Broken Telephone

Usually, when conservatives gripe about the PC Party, they gripe about the leader, the logo, whether we need to remove the P from PC, and other such issues.

Today I'm going to gripe about something a bit more substantial. You see, our party's relationship with the media, quite frankly, sucks.

Now we all know that the media are a bunch of Liberals who hate us just because and all successful Conservatives ignore the media. I get that we're never going to be loved by the media. The difference between us and the CPC/Ford is that Harper and Ford are in government, and when they take a pasting from the media, they can shrug it off. When we take a pasting from the media, it hurts a lot more.

Here is another fine column from Adam Radwanski in which he decides that the PC Party cannot oppose the closing of slots in Fort Erie and the opening of a casino in Toronto.

I don't know if anyone from the PC's bothered to talk to Radwanski and tried to explain that the government's stance is contradictory in that they are trying to prevent gambling in one place and trying to promote gambling in another. Wait, I'm sorry; the government is actually going hold a referendum on gambling in Toronto, because it's Toronto, so even if the government doesn't get to build a casino anywhere and gets no new revenues and doesn't fix the deficit at all, it won't be their fault. Wow, these Liberals sure are master strategists!! Or else they are just confusing the hell out of people and people like Radwanski are deciding that they are more in the right than the PC's because, well, they're the government.

Seriously, I can bash Radwanski all I want, but it isn't going to get me anywhere. His column is already written. Tomorrow there'll be another one about how Hudak wore blue socks on Tuesday and black socks on Wednesday, so he'll never be Premier. We can't do anything about Liberal friendly journalists. The problem is that we aren't getting any love from any journalists. And this is no one's fault but ours.

I don't know what it is, but there seems to be some sort of cognitive block amongst some Conservatives where we seem to feel that nobody's going to notice if what Hudak said before conflicts with what he's saying now. We had a situation a few weeks ago where what Hudak said, or didn't say, on subways back in the 1990's invalidates his position today. Did anyone notice that Dalton once said that he didn't want to start building casinos to generate revenue? Well, Radwanski did, but then he spent the rest of the article bashing Hudak, so never mind.

Either we can make sure our position on every issue is totally consistent, or we can stop acting so shocked when people don't give us the benefit of the doubt and we can also fight back.

Here's a great example: If the Liberals call the revenue sharing agreement with racetracks a subsidy when it isn't, then the party needs to loudly and firmly and repeatedly say that it isn't a subsidy.

Another example: A journalist asks Hudak why his position on subways now is different than what it was in 1995? Hudak says, "I appreciate that things are different now than they were 20 years ago. My position has changed for the following reasons." And then he tells us what they are.

And as far as the base is concerned, we need to get in on the act too. Can anyone explain to me why we are so quick to defend Harper and Ford when they get into trouble but we can't do the same for Hudak? We all hate Dalton and we all want him gone, and we gave Hudak a 78% vote to continue as leader, so where's the disconnect here?

I don't know who's responsible for solving this problem, but unless we solve it, we're going to be stuck in opposition forever.