New York Times | Religious Liberals Sat Out of Politics for 40 Years. Now They Want in the Game. New York Times Frustrated by Christian conservatives' focus on reversing liberal successes in legalizing abortion and same-sex marriage, those on the religious left want to turn instead to what they see as truly fundamental biblical imperatives caring for the poor ... |
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Religious Liberals Sat Out of Politics for 40 Years. Now They Want in the Game. - New York Times
The series opener between the Hays Larks and Liberal BeeJays on Friday night was the textbook definition of a pitchers dual.
Larks starter Alex Lopez won the individual battle with Liberal starter Darin Cook. Lopez picked up his second win of the season with seven shutout innings, scattering five hits in the outing.
Through two starts, Lopez has a pair of wins and is yet to give up a run.
It feels pretty good right now, the Texas Wesleyan product said. Coming back out to Hays is always a great time. It was really good to start off this year with some good games.
Hays manager Frank Leo has come to expect nothing but quality from the second-year Lark.
It helps when youve seen a guy for a year. Its a guy you ran out in the championship game of the (NBC) World Series, Leo said. That tells you we have confidence in him.
Lopez retired the Bee Jays in order in the top of the first before the Larks plated the games only run.
Catcher Nick Jones ripped a one-out double before Jacob Boston plated him with a single for the games only run.
Lopez worked around a two-out single in the second before another 1-2-3 inning in the third. After the Larks stranded two in the bottom half, Lopez had to get himself out of a jam in the fourth.
An error, the only one of the game, put a man on before a single and a walk loaded the bases with two outs. Lopez made one of his better pitches on the night, catching Liberals Zac Cook looking on a 3-2 pitch to get out of the inning unharmed.
Hes an experienced guy that isnt going to get shook out there, Leo said. If he gets himself in a jam, he can step back and make pitches when he needs to.
Hays second baseman Johnathan Soberanes started a 4-6-3 double play to end the Liberal half of the fifth before the Bee Jays had their best opportunity in the sixth.
Jaron Robinson opened the top of the sixth with a double to the gap before Cale ODonnell singled, putting runners on first and third with no outs. Lopez got a strikeout before getting he got Bee Jay catcher Garrett Scott to ground into a double play.
It makes things really easy, said Lopez of pitching in front of a defense he trusts. You can just fill up the zone, and you know theyre going to have your back no matter what happens.
Hays outfielder Trevor Boone smacked a one-out double in the bottom of the sixth but stayed there after a pair of fly outs.
Lopez returned for his final inning in the seventh and sat down the Bee Jays in order, getting a ground out and his sixth and seventh batters.
Alex was really good, Leo said. He made pitches when he had to. Thats a sign of an experienced guy.
The seventh was the pitchers 12th consecutive scoreless inning to open the season. In Fridays seven innings, he said he rarely used his offspeed pitches.
Really working the fastball in on both sides of the plate was really good for me tonight, Lopez said.
Lopez handed it off to Ryan Kotulek for the eighth. After a leadoff single, Boston snagged a liner at short and threw to first for a double play. After playing third and short last year, Boston started the year handling most of the action in right field. With Trey Ochoa gone for the weekend, Leo was comfortable sliding Boston back into one of the most important defensive spots.
Hes a great utility guy, Leo said. Hes a very good athlete. He can handle a lot of spots for us.
Boston led off the bottom half with a walk and moved to second on a Boone single with one out. That ended Cooks night after 7.1 innings. The Liberal starter worked around 10 hits and struck out two with a walk. Derek Craft came on and got a fielders choice that moved Boston to third for Hays third baseman Alex Weiss. Weiss flared a pitch to right but saw it snagged by the Liberal outfielder.
It was far from the only time the Larks sent hard-hit balls right to Liberal fielders.
He barreled too hard, Leo said of Weiss. We did that several times during the night. Im encouraged by what were seeing.
Tyler Starks took the mound in a save situation in the ninth. After a lead off single, the Hays closer got Scott to ground out to Larks first baseman Jace Selsor. Selsor was able to step on first and throw to Boston at short, who tagged ODonnell for the second out of the inning. Starks recorded the save with a called third strike.
The Stephen F. Austin product appears to be in line to hold down the closer role this summer.
Hes the guy, Leo said. He wants the baseball. Hes used to that. Hes a competitor. Hes got the right demeanor for that situation.
The Larks will look to take the series in Saturdays Game 2. First pitch is set for 7 p.m. at Larks Park.
Hays 1, Liberal 0
Liberal 000 000 000 0 7 0
Hays 100 000 00X 1 10 1
Lopez, Kotulek (8th), Starks (9th) and Jones. Cook, Craft (8th) and Scott. W Lopez. L Cook. S Starks. 2B Jones, Boone (Hays); Robinson (Liberal).
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Lopez wins dual, lifts Larks to win over Liberal - Hays Daily News
There was a very instructive moment this week amid all of the political messaging, applause and back-slapping involved in the arrival of the long-awaited Liberal foreign policy statement and defence review.
It happened when Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan was asked, in front of a sea of uniforms, to guarantee his exhaustive, occasionally thoughtful piece of policy homeworkwould survive beyond the life of the current government.
The report, after all,is supposed to be a 20-year document.
His response was somewhat awkward: "We as a government and future governments owe it to the Canadian Armed Forces that we fully fund the Canadian Armed Forces on a long-term footing."
Much of the post-policy coverage has, justifiably, focused on fiscal skepticism.
Do the Liberals have the money? If so, where is it? Will it add to the deficit? If so, by how much?
The answers were: Yes. Stay tuned. No. And see the previous answer.
The skepticism, however, has deep and tangled roots, some of them fresh in terms of the string of broken Liberal campaign promises; others stretch back decades where history is littered with well-crafted and some not-so-well-crafted defence policy plans.
The Trudeau government may have given Canadianssome crisp, well-honed ideas and fact-based conclusions in the report about a world in turmoil, many of which run contrary to what they campaigned on.
But what Sajjan's rather tentative call to arms indirectly exposed is perhaps the biggest failing of this latest endeavour and maybe even the ones that preceded it: The absence of clear, unambiguous, long-term political support.
So, forget about the budget for a minute. Think Parliament.
"Unless you do get a consensus, some kind of bipartisan consensus, which I think is possible, then this policy is going to be very short-lived," said Richard Cohen, a retired military officer who servedin the Canadian Forces and the British Army.
He should know.
A member of the military looks on as Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan unveils the Liberal government's long-awaited vision for expanding the Canadian Armed Forces Wednesday. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)
As an adviser to former defence minister Peter MacKay, Cohen was one of the people who helped craft the ephemeral 2008 Conservative defence strategy document.
That 20-year plan survived a little less than 20 months from the time it was introduced, said Dave Perry, of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.
TheConservative planwas sacrificed in a bid for abalanced budget, but in light of the toxic politics of the day succeeding governments, regardless of their political stripe, would have had a tough time swallowing even the more palatable portions.
The survival of this plan will depend on "whether there is cross-parliamentary and cross-partisan support," Perrysaid.
The two major overseas deployments in recent years have been either politically divisivethink Afghanistanor languished in misunderstood obscurity, such as Iraq.
The defence minister wasn't the only one in the spotlight this week.
Behind Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland's measured, sometimes chirpy, delivery of a major policy speech on Tuesdaywere some stark words and reality.
"To put it plainly: Canadian diplomacy and development sometimes require the backing of hard power," she saidin her speech.
Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland delivering a speech on Canada's foreign policy future in the House of Commons Tuesday. (Chris Wattie/Reuters)
The notion that Canada can no longer be entirely comfortable under the U.S. security umbrella is remarkable in its sobriety and significance.
Yet, it was politics as usual in the House of Commons after Sajjan delivered his plan.
"The previous government announced a lot of things, didn't put the kind of money forward in stable, long-term predictable ways,and that's what we've done," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said answering opposition criticism.
What the Liberals haven't done is the kind of painful, political bridge-building that may be necessary in times that they themselves acknowledge are extraordinary, said Cohen.
"Neither [opposition]party is very supportive of the end result it seems to me," he said.
The Liberals would argue that both the Conservatives and NDP had their chance during the months of public consultations held during development of the policy.
And, in fairness, neither opposition party has shown any inclination towards ratcheting back the partisan rhetoric.
But Cohen argues the government has an extraordinary opportunity to take politics out of national defence and build some kind of long-term consensus in the implementation of its policy.
"I think this is a time when parties are moreor lessaligned on what they see in terms of our national goals. It is the means they are arguing about," he said. "I think it's possible to come to a consensus, but who knows, maybe it's too late."
Cohen said an overhaul of the House of Commons and senate defence committees,or creating some other kind of body,might provide a venue for bipartisan co-operation.
The almost-established parliamentary oversight committee on national security promised by the Liberals during the election could have provided such a bipartisan forum.
But defence is not included within its already sprawling mandate.
Originally posted here:
Cost is one question but partisan politics may undo Liberal defence plan - CBC.ca
NewsBusters (blog) | ESPN Hides Overwhelming Truth About Liberal Bias NewsBusters (blog) Approximately two-thirds (64 percent) of respondents believe ESPN is getting it right in terms of mixing sports news and political issues. Another 10 percent had no opinion and 8 percent said ESPN does not do enough politics in its programming. |
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ESPN Hides Overwhelming Truth About Liberal Bias - NewsBusters (blog)
"Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling on Friday delivered a passionate takedown of "liberal" men who profess progressive politics yet still call women vile and derogatory names when they disagree with them.
"Just unfollowed a man whom I thought was smart and funny, because he called Theresa May a whore," Rowling tweeted. "If you can't disagree with a woman without reaching for all those filthy old insults, screw you and your politics. I'm sick of liberal' men whose mask slips every time a woman displeases them, who reach immediately for crude and humiliating words associated with femaleness, act like old-school misogynists and then preen themselves as though they've been brave."
Rowling frequently tweets acerbically about President Trump and is a champion for liberal causes, yet her defense of May came after the British prime minister's Conservative Party suffered a major blow losing its majority in the House of Commons.
Rowling ended her tweetstorm with a reference to Pepe, the online mascot of the "alt-right" movement that dishes out vitriolic hate on Twitter, and said "liberal" men who attack women based on their "femaleness" are no better.
"I don't care whether we're talking about Theresa May or Nicola Sturgeon or Kate Hooey or Yvette Cooper or Hillary Clinton: femaleness is not a design flaw. If your immediate response to a woman who displeases you is to call her a synonym for her vulva, or compare her to a prostitute, then drop the pretence and own it: you're not a liberal. You're a few short steps away from some guy hiding behind a cartoon frog."
See more here:
JK Rowling attacks 'liberal' men who call women vile names online - Washington Examiner
Galvanised by the referendum Young anti-Brexit protesters at Downing Street, June 2016. Photograph: Isabel Infantes/PA
Before that other surprising election night the one back in 2015 that now seems a very long time ago it had seemed that Britain had become a political environment where it was impossible to build a secure majority for any party. For every gain in support from somewhere, a party would lose some from the other end of its electoral coalition.
In 2015, David Cameron proved that it could be done, at least for one election, and for a while the Conservatives under Theresa May looked to have found a way of building a big majority. Perhaps Brexit had unlocked a future that would consistently deliver one-party hegemony for the Conservatives. It looked like Labours vote was badly split between the liberal remainer tribe and the partys traditional supporters who favoured Brexit, who were ready to defect to the Conservatives. But, as it turned out, the coalition of support that the Tories had enjoyed during Mays honeymoon was also too broad to survive.
The Conservatives achieved some of their aims in the election. They did gain some white working-class seats from Labour in the north and midlands, winning some new territory in places such as Mansfield (Labour since 1923), and North East Derbyshire and Stoke-on-Trent South (both Labour since 1935). The raid on Labours leave-voting heartlands came away with some prizes but the very campaign messages that helped them win those seats alienated some of the Conservatives own former supporters.
The Conservative vote in 2010 and 2015 included many liberal, free-market, pro-European electors who were increasingly alarmed by the drift towards isolationism and hard Brexit; May had assumed that the Conservatives could take these people for granted given the threat of Jeremy Corbyn. The disquiet among those Cameron-style Tories was amplified by the feelings of Britains liberal tribe.
The Liberal Democrats had a poor election overall, with the Conservatives consolidating their hold on past strongholds such as Yeovil and running Tim Farron close in his own constituency. But they picked up shock wins in Bath and Oxford West & Abingdon, as well as restoring Vince Cable and Ed Davey to their south London constituencies.
Labours share fell in Oxford West, helping to eject a Conservative MP, while it soared in Oxford East. Labours first-time gains in Canterbury and Portsmouth South which they did not manage even in 1997 came with the help of falls in the Green and Lib Dem vote totals. It was a surprising resurrection of tactical voting and progressive alliances on the ground. It could be that the vilification of the remainers the sense that a part of society had been pushed into a corner encouraged them to vote and to maximise the power of their vote.
The outcome of the referendum, by demonstrating the power of a vote to do something radical in a way that many young people and disengaged liberals disliked, encouraged them to strike back against the complacent assumptions of the people with power. Perhaps also the freedom to do the unexpected and radical encouraged Scottish voters to embrace the Conservative and Unionist party. The Scottish Tories a milder breed for the most part than their English counterparts have a lot of power in the new parliament if they choose to use it.
Theresa May must be wishing that remain die-hards were indeed citizens of nowhere, because that would mean they couldnt vote. Among all the cross-currents of the election the youth vote that finally turned out, the Ukip-to-Conservative movement that happened but not as powerfully as most expected, the dramatic drop in the SNP vote was the revenge of liberal Britain. For the first time in many years, a party has paid a price for scorning the embattled liberal elite.
Excerpt from:
Britain's embattled 'liberal elite' has taken its revenge - The Guardian
Progressives want education, health care, and housing for everyone. And were the close-mindedones?
Protesters gather outside Republican Congressman Darrell Issas town-hall meeting in San Juan Capistrano, California, on June 3, 2017. (Reuters / Mike Blake)
If I have to read one more article blaming liberal condescension toward the red states and the white working class for the election of Trump, Im moving to Paris, France. These pieces started coming out even before the election and are still pouring down on our heads. Just within the last few weeks, the New Republic had Michael Tomasky deploring elite liberal suspicion of middle America for such red-state practices as churchgoing and gun owning and The New York Times had Joan Williams accusing Democrats of impugning the social honor of working-class whites by talking about them in demeaning and condescending ways, as exemplified by such phrases as flyover states, trailer trash, and plumbers butt. Plumbers butt? That was a new one for me. And thats not even counting the 92,346 feature stories about rural Trump voters and their heartwarming folkways. (I played by the rules, said retired rancher Tom Grady, 66, delving into the Daffodil Diners famous rhubarb pie. Why should I pay for some deadbeats trip to Europe?) Im still waiting for the deep dives into the hearts and minds of Clinton supporterswhat concerns motivated the 94 percent of black women voters who chose her? Is there nothing of interest there? For that matter, why dont we see explorations of the voters who made up the majority of Trumps base, people who are not miners or unemployed factory workers but regular Republicans, most quite well-fixed in life? (I would vote for Satan himself if he promised to cut my taxes, said Bill Thorberg, a 45-year-old dentist in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Im basically just selfish.) There are, after all, only around 75,000 coal miners in the entire country, and by now every one of them has been profiled in the Times.
In her fascinating recent book Strangers in Their Own Land, the brilliant sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild asks readers to climb the empathy wall and really try to understand the worldview of Trump votersas she did, spending over five years getting to know white Southern Louisianians, many of them Cajun, who have extreme free-market, anti-government Tea Party politics although they live in Cancer Alley, an area where the petrochemical industry, abetted by the Republican politicians they voted for, has destroyed nature, their communities and their health. Hochschild has a deep grasp of human complexity, and her subjects come across as lovely people, despite their politics. As she hoped, I came away with a better understanding of how kindly people could vote for cruel policies, and how people who dont think theyre racist actually are so.
But heres my question: Who is telling the Tea Partiers and Trump voters to empathize with the rest of us? Why is it all one way? Hochschilds subjects have plenty of demeaning preconceptions about liberals and blue-statersthat distant land of hippies, feminazis, and freeloaders of all kinds. Nor do they seem to have much interest in climbing the empathy wall, given that they voted for a racist misogynist who wants to throw 11 million people out of the country and ban people from our shores on the basis of religion (as he keeps admitting on Twitter, even as his administration argues in court that Islam has nothing to do with it). Furthermore, they are the ones who won, despite having almost 3 million fewer votes. Thanks to the founding fathers, red-staters have outsize power in both the Senate and the Electoral College, and with great power comes great responsibility. So shouldnt they be trying to figure out the strange polyglot population they now dominate from their strongholds in the South and Midwest? What about their stereotypes? How respectful or empathetic is the belief of millions of Trump voters, as established in polls and surveys, that women are more privileged than men, that increasing racial diversity in America is bad for the country, that the travel ban is necessary for national security? How realistic is the conviction, widespread among Trump supporters, that Hillary Clinton is a murderer, President Obama is a Kenyan communist and secret Muslim, and the plain-red cups that Starbucks uses at Christmastime are an insult to Christians? One of Hochschilds subjects complains that liberal commentators refer to people like him as a redneck. Ive listened to liberal commentators for decades and have never heard one use this word. But say it happened once or twice. Feminazi went straight from Rush Limbaughs mouth to general parlance. One of Hochschilds most charming subjects, a gospel singer and preachers wife, uses it like a normal word. Equating women who want their rights with the genocidal murder of millions? How is that not a vile insult?
Sorry, self-abasing pundits: If you go by actual deeds, liberals and leftists are the ones with empathy.
Im sure I have stereotypical views of people who live in red statesincluding forgetting that, as Tomasky points out, all those places have significant numbers of (churchgoing, gun-owning) liberals. I try not to be prejudicedmost people are pretty nice when you dont push their buttonsbut I probably have my fair share of biases. But so what? What difference does it make if I think believing in the Rapture is nuts, and hunting for pleasure is cruel? So what if I prefer opera to Elvis? What does that have to do with anything important? Empathy and respect are not about kowtowing to someones cultural and social preferences. Theyre about supporting policies that make peoples lives better, whether they share your values, or your tastes, or not.
How much empathy did Louisiana Republicans show when they electedand reelectedBobby Jindal, who, backed by Republican legislators, cut taxes, slashed spending on education, health care, and social programs and gave massive tax breaks to the very petrochemical companies that poisoned Republican voters themselves? In Oklahoma, a growing number of schools are now open only four days a weekvoters, ultimately, made the choice to cut taxes instead of pay for a decent education for the states children. You can go down the most uncontroversial list of social goodshospitals, libraries, schools, clean air and water, treatment for mentally ill people and drug addictsand Republican voters label them Big Government and oppose them. And when the consequences get too big to ignore, as with climate change, they choose to believe whatever nonsense Fox News is promoting that week, as if at least 97 percent of the worlds climate scientists are just elitists who think they know so much. True, by the time the world burns to a crisp, todays voters will mostly be dead, but wheres the empathy for their own grandchildren?
THE STAKES ARE HIGHER NOW THAN EVER. GET THE NATION IN YOUR INBOX.
Sorry, self-abasing liberal pundits: If you go by actual deeds, liberals and leftists are the ones with empathy. We want everyone to have health care, for example, even those Tea Partiers who in the debate over the Affordable Care Act loudly asserted that people who cant afford treatment should just die. We want everyone to be decently paid for their labor, no matter how low they wear their pantssomehow the party that claims to be the voice of working people has no problem with paying them so little theyre eligible for food stamps, which that same party wants to take away. We want college to be affordable for everyoneeven for the children of parents who didnt start saving for college when the pregnancy test came out positive. We want everyone to be free to worship as they pleaseincluding Muslimseven if we ourselves are nonbelievers.
What should matter in politics is what the government does. Everything else is just flattery, like George H.W. Bushs oft-cited love of pork rinds. Unfortunately, flattery gets you everywhere.
Read more:
Xn#}`3lv!Xd&H^-nk`?"/[-/@&Udvo: Ky}CESbz+rvMh }_LjOu]uUY;|{C8#H53Ni132`GwK: <~;EQ& -egbWd1 P{:$ D5SXL-h& T#b]~D#2c-On ')J_5~gkI]T}I'9hZRH(u(Z^pK:xaHf$9Pd2.w>Z_mmE.!!WDeFH;MB- Yh-LwEQ :](N,q`PLh $H](RCT} cW6%: 'vl1~h/>01 PQsJ7{VXj>p6lrw$@zKJ| Sr5v/:tq=Rvd`>^ArDPQHJ:Omf1K]UE `-j}nL|=!_ayP}[,+fGzOsr![| 5Szfbm#L_ERa1mp& 9-NU~`avc2&dX'Fd'tV0k XCiuI4os4fQfoL1 |sLy8UT;6[obB9TbHZ0HAl ?ci2.;YcI3[+1 Read the rest here: Election night offers little cheer for the Liberal Democrats - The Economist (blog)
If the media werent so desperate to beat their anti-Trump drum, the only headlines wed see today would deliver harsh indictments of the Obama Justice Department.
In his testimony yesterday, former FBI Director James Comey dropped the bombshell that former Attorney General Loretta Lynch asked him to publicly lie to the American people about the investigation into Hillary Clintons emails.
Yet Democrats and liberal talking heads are solely focused on twisting Comeys testimony to impose their own negative narrative when the facts that just dont support them. Despite the huge disappointment to the liberal media machine, the testimony Thursday reaffirmed exactly what we already knew: at no point has there been any evidence of the alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian actors, nor any effort to impede the FBI investigation into the matter.
In a political atmosphere driven by unsubstantiated leaks it is often hard to cut through the constant, deafening din of unsourced rumors often reported as facts. The only way to cut through the noise was to have Comey himself to speak openly about the facts of the case. President Trump knew this, which is why he didnt invoke executive privilege and members of the administration encouraged Comeys testimony.
Democrats across the board have criticized Comeys decision making abilities, questioned his fitness for the job, or outright called for removal from his post. A large part of this, in the words of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was due to the fact that they believed he had caved to political pressure in ways that might make him unfit to lead an independent FBI.
My friends on the left are right about one thing: an FBI director must insulate himself from political winds. Thursday, James Comey further underscored his inability to do just that. In fact, even members of the media admitted that Comey was extremely political and knew exactly what he was doing during his testimony in order to get a desired outcome.
What was even more alarming was Comeys admission that he intentionally leaked the memos he wrote in an attempt to compel the Department of Justice to appoint a special counsel. This outright confession of his manipulative intent is as out of the ordinary as it is proof that Comey has become nothing but another D.C. political operative.
This just reinforces that President Trumps decision to remove Comey from his post at the FBI was based solely on the overwhelming lack of public confidence in his inability to carry out the job.
From his gross misstatement of facts regarding evidence to his showboating throughout the entire Clinton email investigation, this is not a man that instills confidence in his judgment.
In fact, the most potentially damning indictment of Comeys judgment is the allegation that he used a crucial piece of information related to the Hillary Clinton investigation that he knew to be fabricated by Russian intelligence.
The pernicious influence of James Comeys carelessness has eroded all trust in his integrity and ability to lead.
For months Democrats have demanded answers from James Comey and Thursday they got the answer they are still reluctant to accept: there is no there there.
Yet they will continue to fan the flames of faux outrage, and their allies in the liberal media will dump fuel where there is no fire.
Brett M. Decker is a member of the White House Writers Group and best-selling author of The Conservative Case for Trump.
Read more from the original source:
Comey testimony: The liberal media ignores big questions about Obama's Justice Department - Fox News
So it was brilliant defeat after all. Labour lost their third successive general election, but for the first time since 2005, the party can feel they have the wind at their backs.
Yes, the numbers mean that the only viable government and even then that's using a very generous definition of "viable" is a Conservative one, propped up by the Unionist parties. English votes for English laws means that the Conservatives will still have a majority of 60 on English issues, but this is a government that is altogether weaker and more vulnerable than the one it replaced.
Don't underestimate the scale of the turnaround that Labour achieved after its disastrous local elections, either.
As far as Jeremy Corbyn is concerned personally, having increased both Labour's vote share and more importantly its seat share, he has a cast-iron right to have a second crack at the electorate if he so wants. Equally, if my maths is right, a Corbynite successor could now make the ballot without relying on the kindness of strangers.
But Corbyn hasn't just achieved an internal victory. (And let's take a moment to praise Theresa May, who has done what no one thought possible, and unified the Labour Party.) As I wrote immediately after the 2015 election, that defeat was very bad for Labour indeed. So bad that the party had lost two elections in one night. There were very few genuine marginals for them to gain and a number of their own seats were highly vulnerable.
Some of their own seats are still very vulnerable but Corbyn has created an electoral map with many more winnable seats than he inherited. Shipley is a marginal again. Chingford and Wood Green is a marginal for the first time in its history. The electoral path to power is still formidable. But no matter how bleak things look, Labour will know that having won Canterbury a seat that has been Conservative-held for so long that the last party leader to take it off the Tories was William Gladstone they can revitalise and regenerate their coalition.
The remarkable boost in turnout not only among the young, though we will have to wait for the full figures to emerge to start to draw real conclusions from it means that no party will feel as relaxed about offering thin gruel to young voters again. That will change British politics for the good and for ever.
As for the Liberal Democrats, as bruised as they will feel, they had a fantastic night too. The loss of their best performer in Nick Clegg, the miscalculation of wasting time and money trying to unseat Kate Hoey in Vauxhall while narrowly losing to Zac Goldsmith in Richmond Park, and the fall from first to third place in Southport, obscures a night in which their parliamentary party is larger and their talent pool is deeper. Their vote went down but it is more efficient. And to be frank, Clegg doesn't need to be in Parliament to make a splash.
But what the parties of the left and centre can now do is look at the next election, whenever it may be, with genuine hope.
Read the rest here:
Jeremy Corbyn has won a great victory and so have the Liberal ... - New Statesman
It is a strange world where a bakers dozen of seats can be regarded as some sort of deliverance but,of course, that is exactly where the Liberal Democrats have wound up. It is a mild advance on the 2015 disaster, and a very mixed one indeed.
When you get down to this sort of representation,quality is more important than quantity. Theobvious loss is Nick Clegg,meeting his nemesis at last after the tuition fees affair. The students in Sheffield Hallam, this time registered at the right address, managed to get to the polling stations in time.
The positive side of the ledger comprises the return of Sir Vince Cable, Jo Swinson and Ed Davey,plus the survival of Norman Lamb and only just party leaderTim Farron himself. It will now fall to Cableto fulfil the job of leader of the Anti-Brexit Party in Parliament where Remainers actually constitute an easy majority, whatever their party labels. In the Lords,perhaps, Clegg could play a prominent role in delivering a second referendum on the terms of the Brexit deal negotiated with the EU. A more consensual Brexitnowseems inevitable.
Former deputy PM Nick Clegg loses Sheffield Hallam to Labour
Yet the Lib Dems failed in so many ways to capitalise on the bruised 48 per cent of left behind Remainers. Outside the posh London suburbs and places such as Bath, they have been almost driven out of England, andpushed further to the Scottish fringe. There is little sign that they are anywhere near re-establishing in the rest of theCeltic fringe, especially the West Country.
Talk about a progressive alliance and the realignment of the centre left seems misplaced because the country has polarised and progressives have shifted to the left. Theres not much point in creating a grouping that would just get squeezed under this return to two party politics.
Jeremy Corbyn is consolidating the progressives,and even the Remainers, himselfeven though he personallyremains radical and Eurosceptic. He has found a way to mobilise people in a way that had been entirely unexpected, and his statist agenda is popular.
The Lib Dems have survived again. They arepolitical cockroaches, stubbornly surviving thenuclear attack under which they are continually placed by the the first-past-the-post electoral system.And theyvebeen through worse: the 1950s;1989.
Today, however, the Liberal Democratsdo look like a party without a purpose.
Continued here:
Some political moves are complex, requiring a delicate balancing of competing interests and priorities. Some are tough moral calls, with reasonable people disagreeing over the right course.
And then are those political moves that should be the equivalent of empty net goals. Theyre supposed to be an easy score. Theyre supposed to be hard to miss.
And yet, faced with such opportunities, the Trudeau government has often displayed a remarkable ability for seeing an open net, misfiring and instead scoring an own-goal.
Theres a discernable pattern of unforced errors, lapses in judgment, self-harming secrecy and worse. Coming from a PMO that sees itself as Mensas gift to Ottawa, its more than a little puzzling.
Consider the botched appointment of Madeleine Meilleur to the post of Official Languages Commissioner.
As a Franco-Ontarian and former Ontario cabinet minister, Ms. Meilleur is arguably well qualified for the position. But shes also a just-retired Liberal politician, being offered what is supposed to be a non-partisan job. And most importantly, the job the government tried to give her wasnt its to offer.
Read more: Madeleine Meilleur drops bid to be Canadas languages commissioner
The Official Languages Commissioner is an officer of Parliament. She reports to Parliament, not the government of the day. Traditionally, the appointment is made by across-the-aisle consensus, or something close to it. That the government didnt clear Ms. Meilleur with the opposition before announcing the appointment is hard to understand and impossible to justify which is why it provoked such an outcry.
Heritage Minister Mlanie Joly, who is ultimately responsible for putting forward a nominee and conducted the final round of interviews with prospective candidates, is surrounded by people who used to work for or with Ms. Meilleur. It turns out that Ms. Meilleur also spoke prior to her nomination with senior staff in the Prime Ministers Office, who also used to work at Queens Park.
The process that led to the appointment initially held in secret; later revealed amid public pressure has even drawn fire from minority language groups who fear the office has been tainted.
Theyre not far wrong; this has every appearance of a Liberal government looking after a member of its political family, while undermining its own claims to believe in greater parliamentary accountability and transparency.
This week, faced with the ongoing outcry, Ms. Meilleur withdrew her name from contention.
This should have been a simple, non-controversial, non-partisan appointment. The government transformed it into an own-goal.
And remarkably, this is not the Trudeau governments first such hubris-driven, self-inflicted wound.
There were those attempts plural to rewrite the rules of parliamentary procedure without all-party consensus.
There was that time the Liberals presented draft legislation clearly aimed at undermining the arms length Parliamentary Budget Officer.
And there is the ongoing controversy over the Prime Ministers Christmas vacation on the Aga Khans Caribbean island. The story began when the government refused to tell the media, and Canadians, where the PM was. The move was pretty much the definition of self-defeating: A sure sign that you have something to hide is that you are very visibly hiding it.
More recently, an entire Question Period was devoted to Mr. Trudeau repeatedly refusing to say whether hed been interviewed by the federal Ethics Commissioner about the trip.
In a related vein, the obvious solution to the controversy provoked by Liberal ministers holding secret pay-to-play fundraisers involving people who do business with his government would have been to stop them, immediately.
The newly-introduced Bill C-50 is an important step forward, as was the Liberal Party decision earlier this year to make its fundraising more transparent. Both go a long way to removing the secrecy around party fundraising. The government has ultimately moved in the right direction but first, it spent months exhausting all other options, while denying there was a problem.
The paradox is that this is a government that has at times demonstrated flexibility and shown a willingness to change its mind. Reversing course on the PBO legislation was the right thing to do, even if it required last-minute amendments in committee to do it.
But why not just take the right course, first?
The Liberals came to power promising radical transparency, and a clean break with practices they decried under former PM Stephen Harper. And yet, for all the Sunny Ways branding and all the carefully curated photo-ops, there are too many moments when the Trudeau government comes across as puzzlingly, insistently Harper-esque.
It is not a good look.
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Globe editorial: Another case of Liberal hubris and self-harm - The Globe and Mail
He had previously ruled out a coalition deal with other parties after warning their positions on Brexit could not be reconciled.
Speaking about the loss Mr Clegg said the next parliament will preside over a deeply, deeply divided and polarised nation.
We saw that in the Brexit referendum last year and we see it again tonight, he said, adding that the most grave gulf of all in society is between the young and the old. Accepting his defeat, he said that in politics You live by the sword and you die by the sword.
It came after the former leader warned he had seen an "uptick" in support for Jeremy Corbyn's party in his seat, which has a high student population.
The former Lib Dem leader ruled out a coalition between his former party and Labour or the Conservatives, addingthere is no "meeting point" between them because of their views on Brexit.
Speaking to ITV MrCleggsaid: "It's clearly a complete boomerang election for the Conservatives who when they started out in this election campaign were treating it as something of a coronation and clearly it's going to be a much tighter fought contest."
Asked about the possibly of a coalition with either Labour or the Tories he added:"There's no meeting point between the Conservatives and the Labour parties and the Lib Dems."
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'A Proud Liberal' Engages 'a Proud Deplorable' New York Times Dear Friend: I write as a proud liberal with an open mind. Though there is much we disagree about, there is one thing you and I agree on: We live in a dangerous world. One of the greatest risks we face is our belief that those who disagree with us have ... |
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'A Proud Liberal' Engages 'a Proud Deplorable' - New York Times
Liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org called for President Trumps impeachmentThursday after the release of former FBI Director James Comeys opening testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee.
In the United States, no one is above the law. The testimony that former FBI Director James Comey is expected to deliver today makes clear that Congress must begin impeachment proceedings immediately, the statement reads.
Todays testimony puts us in fundamentally new territory. This is no longer about our opposition to Trumps policies and rhetoric.
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MoveOns call for Trumps impeachment is not the only one. Democratic Reps. Al GreenAl GreenRyan denies GOP would try to impeach Dem accused of same actions as Trump Liberal group MoveOn calls for Trump to be impeached Second Dem joins effort to impeach Trump MORE (Texas) and Brad Sherman (Calif.) have also called for the presidents impeachment.
Sherman said he was drafting a single article of impeachment due to Trumps firing of Comey. This would be the first step in any congressional bid to oust the president.
However, House Democratic leaders have pushed back on calls for impeachment,saying the efforts could undermine the congressional and federal investigations into alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russian election meddling.
MoveOns statement comes hours before the former FBI chief will testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee. The former FBI head put out his opening own opening statement on Wednesday, in which he says the president said he expected Comeys loyalty and that Trump wanted him to lift the cloud surrounding the Russia investigation.
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Liberal group MoveOn calls for Trump to be impeached - The Hill (blog)
Christy Clark reiterated that she doesn't expect to be B.C. premier much longer, while addressing media at today's Liberal MLA swearing-in ceremony.
"There is a very strong likelihood that the government will be defeated on a confidence motion, and I think that's a fair assumption to make," she said.
"We are in an unusual place in the province," she said. "It's an unusual situation when the party that gets the most seats does not govern."
The NDP and Greens won a combined 44 seats in last month's election and have agreed to work together to unseat the Liberals and form a minority government. The Liberals won 43 seats.
With the legislature set to berecalled June 22, there is growing intrigue over who will be elected Speakerand whether or not it will throw the legislature into gridlock.
Normally, the Speaker comes from the party forming government, which would have the effect of reducing the combined NDP-Green seat total to 43, tied with the Liberals.
Parliamentary convention has it that in the event of a tievote, the Speaker would continue debate and maintain the status quo. However, in the matter of a confidence vote, the speaker could cast the tie-breaking vote.
LiberalGovernment House Leader Mike deJongcautioned it would be dangerous to go against custom and politicizethe Speaker's position.
NDP leader John Horgan is introduced to his caucus in advance of the NDP swearing-in ceremony. (Mike McArthur/CBC)
"Whoever that person ends up being, there are parliamentary conventions in place for the approach the Speaker takes when called upon to cast a deciding vote," he said.
"To begin to amend the rules simply to buttress or make life easier in a precarious minoritysituation isfraught with problems."
The 41-member NDP caucus was sworn in this afternoon, one day after thethree elected members from theB.C. Green Party.
Clark said her party would be willing to support the NDP-Greens on issues they agree on, but that major decisions on Liberal-backed Kinder Morgan and Site C need to be pushed forward.
Clark and NDP Leader John Horganhave been waging a public letter-writing battle over the massive Site C hydroelectric dam, sparked by Horganadvising BC Hydro to not sign any new contracts related to the $8.8 billion project.
And the NDP-Green alliance has said it will attempt to stop the twinning of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline, which has federal approval and is slated to begin work in September.
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Liberal, NDP MLAs take part in swearing-in ceremony - CBC.ca
From a very early age Ive been put off by sanctimoniousness; its why, I think, Ive never been attracted to the political Left, which when I was growing up was heavy on the finger-wagging, and why I find a certain style of newspaper column irritating. They remind me of the sour-faced old guys we used to see at church all in competition to see who could look the most serious and disapproving. This whole idea that if you dont support Labour and the Left youre not just wrong or misguided but a bad person is what puts me off; this Daily Mash article is depressingly close to reality in my experience.
Yet this election has made me feel the same, for the first time; my area is flooded with Labour posters outside front doors and when I look at them I find myself shaking my head.
The extent to which Labour have done better than expected in polling is disappointing; they will certainly lose, but I hoped and expected that they would haemorrhage support from the start as people were put off by Jeremy Corbyn. Some seem to see him as a sort of Obi Wan Kanobi character saving the NHS; I look at him and see a man who has previously spoken of his admiration for the Venezuela regime which has brought such an economic miracle to that country; then theres a shadow chancellor who appears alongside Soviet flags at a rally, and a director of strategy who quite openly laments that the Berlin Wall came down. Even if supporters of the three parties have disagreements, we tend to think of each other as being wrong within normal parameters, as P.J. ORourke said of Hilary Clinton but these views seem so far beyond the bounds of normality I assumed most would be repulsed.
Instead huge numbers not just support him, but see Corbyn as a deeply moral man in a crusade; most troubling is the level of popularity among the young, estimated to be over 60 and maybe 70 per cent.
Sorry if I sound sanctimonious, but the Soviet Union was evil and if you stand beside its flag theres something wrong with you as a human being; yet over two-thirds of the next generation want Britain to be Venezuela with Jihadis. Where has the education system gone wrong?
Thats why Im voting Liberal Democrat for the first time today. The main practical reason is that I live in a two-horse constituency; I am also totally underwhelmed by the Tory party and, ideology aside, Im not sure they are competent enough to do the job. But I also believe the Lib Dems have been unfairly maligned, and the lack of support for them is not just surprising, but also unjust. Im not a natural liberal but they have been unfairly blamed for a coalition they had almost no choice to enter and in which they achieved much, as this Economist assessment points out.
The coalition has cut the deficit more pragmatically than it admits and more progressively than its critics allow. When the economy weakened, the Tories eased the pace (although not by as much as this newspaper would have liked). Though the poorest Britons have been hit hard by spending cuts, the richest 10% have borne the greatest burden of extra taxes.
Its not a perfect record, by any means, but in real life there are only imperfect governments, and terrible governments. (John Rentoul also wrote a good defence of the Lib Dems in government here.)
The Liberals didnt do enough to get their message across while in government, especially on the subject of cuts; a narrative seemed to emerge which went unchallenged, although I think thats probably a perennial problem with those in the political centre. (Likewise Ive come to appreciate the Blair government did lots of pretty good things but almost no one in the Labour party seems to defend them anymore.)
I thought that with Corbyn in charge the Liberal Democrats would become the natural home of Britains moderates, but it doesnt seem to have worked that way; liberals dont seem to support them, so I think its only sporting I should.
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Why I'm voting Liberal Democrat for the first time today - Spectator.co.uk (blog)
Project Veritas, the conservative activist group famous for damaging undercover videosthat recently forced two Democratic operatives out of their jobs, has been hit with a potentially expensive problem a $1 million conspiracy lawsuit.
The allegations: Project Veritas infiltrated a Democratic consulting firm under false pretenses, secretly recorded private conversations and published deceptively edited footage all to mislead the public and hurt former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's chances of winning the White House.In doing so, Project Veritas violatedfederal and Washington wiretapping laws, among other things, said attorney Joseph Sandler, a former Democratic National Committee general counsel who represents the plaintiff, Democracy Partners, a consulting group working with the Clinton campaign.
Project Veritas's founder, James O'Keefe, hasdenounced the lawsuit as an intimidation tacticto impedeProject Veritas's army of guerrilla journalists and their pursuit of the truth.
The lawsuit, which comes at a time of strong political divisiveness,will not be without significant challenges, legal experts say.
For one, pretending to be someone else to expose something that might be of public interest is hardly new. And courts in the pasthave protected constitutional rights to gather and publish news, whether by the institutional press or the average citizen, said David Heller, deputy director of the Media Law Resource Center.
[Two Democratic operatives lose jobs after James OKeefe sting]
Secondly, although wiretapping laws make it illegal to secretly tape conversations, they also say that it's okay to do so as long as one party knows about the recording and had consented to it. The exception, known as the one-party consent, is the reason why, for example, President Trump wouldn'thave broken any laws if he did tape conversations with former FBI director James B. Comey.
A judge or a jury will have to answer these questions: Do Project Veritas's undercover investigations serve the public interest? Or are they a smear campaign disguising asjournalism?
In the current environment of 'fake news' and hyper partisanship, it won't be surprising if judges struggle over what is or isn't for the good of the public, Heller told The Washington Post.
It all started in June 2016, when a man named Daniel Sandini introduced himself to Democracy Partners's founder, Robert Creamer. Using a false name, Sandini connected Creamer tohis niece who he claimed was interested in advocacy and political work, according to the complaint, which was filed last week. That niece, Allison Maas, used a false name and a fabricated resume to secure an internship at Democracy Partners.
Both Sandini and Maas are Project Veritas operatives, the lawsuit states.
During the course of her internship, which started in September, Maas wore a hidden camera and audio recording devices. Sherecorded conversations made with clients in person or via conference calls, the lawsuit states. Shehad access to confidential emails and documents and was present at confidential meetings.
Creamer had told her not to share information with anyone, the lawsuit states, although Maas never signed a nondisclosure agreement with Democracy Partners. Sandler said that even without a nondisclosure agreement, Maas owed it to Democracy Partners to not steal information.
[James OKeefe says CNN is the target of his next sting]
You essentially sign up for an internship and become part of an organization, Sandler said. You owe a basic duty of loyalty to that organization that you are not going to that you haven't deceived them, defrauded them. That's what she breached here.
Mason Kortz, an instructional fellow at Harvard University's Cyberlaw Clinic, said what will likely be a hurdle for Democracy Partners is the manner in which the conversations were recorded. Was Maasa bystander recording other people's conversations? Or was she a part of the conversations? If it's the latter, federal andWashington wiretapping laws' one-party consent couldgive Maas some reprieve, Kortz said.
But the laws also provide another exception that could help Democracy Partners, Kortz said.Secret recordings are illegal in Washington if they were done to purposely damagea person or an organization.
They would have to provide proof of what(Maas's) purpose was, her state of mind, Kortz said.
According to O'Keefe, his organization's purpose is investigative journalism that exposes malfeasance and corruption of certain organizations. Sandler calls it political espionage.
In the weeks leading up to the presidential election, Project Veritas released videos, some of which were from footage taken by Maas. The series, called Rigging the Election, purport to prove that Democracy Partners, including Creamer and a Democratic activist from Madison, Wis., had committed voter fraud and conspired to disrupt campaign ralliesof Trump, who was then a Republican presidential candidate.
Creamer announced that he was stepping back from his work for the Clinton campaign shortly after the videos were published. Scott Foval, the activist who contracted with Democracy Partners, was laid off. Democracy Partners and a consulting firm owned by Creamer also lost clients and contracts.
The lawsuit alleged that the videos, some of which Trump mentioned at presidential debates and which have been viewed millions of times on YouTube, were selectively and heavily edited and contained false commentary by O'Keefe.
[James OKeefes CNN Leaks are totally overrated]
Yael Bromberg, a supervising attorney for the Institute for Public Representation at Georgetown Law, said the videos gained widespread criticism across the political spectrum.
We're in an era of unprecedented hyper partisanship and fake news, and the integrity of the public domain is critical to the practice of democracy, said Bromberg, who's also representing Democracy Partners and Creamer. What's more is they degrade public discourse during a time of heightened importance, which is when the public is most in tuned into politics just before the election.
In an earlier statement, Democracy Partners denounced both Project Veritas and the statements caught on camera.
Our firm has recently been the victim of a well-funded, systematic spy operation that is the modern-day equivalent of the Watergate burglars, the firm said. The plot involved the use of trained operatives using false identifications, disguises and elaborate false covers to infiltrate our firm and others, to steal campaign plans and goad unsuspecting individuals into making careless statements on hidden cameras. One of those individuals was a temporary regional subcontractor who was goaded into statements that do not reflect our values.
O'Keefe saidthat he and his group are on the right side of the law.
This lawsuit further justifies the need to drain the swamp. We will not be intimidated. We will not be silenced. We will find out who is funding this lawsuit. We will never stop exposing the truth. We will not back down,said O'Keefe, whose organization received $10,000 from the Trump Foundation in 2015 before heannounced his candidacy.
O'Keefe first gained notoriety in 2009,when Project Veritas's undercover sting led to the destruction ofthe Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. Another sting in 2011 led to two resignations at NPR, although subsequent investigations found discrepancies between what NPR executives actually saidin taped conversations and what was shown in the sting video.
In 2013, O'Keefe agreed to pay $100,000 to a former ACORN employee who said he was illegally recorded.
David Weigel contributed to this report.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly characterized Shane Bauer's reporting when he worked as a prison guard for a Mother Jones expose. The article has been updated.
READ MORE:
James OKeefe finally realized that people will develop conspiracy theories all on their own
The left jousts with James OKeefe
New James OKeefe video: Clinton campaign allowed a foreigner to acquire official swag
Read more:
James O'Keefe's undercover video stings damaged liberal icons ... - Washington Post
A member of the NSW Liberals is facing up to five years' suspension for publicly criticising an MP who was caught falsely swearing to have lived in her electorate for a decade.
Liberal headquarters is moving to suspend barrister Juris Laucis for up to five years for criticising Felicity Wilson, the party's candidate for North Shore.
During a close preselection battle, Ms Wilson was revealed to have falsely sworn to have lived in the electorate for a decade.
On the eve of the April byelection, Ms Wilson said she should have been more careful with her wordsamid a burgeoning media scandal about inconsistencies in her claimed connection to the electorate.
Writing for The Spectator, Mr Laucis described the affair as a "running sore" for the party.
"The honourable thing to do, even at the 11th hour, would have been for the Liberal Party to withdraw from the race, and thereby demonstrate that it is a Party that commands the moral high ground," he wrote.
"The election of Felicity Wilson is a running sore that will plague the Berejiklian government all the way to the next election."
Liberal party state director Chris Stone commenced suspension proceedings against Mr Laucis for those comments this week.
"Mr Laucis did not obtain authority from the State Director prior to publishing the article and has therefore breached [regulations]," a motion from the Department of Party Affairs and passed by the Liberals' ruling state executive read.
But Mr Laucis was unrepentant.
"They're trying to set up a Stalinist regime," he told Fairfax Media. "The reason I speak out is the only way that culture is going to change is if it comes out in the public domain.
"Within the Liberal Party there's no mechanism we can [use to] stop whatever the executive is doing."
Mr Laucis' fate will be determined by a meeting of the party's all-powerful state executive on July 28.
In her first tilt at Parliament, Ms Wilson retained the seat of North Shore for the Liberals, notwithstanding a swing of more than 15 per cent.
Last week she was revealed to have presented her third different account of her ties to the electorate in a speech to party members that significantly watered down her initial apology.
A spokesman for the NSW Liberal party declined to comment.
The Liberal Party maintains famously strict rules that prohibit members from discussing "internal party matters" in the media.
Ex-federal MP Ross Cameron recently fell foul of the rule and was recently suspended for four-and-a-half years for critical comments he made about now-Premier Gladys Berejiklian.
Mr Laucis was also previously suspended last year, along with former MP Charlie Lynn and Mr Cameron, for a period of six months, for comments critical of party preselection processes made to the ABC's 7.30 program.
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Liberal faces five-year suspension for criticising MP Felicity Wilson - The Sydney Morning Herald
The review of Canadas defence policy took more than a year to assess the potential threats in the world and came back with one real priority: wed better figure out a way to pay for a military.
There are some new things in the Liberal governments blueprint: more drones, surveillance, cyberdefence and special forces.
But the big thing is an admission a rare one that Canada must spend more to have an army, a navy and an air force.
Read more: Ottawa lays out $62-billion in new military spending over 20 years
Its going to be a lot more, $7-billion a year more a decade from now, in 2027, on an accrual-accounting basis. And it wont really buy a bigger or flashier fighting force. Mostly, the extra money is needed because there wasnt enough set aside for the long-planned buys of essential equipment, such as fighter jets and warships.
The policy issued Wednesday was supposed to take stock of the challenges the military will face in the coming world, but the assessment was groundbreaking: The job is still to protect Canadian territory, work with the United States in North America and NORAD and join with allies in global security, either in NATO missions or UN peacekeeping. Theres terrorism and theres cyberthreats. Thats not news.
The real issue was cost. And on that score, the Liberals were refreshingly realistic. They dispensed with some of the perennial flim-flam of Canadian defence policy, which involves underestimating what the military needs and low-balling costs, then shifting budgets around to make do.
This was a Liberal defence policy for the harder realism of 2017, when the Liberals have been forced to face the fact that there isnt enough money set aside for the planes that make the air force an air force and the ships that make the navy a navy. Theres a new U.S. President, Donald Trump, who demands allies bear a greater share of the defence-spending burden. Plus, theres concern, outlined in a speech by Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland on Tuesday, that the United States might shrug off the burden of world leadership, requiring other countries to do more.
But it was a long way from the way Justin Trudeaus Liberals talked about defence when they ran for office in 2015, or even last year. This was a good defence policy, but for the Liberals, the snag is that it clashed with so many of the things they said about military matters in the past.
Remember how Mr. Trudeau talked about pulling CF-18s from air strikes in Iraq and Syria, as he suggested a Liberal government would be less combat-minded? He emphasized a return to Pearsonian peacekeeping. Last year, he tasked Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan with preparing a deployment to a UN peacekeeping mission; thats still on hold.
Instead, Mr. Trudeau is proposing to devote the kind of money to defence that his Conservative predecessor, Stephen Harper, was unwilling to spend.
Even if the biggest bumps in spending are slated to come five years from now, the increases start this year and will see the defence budget rise from $17.1-billion to $24.6-billion in the 2026-27 fiscal year, in accrual accounting terms.
Is that what Liberal voters expected? A Justin Trudeau government spending billions more on the military? No.
Mr. Sajjan said Canadians want the government to equip the military properly. But the price tag alone means increased defence spending is a new Liberal priority and that will be a surprise to many of those Liberal voters.
In 2015, he promised to save by ordering cheaper fighter jets than the F-35s that Mr. Harpers Conservatives planned to buy. Now, his Liberal government says the military needs 88 fighter jets, not the 65 Mr. Harpers government planned to buy at roughly double the cost estimated by the Tories. Similarly, the Tories promised to buy 12 to 15 warships and now, the Liberals say it will be 15, period but theyll cost $30-billion more.
Give Mr. Sajjan credit for that. It was always widely believed that 65 fighter jets would be too few the last time Canada bought fighters, it ordered 138 CF-18s. The cost estimates for planes and ships were low-balled. Thank goodness Mr. Sajjan did away with that guff.
The Liberals say they were surprised at the extent of the budget shortfall for big equipment buys. In the harder world of 2017, they chose to look past their campaign rhetoric and face the real cost of a military. The political question is still whether Liberal voters of 2015 want to pay it.
Follow Campbell Clark on Twitter: @camrclark
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A Liberal defence policy could cost you - The Globe and Mail