KEvron
Yes KEv, that 'can of worms' seems to have been 'punctured' ... No 'bloody he-man' should take that lying down ...
Personally I am just too tired after fighting the wa(R) on ch(R)istmas to be able to respond to what's going on in my 'presents' ...
Snerd
Okay Snerdley ...
I don't usually frequent American Blogs, but with the demise of the political version of RT, you and I are all each other has left.
So, can I have your liver ?
That's funny, Aeneas for a couple of reasons, one of which you are aware ... the second, possible not.
REd and I live a couple of miles apart. I am a Canadian ... and exercise my patriotism by blogging about the 'elephant' about to 'role' us, as it were.
But by all means, you are most welcome here. I have acquired a whole new appreciation for the political and intellectual position of the Conservative movement, as it used to present itself.
Tangentially, the Neo-Liberal term is problematic in non-academic idiom, no?
Snerd
Brother Snerd:
Call me a victim of the "Ivory Tower Syndrome." I did my undergrad in PPE, and a Master's in Political Economy (I was done in 1990 however ...) and I took it for granted that "conservative" had a different meaning in Canada than in the USA.
In academic circles, the term "conservative" is rarely used when referring to the politics of the US (back in my tine anyway ...) as there was a very broad consensus on BOTH sides of the border that conservatism was expunged from the US and INTO Canada (by way of the Loyalists) after the American Revolution.
This Conservatism was loyalist, protectionist, nationalist, and if not collectivist, at least communitarian.
Much academic work was done in the 50's through the '70's on this sociological-political-science work - and the thesis was widely accepted on both sides of the border. The leaders in making these distinctions were Horowitz in Canada, and Lipsett in the United States. Both are still alive, but of course retired.
In hindsight, I started to see this change during the late 1970's, and here is what I came to conclude:
Trudeau, like many statesman of the era (including Nixon and Ford), enacted some statist (not socialist, there is a difference ...) economic policies to contend with the stagflationary economy.
This, of course, out him at odds at times with Private Enterpise and the Entrepreneurial class. To this point in history, these people always generally supported the LPC - because capitalism is a liberal ethic and system (LPC MPs like Bob Winter, John Turner, Mitchell Sharp were hardly social-democrats).
However, because they were in opposition to their own party's policies, people who were so inclined joined the other Capitalist party (PC's) in order to oppose the statist programme.
So the ranks of the PC Party were restaffed with new blood: most of whom, as former Liberals, had no problem with Free Trade (the historic Liberal policy) and a renewed capitalism.
This infusion of liberals into the PC party, started to change that party. The former protectionist, tariff-loving, and mercantilist Conservative Party, became, over the next decade and a half, the party of Free-Trade and a wider-open and market-oriented system.
Mulroney ran for the Leadership in 1976 and 1983 and never talked of Free Trade. In 1983, he declared that FT was "not on the table" as it was not a historic PC policy. Scant years later, he had Simon Riesman (a Liberal btw ...) negotiating with the Reagan Administration for the very same idea of reciprocity that Borden and the Tories fought against (and won with) in the 1911 election!
In the USA of course, the Republicans, up until Reagan, were the party of protectionism and domestic capitalism. It was always the Democracts who were the Free-Traders down there. However, Reagan was an ex-Democrat !
Up became Down. Black became White, and by 1990 I was no longer a member of the PC Party. Tens of Thousands of us broke ranks. The PCs didn't get spanked so badly in 1993 JUST because the Country wanted Chretien. Of course the Liberals didn't like Mulroney, and the Albertans went Redneck with Reform, but ALSO the PC Voter in Ontario and the East abandoned the old PC Party - as it was not the Conservative Party of Macdonald, Borden, and Diefenbaker anymore.
This shift was lost on the media of course, which became heavily influnenced by the American media over the last 20 years, and has since adopted the simplisitic political reporting style so prevalant south of the Border.
As I take pains to point-out, Harper can ONLY win a majority if he acts more like a Tory and less like a Reformer; but if he does that, he alienates the hard right Reform element - and anyway much of the old Tory vote in Ontario and the East are very sceptical about the CPC anyway - because, much like Scotian points out, they are out of step with Canada and the Canadian values that Eastern Conservatives hold. The MPs they have in Ontario are a hodge-podge of Red Tories who only tenuously support the party, and ecnonomic right-wingers who lost their jobs when Harris had his arse rightly handed back to him. Others, like me, have scattered their votes between the Liberals, NDP, Christian Heritage, Canadian Action Party, Progressive Canadian Party, and the Greens.
As I have said before, get used to Minority Government.
I am glad to see that you are a Canadian. I should have known, but I am always fascinated by how much Westerners look south of the border. I made an ASSumption - and for that I apologise.
I will be back, regularly.
Latest news on “The Way Forward” is that no results will be demonstrable until June or July of this year. How hilarious is that? Let’s do the math, shall we. That means that 21,500 are going to make all the difference in the world in a city of 6 million in half a year’s time. The approach of taking the city street by street, neighbourhood, by neighbourhood is what makes it an especially brilliant and novel strategy because, as this small number of forces cunningly drives forward, their backs will be turned on the supposedly pacified neighbourhoods that have been bought off and where newly funded insurgents will inevitably re-emerge. If the Americans leave a security contingent behind in each neighbourhood then their effective fighting force will be progressively reduced So then they’ll be facing enemies on all sides. Thankfully, the Iraqis will be leading the charge here. And it’s certainly not like they’ve proven to be incompetent, riddled with corruption, terrorist infiltrators, sectarian thugs or that they’re under equipped, and demoralized or anything… Snort! But they’ll be the ones leading the charge! Or maybe not… The laughably so-called “democratic” government is already waffling.
Happy days ahead as Bush creates his very own Stalingrad.
It's going to be very difficult to listen to Bush tonight.
I'm bracing myself for his veto of the stem cell bill. :(
Snerd!
Long time no comment et al,
You were teh funny on RedTory's Why Aren't Conservatives Funny post.
Watch out for Aneas the younger, he loves an argument (by which I mean a real argument, not a Monty Python "argument clinic" argument). He's too snooty I guess to visit MY blog, but if he re-visits yours he'll work your brain cells over like a pitbull savaging a fluffy three-week old kitten. He's very interesting and erudite.
But never mind all that! You were teh funny!
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