Cult Conservatives

CBC reports on the Cons' latest sad effort to win back lost support in Newfoundland. And it looks like they may soon be in conflict with Charles McVety and his fundamentalist friends as to just which religion they're trying to impose:

Defence Minister Peter MacKay says Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn — Newfoundland and Labrador's federal cabinet representative — is getting an unfairly rough ride at home.

"Sometimes you know, a prophet is least appreciated in his own land," said MacKay, who visited the province over the weekend for a meeting of Atlantic Conservative MPs and to make some funding announcements.

Of course, it might be pointed out that even if one believes that the Cons' goal is the stuff of prophecy rather than farce, MacKay's appeal wouldn't make much sense. After all, the most-respected prophetic figures tend to be those who stand by their vision even when it isn't particularly popular, rather than feeling the need to send a slightly higher-ranking cleric to whine about how it's not fair to question the prophet's words.

But then, it's worth asking just why MacKay would select the term that he did. And it would seem that MacKay's choice to use "prophet" to describe Hearn would seem to offer yet another example of the Cons trying to operate more like a cult than a political party.