Conservatives: Muffled, but how Moderate?

[arikara]

One of the biggest differences between this election and the 2004 campaign, is that this time around, Conservative candidates have been virtually silent on social conservative hot-button issues.

This time, the Conservatives have run a remarkably disciplined campaign, so much so that critics have accused the party of muzzling its more outspoken candidates.

Candidates like Darrel Reid running in Surrey, who not too long ago said: "I think every Christian's under an obligation to change laws to reflect biblical values."

The discipline is especially impressive in light of the fact that the Conservative party still contains divisions between former Reform-Alliance members and members of the old Progressive Conservative party, said David Laycock, a political science professor at Simon Fraser University.

Laycock said that, following the 2004 campaign, Harper "read the riot act to people like Cheryl Gallant," the Ontario MP who had said in the middle of the campaign that the beheading of an American in Iraq by terrorists was "absolutely no different" from the practice of abortion.

'Just hasn't come up'

Laycock, author of The New Right and Democracy in Canada, noted that there are a number of socially conservative candidates running for the Conservatives in B.C.
The Tyee's Election Central Superblog

"I haven't seen any coverage of their rather distinctive views on social policy questions in the daily press," he said. "It just hasn't come up. And you would think it would."

<snip>

http://thetyee.ca/News/2006/01/11/MuffledModerate/


Just goes to show how much our media is controlled by the neo-cons too. Even CBC has been co-opted. These guys are scary and they haven't changed but they've learned their lessons well from the repukes. I just pray that the Canadian people don't have a short memory, because Harper is managing to keep his nuts under control so far this time.

[Telly Savalas]

1. It would have been nice if Martin, Layton, and Duceppe

had needled Harper about this in the leaders' debates this week. The Conservatives are nearly being given a free ride with regards to their sudden shift towards the centre.

[arikara]

2. I know...

and today when the libs finally acknowleged it and put out an ad about it, the r/w media is touting it as a negative ad.

[AX10]

3. How much of the media is right wing?

I'm trying to an objective view of Canadian media, if that's possible.

[glarius]

4. That's the biggest surprise of all to me....I never thought of our media

as right wing at all...Global TV seemed more to the right but CTV was always right down the middle and CBC was really fair and even-handed...Suddenly they all seem to be falling for Harper...Especially CTV which has almost become a Harper advocate....CBC is still pretty fair but they seem taken in by Harper's phony pose as a middle of the roader too....It's very frustrating!

[arikara]

5. Our media has been bought up by big conglomerates

Canwest global is huge, it owns practically everything around here on the west coast, in other words all of our newspapers and TV news comes from the same source. From what I notice when I do watch, its mostly 5 second sound bytes which are usually taken out of context and then commented on to pass on the correct slant, canned press releases and stimulating features like "Health Watch" which are pre-made infomercials from the pharmaceutical companies that are passed off as news. This of course saves them having to pay people to do any sort of investigative journalism which is totally non-existant.

I'm not up on the specifics of ownership and don't really have time to research it but here's a couple of links. They are old but the situation would be only getting worse and not better; and don't forget the assault that the CBC has been under too.

http://dominionpaper.ca/accounts/2003/11/10/journalist.html

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1106

[pbca]

6. Whoever is running the Cons campaign

Is very good at it - to manage to keep things like gay marriage, abortion, etc., completely and totally off the radar. Whoever is running Martin's campaign apparently has no idea what they are doing - one mistake after another.

[V. Kid]

7. Yes, I'm genuinely suprised...

...they were throughly unpopular during the attempts to bring down the goverment. They looked power hungry and unreasonable. And if they would've succeded, we might have gotten a Liberal majority, or increased minority.

[Posteritatis]

8. You'd think the muzzling of their candidates would hurt them

But noooooo, they can actually tell candidates not to speak about something and claim they're doing it in the name of free speech. Augh.

[MrPrax]

9. They are all muzzled in a campaign...

But if you want a good sidebar ats to the lengths the Tories go, you might want to check this from the current Georgia Straight watching the BC political scene.(it was also mentioned on Cursor Cursor--which is good to see a great local newsmag getting attention in the American blogsphere)

Conservatives boost Fogarassy

By Matthew Burrows
Publish Date: 12-Jan-2006

Conservative Party of Canada strategists are not trying to keep their right-leaning candidates in the deep freeze on contentious issues like same-sex marriage and climate change. This is according to Colin Metcalfe, B.C. communications and media coordinator for the Conservative party.

“No, there is no such strategy in place,” Metcalfe told the Straight. Metcalfe also denied any plan to make Vancouver Centre Conservative candidate Tony Fogarassy the media point man for same-sex marriage—which Fogarassy has stressed he supports—and climate change. “There is no such plan, and if there were, I would know about it. And there’s not,” Metcalfe said.

More

But then again, the Tories ain't doing anything else that the other two aren't doing to their 'canadidates'--campaigns are topdown and have little to do with a 'healthy exchange of ideas and opinions' anyhow.