ROFL – LMAO : us usual Paul your style is impeccable I had to pick my knuckles up from dragging them on the floor to type this. PS: the more obscure the jazz the better! And as soon as I can get out of the office I am off to the beach with my guitar to play Kumbaya (the lost version an ODE to the once great but recently having fallen on hard times Liberal Party of canada)

Paul,
I am similarly dismayed by the amount of heat and light generated by this. I consider myself a keen support of the arts (yes, even ballet, opera and orchestras) but I do not like government funding of same except in limited circumstances. For this, I am a knuckle-dragging hilly-billy philistine.

Also – I think the “base” for this is bigger than people think (even in Quebec) , but maybe I just don’t want to be in a minority.

which is why I continue to think the Conservatives may be smart to press this hot button — as long as they understand that the base they’re rallying doesn’t happen to have me in it

See, that’s what I don’t get about this strategy (if one wants to think of it as a “strategy” in terms of politics… it could be simple unadulterated ideology, in which case it makes sense).

Why would the Tories feel they need to “rally the base”. I mean, sure, the polls show “the base” is pretty much all they have (and that’s absolutely true of the other parties right now too) but where do the Tories think the base is going to go? What sense does rallying the base make if all it does is preserve the status quo (of course, it potentially preserves the status quo I suppose, so there’s that).

It just seems to me that 70% of the country is to the left of the Conservatives’ “base” and if they ever want to get out of the purgatory of minority government they need to appeal to THOSE people.

Or at least not poke them with pointy sticks.

The Liberals moving to the left, while perhaps foolhardy, at least has some sense of logic. There are votes to the Liberals’ left. The Tories moving to the right (or at least being less opaque about the fact that they’re ON the right) makes much less sense to me, politically speaking. Seems to me it just makes the people who vote Tory anyway REALLY happy, and ticks off everyone else. Kinda like giving out free samples at a store only to people who’ve already made a purchase, while refusing to offer them to POTENTIAL customers.

Perhaps I’m just stuck playing checkers though.

I could accept it as a values debate, but that’s not what the Conservatives are doing. They are LYING about the reasons for cutting the programs – they aren’t meeting objectives (based on unknown analysis), they will be replaced by awesome new programs (I bet), we love the arts, blahblahblah. Have some balls and just say “We don’t like most art and the art we do like we don’t think should be taxpayer funded.”

I’m from Brampton – our idea of culture is listening to talk radio in the Tim Horton’s drive through…

LKO, why rally the base? Two reasons. Well, maybe three. The maybe-third is that Harper can do no better because he’s a flawed political leader. His potential successors, whenever they get a chance to potentially succeed, will certainly make that argument.

But the two other reasons are important and, while I’ve written about them many times, I seem to have a hard time getting them across.

1. Failure to keep the conservative base of Conservatism happy led to the destruction of the Mulroney coalition (and of others before it) and, incidentally, to Stephen Harper’s first decision to enter electoral politics as a candidate. To this day the mere mention of some Mulroney-era cabinet ministers — Mary Collins seems to be one of them, reliably — will get Reform-era conservatives shaking with anger. Lesson: You tend the base before you do *anything* else. Incidentally, this is a huge part of Chrétien’s success compared to Martin. I used to point Francie Ducros to polls saying Martin polled higher among non-Liberals. She’d say, “Chrétien polls higher among Liberals.” That was less true at the end, but Martin’s (virtual) coalition didn’t just fray at the conservative and social-democrat and nationalist edges, where it extended beyond the old Liberal tent; it collapsed in the middle, when people who instinctively think of themselves as Liberals decided this guy had no centre worth supporting. (Not all of them, but enough.)

2. Majorities are nice, but not without their own problems. Tom Flanagan has written more clear-headedly about this than anyone I’ve read, in his underappreciated book on game theory and Canadian politics. The largest majorities in Canadian electoral history were almost all followed, not only with failure, but with fracture that made them irreparable for a long time. As one Tory-friendly pollster put it to me, and I swear this is a verbatim quote: “Who needs a majority if you can keep your base so horny they’ll never leave you?”

Needing majorities is a symptom of Liberals, who spent a decade winning majorities and, in many cases, thinking the guy who did it was so mediocre that surely anyone with a Liberal team jersey should expect a majority. Being content with minorities is a symptom of Conservatives, who spent much of that decade as laughing stocks and will take what they can get — and run with it.

Enjoy the debate while government(s) still have a choice about funding arts programs. The spectacular fall in tax revenues in the US is on its way to visit our country in a few short months.

While I’m not philosophically opposed to arts funding I agree with jwl who says the current approach encourages crap. What other patron of the arts than the government doesn’t evaluate the quality of the outcome?

Unless someone actually cares about what the money is used for, the budgets should be cut. It’s up to the umbrella organizations to demonstrate that they care about the ART, not just the MONEY.

“What other patron of the arts than the government doesn’t evaluate the quality of the outcome?”

I think the problem some are having is with the evaluation itself. Why would a band’s name or someone’s political leanings be determining factors in the said evaluation?

@David: “In fact, our archives is run by a bunch of technophobic luddites and copyright nazis who, if they had there way, would smash machines.”

Godwin’s Law Rules Again!

“It just seems to me that 70% of the country is to the left of the Conservatives’ “base” and if they ever want to get out of the purgatory of minority government they need to appeal to THOSE people.”

Well, you’re probably very wrong because people vote and/or join political parties for all sorts of reasons and probably don’t match your definition of left and right (whatever they are) as well as you would imagine.

Take SSM, would Bev Desjarlais, an NDP MP who was against it, would she be to the right of the entire Liberal caucus, just those who voted for SSM, or none of them? Would she be to the right of James Moore who voted in favour of SSM as a Conservative MP?

If people with diametrically opposed views on a subject as polarizing as SSM can be found within all three federal parties, perhaps it’s just a wee stretch to pretend that everyone who isn’t a rabid conservative is opposed to funding cuts to arts programs that most of them have probably never heard of, let alone benefit from.

Lefties still say “panache”?

Yoiks.

Going back a few posts, I think the film YPF was partially financed via tax credits, which Bill C-10 proposes to put under direct control of the PMO.

I’m trying to think of famous historical art that doesn’t result from public funding. I think most of the Abstract Expressionists made their living from selling vertical stripes & paint sploshes to the rich.

Paul says: “Being content with minorities is a symptom of Conservatives, who spent much of that decade as laughing stocks and will take what they can get — and run with it.”

But they don’t seem so content to me. Is it because of all the bad press they’ve been receiving? Or is it because they actually fear that they could be on the opposition side of a minority just as easily as the government side — and they’re playing their usual offence.

Harper so damn cranky and angry! Gimme a little hope around here!