I’m kind of tickled that she’s using the Progressive Conservatives to rebuke the Harper Conservatives on fiscal responsibility. I stand to be corrected on this, but I believe no Progressive Conservative government ever delivered a balanced budget. (Before Harper, Robert Borden delivered the last balanced budget under a government with the Conservative label — in 1912, before the Progressive Conservative party was created.)

But Harper was only forced to have a balanced budget by the dastardly fiscal habits established by the previous crew. Thankfully, he’s right on course to return Canada’s finances to the red. It allows for greater theatrics, afterall.

Sisyphus, the link to her platform’s in the post. Here’s your chance to provide the insightful and substantive commentary you find so sadly lacking! There is literally nothing stopping you!

Stephen hasn’t read Joe Clark’s 1980 election platform. A reading of Jeff Simpson’s book Discipline of Power never goes out of style.

Blogging isn’t always suited to insightful commentary, and I guess this post is no exception.

Grohmann makes very good knives. Have some myself.

And, Paul, I have the platform document. Probably had it before you did. And I read it, too. In a very quiet place.

Discipline of Power was a great book…read a long time ago though, when Jeff Simpson had some insight. My hazy memory just recalls the lack of counting the MP’s before a vote and that the cons were a fractious group who couldnt agree on goals, objectives and message.

The 80 platform??? I rememeber mortgage interest deductability, and they didnt implement that because it would cost the treasury too much, or was that ’79? Or are you talking about the gas excise tax? The one the Liberals criticized then implemented in a larger amount?

It is a little rich for the Liberals to claim a heritage of fiscal discipline when the history shows otherwise. They get credit for 1995 budgets for sure, the program expenditure review was well done and proof again that “only Nixon can go to China”, i.e. only a moderate government could carry that out since the conservatives could only say go faster.

But that mess was all really created in the 70′s, then the Liberals cratered the budget and the PC’s got it back to an operational supplus by 1987 and kept the operational surplus through the early 90′s recession.

The public wasnt really ready for the needed cuts, and or controls, till we were on the verge of Argentina like status in 94/95. Ask Bob Rae what it was like being Premier. He went through an enormous conversion then. I believe his quote at the time was “The problem wasnt that we couldnt borrow the money, the problem was that people were willing to lend us more” meaning the rates they would have to pay and the conditions attached. I believe Saskatchewan was close to defaulting at that time.

Point being, major crisis finally brought the consensus to do something, even though this had been a plank of the conservative wing of the conservative party for some time, and to be fair some of the Blue Liberals.

My point is that the history of the Liberal party over the last 30 to 40 years is not one of fiscal discipline. It was religon found only when faced with a major meltdown. Are the cons any better, they spend on different things but it is more embedded in their political DNA, but electoral necessities drive them to other options. This may well instruct how Harper would deal with a majority. If he is trying to capture the middle then he will continue to spend, the Liberals and NDP can only criticize by saying “spend more and faster”

I still point to the first Mulroney term as an example. All attempts to control spending were shouted down by the Liberals limiting how far the “minority party” could go.

Sorry for the length of response and I may have totally missed your point, that wry obscure wellsian detatchment, and for that I duly apologize.

Sandi, what politician doesn’t love to?

I was walking by the Grand Parade in Halifax and there she was.

Why was she shouting? Because she was right next to Barrington street, and there were a lot of traffic going by. Especially buses. Really loud buses.

I had thought about heckling her but I didn’t want to be on tv. There were about 20 people clapping, 20 reporters, and 30 curious onlookers eating their lunches.

The Liberals get far too much credit for bringing in the first balanced budget.

Much of the heavy lifting in inching public opinion towards accepting the idea of a surplus was done by the Mulroney government. Moreover, the budget could never have been balanced without the extra revenue flowing in from the GST.

There is a lot of truth to the Nixon goes to China analogy. Mulroney (not to his credit)ran away from fiscal prudence as soon as a little old lady challenged him in a shopping center. Mulroney had to face an opposition that called repeatedly for more spending. On the other hand, the Liberals never had to be afraid of political pressure not to do the right thing fiscally since by that time we were in a crisis and the opposition Reform Party never complained about balancing the budget.

So, for the Liberals to strut around the stage claiming to be the only party that understands fiscal responsibility is just baloney. Especially, when they are the ones that insist that the Conservative Party is the same as the Reform Party and then ignore the fact that the Reform Party was teh one party that was more committed to fiscal discipline than the Liberals.