Playing to the Base

It is pretty clear that Harper and the CPC have written off the more libertarian end of the conservative interest.

Mandatory minimum sentences are a lovely way to send the message that the CPC is tough on drugs. Rather like the GST, the fact that qualified experts actually think mandatory minimums are, at best ineffectual, at worst counter-productive in that, with hard cases crowns and judges will be inclined not to charge or not to convict if they know that there is a mandatory minimum in place, is not going to stop the Tories.

It is no surprise that the CPC is also backing away from the last twenty years of scholarship and experience with respect to marijuana legalization. It seems pretty clear that the Tories want te establish brand differentiation early and this position will certainly ensure that on this issue the Tories have left the building.

Politically it is difficult to see how these positions are going to actually win any votes; but it is a certainty that these fairly simplistic postures will energize the base in the Rovian sense. No bad thing if you are trying to avoid the 50 seat scenario; hopeless if you are looking to pass the Liberals.

Written by jay on December 4th, 2005 with 6 comments.
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Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com Ian Welsh
#1. December 4th, 2005, at 11:34 AM.

LOL. Mandatory sentence minimums. Y’know, as someone who follows US politics very, very closely. All of this (tax cuts, tough on crime, tough on drugs) just looks like warmed over Republican hash. For that matter, it’s 25 year old Republican hash.

And it won’t sell in Ontario or BC. Maybe it’ll avoid a 50 seat washout, but I have to agree that it’s not the sort of moves that a party that wants to move beyond the base should be doing. Which is fine by me.

There are two sets of real Conservative platforms that would sell and make some damn sense in Canada - you could go the fiscal conservative/libertarian route - which Ontarions will vote for (they voted for Harris). You could go the Japanese/Korean corporatist/mercantalist route “we will compete!” But this tax cut/social conservative/decentralization program I’m not so sure about. Admitedly I’m biased - I hate SoCons, and I’m a federalist (wth qualifications like Fisheries), but I’m also on the ground in Ontario and most of my co-workers are 905ers, and this is not going down well with them.

Also, as a fiscal conservative I’m not happy with either the Liberals or the Conservatives (I haven’t seen how much money the NDP intends to spend yet and who they intend to give /their/ tax cuts to.) We still have way too much debt. Didn’t we just see, in the US, what happens when idiots think they have a big surplus they can bribe people with?

We’re still underwater, we haven’t paid off the credit card bill from the last oil crunch, you retards - pay down the bloody debt while we have a surplus. Because the bad times are coming, and every dollar we pay down now, we’ll be glad of then.

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com The Invisible Hand
#2. December 4th, 2005, at 11:38 AM.

…at worst counter-productive in that, with hard cases crowns and judges will be inclined not to charge or not to convict if they know that there is a mandatory minimum in place…

Psst… Judges don’t decide on whether the guy is convicted. Juries do that.

Any why would a mandatory minimum stop the Crown from charging?

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com jay
#3. December 4th, 2005, at 2:32 PM.

Yo, Invisible take a short trip to your local Courthouse and check out the number of drug cases being tried before juries. I’m not saying it never happens; but the vast majority of drug charges are heard by judge alone.

As for Crowns: Crowns like to win and if they have a case which is a bit iffy and a mandatory minimum they are going to plead it out rather than deal with the lottery which a trial before a judge would entail.

It is a dumb idea all round and, as Ian points out, a sort of revisit the golden years of California Republicanism circa Ronald Regan. It sounds tough but, like the loony GST cut, the CPC knows or out to know it will have perverse consequences in practice.

Ian, I completely agree on the debt. But Harper is so invested in the idea that Canadians will only accept “Liberal” choices that he is far too chikenshit to even suggest that until the debt is paid it is too soon to be talking about tax changes which have any revenue effect.

Which would not prevent the CPC from proposing changes in tax policy. So long as these were revenue neutral and allowed debt paydown to accelerate I think some changes could be winners.

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com Ian Welsh
#4. December 4th, 2005, at 8:45 PM.

The thing is Jay, that backhand slight, the Liberals have actually made paying down the debt (when they had a majority) one of their biggest priorities. Admittedly it was done through indirection - they constantly underestimated the amount of the surplus, then used the “unanticipated” surplus to pay down the debt. And they slashed payments to the provinces for healthcare and thus effectively paid down the debt on the backs of the provinces and municipalities.

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#5. December 4th, 2005, at 9:21 PM.

Tilting at Windmills » Blog Archive » Deja Vu All Over Again: To someone like myself who follows US polititcs closely, sometimes more closely than I follow Canadian, the current election ...

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com lrC
#6. December 6th, 2005, at 6:31 AM.

The property crimes which support drug habits affect the victims and the insurers, the latter of which indirectly affects the victims again and a more general class of people. From an individual’s perspective, it might make more financial sense to have the criminal addicts in prison, indefinitely. At least then all of society shares the costs (through taxes) and the individual doesn’t have the PITA of dealing with property damage and loss and stubborn insurance companies. I would guess the people who are most preyed upon by addicts - those who happen to also live in low income and high crime rate areas - would benefit disproportionately. Fans of ends-justify-means socialism should be lined up right behind this one.

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