Today, the National Post has an article titled 'Social conservatives watch campaign from sidelines'.
Stephen Harper's promise Monday that a Tory majority would not open the debate on abortion or gay marriage is likely the final proof that social conservatives have become a spent political force in national politics, observers say.
"We're now just seen as eccentric," said Link Byfield, a long-time social conservative activist and current provincial candidate for the Wildrose Party in Alberta. "I understand why political people avoid these topics. Politicians are not there to be imaginative or perceptive; they're there to be popular. Whatever makes people angry they're going to avoid.
"Harper has made it abundantly and compellingly clear that the social conservative agenda is not to be contemplated in his government and not to be advocated or advanced. And he will have come to this conclusion because he has seen it necessary to get centre voters. As long as he's leader that will remain the case."
'Spent political force'. 'Eccentric'. Lovely words, yes?
The so-conneds have finally had it. Mind, Harper played them like a bunch of banjos for quite a while, repeating the mantra 'Next year in Majorityland'.
Mr. Byfield said Mr. Harper concluded early on that the social conservatives would stay with him because they had no other choice in the political landscape -and if they did not they would not jump to other national parties. The Prime Minister then made it clear to his MPs that they were not to raise these issues, he added.
They sucked up that KoolAid long enough, it seems.
They're pissed.
Here are two threads at the Freaks in which the painfully obvious manifests itself to the painfully oblivious. This one, on 'not even in MajorityLand will we revisit abortion and equal marriage' and an older one I've linked to before on Harper's hidden agenda.
There may not be a lot of them, but they're loud. They're sitting on their wallets, their hands, and voting fringe or spoiling ballots.
They're talking about a new Reform Party. They're talking about ousting PMSHhithead ASAP.
Woo-hoo!
(One 'woo-hoo' does not a happy dance make. I'm still très nervous.)
