I don’t know what Patrick Brown stands for.
Kathleen Wynne needs to go, but what good would it do to replace Wynne with a man in a blue suit and skinny tie that continues Wynne’s politics and policies?
I get running to the right during the leadership race and tacking to the centre for a general election. But Brown is doing more than that, he and his team seem to be actively campaigning for the Toronto Star endorsement – and I’m not just talking about his war with social conservatives.
If Brown wants the support of grassroots conservatives then he has to pick a side and let them know where he stands.
But, I’m not ready to give up on Brown yet and I don’t think you should be.
Right now, he is sending the wrong signals and selling the wrong message. To social conservatives, it feels like Brown is spending as much time denouncing them as he spends denouncing Kathleen Wynne.
When he was running for leader Brown courted social conservatives, was staunchly against the sex ed curriculum, now he denounces the same people that agreed with him during the leadership.
He actually made an MPP apologize and retract statements he made about standing up for families on social issues.
It's fine to have a big tent, but the tent still has to be blue. And if you are shoving folks out of your tent in the hope of finding friends at the Red Star, then good luck.
The whole sex ed thing should have died down by now, but it hasn’t because Brown won’t stop talking about it and throwing his former supporters under the bus.
Then there is the issue where Brown is completely offside his own party, but on the side of the Toronto Star and the downtown Toronto elites -- a carbon tax.
Brown announced his support for a carbon tax at the party convention in Ottawa last February without consulting party members or caucus. Our poll showed 60% of Ontario voters opposed the carbon tax idea including 82% of PC supporters.
Finally, there's the issue of candidate nominations.
Brown promised open and fair nominations – he’s keeping that promise about as well as Justin Trudeau did. Every week I hear from someone else involved in a nomination battle about interference from Patrick’s team. It's leading to mistrust and that is deadly in politics.
Either just state that you and your team are going to be heavy-handed and push your preferred candidates or let the grass roots decide like you promised. You can’t have it both ways.
The election is just about 18 months away and Patrick Brown has a chance to win. He also has the ability to crash and burn.
So, I want you to help me send a message to Patrick Brown. Tell him that he has to pick a side. If he wants you on his side, then he needs to show that he's on your side.
You can do that by sending Patrick a polite email.
Let’s flood his email inbox telling him that he needs to get on board with you, the conservative movement, if he wants a shot at being premier in 2018.
Couldn’t have said it any better myself. Thanks and Merry Christmas- oops- can I say that??
If your message isn’t getting any traction, then obviously you are out of touch with what the people want. Nothing wrong with taking a step back to revaluate things.
He is not going to win elections by trying to force ideas that the people don’t want or won’t support. The goal is the represent what the people want. Politicians have changed their position or evolved on an issue over time since the creation of government.
You’re making my point for me. The “initial message wasn’t getting any traction” sooo, he changed it to align with his opposition! His/our party is called the opposition for a reason.
All politicians lie one way or another. You should know that right from the get go. At the end of the day, they want to win elections.
Perhaps Patrick felt that his initial message wasn’t getting any traction and felt that he compromise or choose his battles better.
When one runs a campaign on a set of solid principals that not everybody, including me, would agree with, one must stick with it. Those points I listed are what HE insisted he stood for. Patrick has now shown himself to be a caver and an avoider. I don’t want a lying, criminal Liberal in power, but electing a flipper is not the answer. Voters don’t know where they’re going to go next. I want a leader that I can trust to keep his word. PERIOD.
If he stood up to YOUR conservative values – he would lose the election.
Do you prefer a liberal in power or a conservatives that agrees with you on SOME things, but not all.
-scolding an MPP for praising socially conservative values
-skipping the vote on criminalization of the words “mother” and “father”
-supporting the job killing carbon tax
-supporting the creepy sex-ed curriculum passed by the devil across the aisle from you. You know the one, she looks like a horse?
-possibly silencing the newest MPP Osterhoff ( who missed? the vote on "mother " father") who is a real social conservative,
You’ve lost me because you don’t have the guts to stand up for the Conservative values that you championed to get your little self elected. Us real conservatives would be stupid to vote for you again.
Sayonara baby…
And that, JAMES RIED, is exactly it.
- by the time she is 6—she will think that she is a boy.If you are not satisfied -We will buy her back.
Are you fucking retarded? There are a billion different things under the umbrella of morality that can be debated – before we get to something where there is probably a general consensus – killing people is wrong and against the law on top of that.
No, I mean reasonable and sensible conservatives – not extreme conservatives. There were many conservatives that used to post here, but left because the conservative community here was just too batshit crazy even for them.
So murder is subjective? If there is no absolute moral imperatives why have law? When you mindlessly puke out this post modernist Nietzsche nihilism you just make it more the obvious you have no understanding of philosophy, morality or ideologies.
ANDREW S. Maybe check and see how Trump did with the Evangelical vote. Serious reservations or not, they overwhelmingly supported Trump, not Hillary the Frump”
That’s just due to lack of options, most Evangelicals would vote for a traffic cone if you painted it red and put an elephant sticker on it. It was a “hold their nose” type vote, not a raving endorsement.
It’s quite interesting, actually, the “frustrated evangelicals” were one of the dominant drivers of the surge in third party support. This was most apparent in Utah (although the Mormons aren’t typically considered such, they are very religiously motivated), but also happened elsewhere.
Stephenson: Who the … do you think voted in Donald Trump?
Where the … were you when this happened? "
Was Trump elected by social conservatives though? As i recall, many of them, particularly of the Evangelical bent (which is closely tied to the social conservative vote in most cases) had some serious reservations about him, as there was some perception that his social conservative principles were… less than sincere (as in, he was pretty much an open social Liberal until two months before nominating himself), and there’s little to no indication he is a man of the church, which is important to those voters. The reservations held by the social conservatives probably explains, to a large extent, the weakness of his mandate. He’s a populist, not a conservative.
No, Trump sailed to victory mostly by promising to address the desperate economic circumstances of what’s left of the working class – that’s what pushed him over the edge in the rust belt states where he secured the Electoral votes to win. There was also some degree of revelry in his carefully cultivated offensiveness.
Kind of like the promise you made about the absolute certainty Hillary was going to be elected, and spewed your accolades endlessly. Now that your tears have dried somewhat you have surfaced again and all of a sudden you weren’t for Hillary bla bla bla. You sound a lot like Patty Browneye. Flip flop flip flop. By the way, what the fuck is a reasonable conservative?
I am not deserting the PC party, they have deserted me. The only way Ontario is going to get fixed is if it is undeniable broken. So far, the millenials do not think so. I guess being the most indebted sub government on the planet shows we are in first place at something. The majority of the PC members cannot pick a winning leader. Tory, Hudack, and now Brown are all losers. That shows you where the party has crashed. There is buzz for a new provincial party to oust the PC’s. They will get my support for sure. The last thing Ontario needs is Brown or Wynne at the helm. Either way, we are doomed.
Evil. LOL.
Fine by me – don’t compromise and conservative politicians that you support will never get anywhere or be elected ever, but the reasonable conservatives will be elected.