Bored on the Corner Gets it Right on the Gun Registry

I love this guy. His videos are always well researched and presented. And he gets it absolutely right when discussing Harper's nonsense over the gun registry. Another incident where he will not allow facts to get in the way of decisions that could hamper his chance at holding onto power.

Keep the "base" happy and for everyone else, he just makes stuff up.

But Stephen Harper may have made a big mistake when he decided to make the gun registry a "wedge issue". It could turn out to be a "wedgie".

According to David Climenhaga:

Obviously, the Conservatives concluded registration of rifles and shotguns was a wedge that could separate sufficient numbers of habitual NDP supporters in rural Northern Ontario and Liberal supporters in rural Atlantic Canada to give them the Parliamentary majority they crave. There is no doubt wedge issues work. They may be divisive and negative, polarizing the populace into bitter camps, but they have effectively driven politics in the United States since the era of Richard Nixon. The cynical Republican strategist Karl Rove used them to push the sophomoric loser George W. Bush right into the White House.

But while Harper's Conservatives clearly admire Rove and imitate his tactics, there are reasons to believe the divisive campaign they have crafted using the long-gun registry could drive just as deep a wedge between Conservatives and many of their natural supporters as the other way around.

Like supporters in the urban west, who vote out of habit. They abandoned the Tories when they didn't believe that Brian Mulroney was listening to them. They are quite capable of doing the same to the Reform-Conservatives, especially when they are listening to the NRA instead of them.

And EKOS pollster Frank Graves, also sees that this could spell trouble for a party hoping to fool people into thinking they are governing from the center.

Mr. Graves characterizes the spin as “egregiously flawed political arithmetic,” suggesting the Tories – rather than winning seats because of their position – would actually lose seats because of it. “Surely, we might at least consider the question of whether Conservative MPs in urban areas, who were elected by slim margins, might not be concerned their fealty to the destruction of the gun registry might not push them into the realm of failure next time?” It’s an emotional issue, he argues, not just for rural voters but also for others, such as women voters in Quebec where the province’s 11 Tory MPs all supported scrapping the registry.

It was a stupid move, and add that to all the other stupid moves, and I sure would not want to be trying to campaign on them.