It seems I am quoted extensively in this Globe and Mail article which appears in today's paper.
It's about a subject I know a little bit about: conservative disillusionment with the Tory Party.
Here's one of my quotes from the piece:
“One thing I know about politics is it abhors a vacuum. And a lot of people right now are sensing that there is no party speaking for them, especially small-c conservatives, fiscal conservatives.”
According to the Globe a bunch of conservatives are meeting to talk about forming a new party.
Seems to me Prime Minister Harper better start tending his own base.
But hey why should he listen to me, I'm only "one of the top five political minds in the country."
I would argue Harper should ignore the right wing base due to the simple fact they make up about 15% of the population and for every vote you lose from them, you gain two from the mainstream middle. The Liberals have been more successful than the Conservatives historically because they ignored the hard left factions i.e. the NDP voters and focused on the larger middle. The 15% right wing ideologues just like the 15% left wing ideologues will not win one an election. The NDP focuses too much on its left wing base and the Reform party focused too much on its right wing base, which is why neither party could crack the 20% mark.
ReplyDeleteHello -
ReplyDeleteit would be a very grave mistake, I believe, to attempt to reform the Reform party.
There's no way that the party would, in this day and age (quite apart from the conditions of the early 1990s) do as well as it did, at its best in the mid-90s.
All of the `liberal' moves that Harper is undertaking at present, are because he's in a minority situation.
Right conservatives would do well to `remain in the tent', to do what they can to reasonably change people's minds about issues which they are about. They will, of course, never get a fair hearing in the MSM, but they're not the only game in town anymore.
aside to Mr. Nicholls - does it not make you slightly uncomfortable that the Grope and Flail and other mainstream publications are so solicitous of your opinions, now that you are no longer the head of the National Citizens Coalition? I mean, before you were `Gerry Nicholls, head of the right-wing, baby-eating, child-killing, racist-fascist-mothercussing National Citizens Coalition', now you're one of the five greatest thinkers in the country?