The reviews are in - Losing the Base Edition

Mike Brock:

The pandora's box that Stephen Harper has opened in this past year goes far beyond the present and extends ominously into the future.

Just as Stephen Harper has in many ways been a mirror-image of Jean Chretien in terms of his governance-style: shrewd, tactical, power-centralizing, etc -- future Liberal governments can be guaranteed to enjoy the inheritance of heavy-handed tools that Mr. Harper has paved the way for using. As such, parliament will become more and more a game for politicians to maneuver through -- pushing procedures and rules to their boundaries -- while the inevitable consequences of corruption through lack of oversight, will go unchecked.

We certainly need democratic reform in this country, as Stephen Harper has himself advocated for. The problem is, Stephen Harper has defined himself as one of the biggest reasons we need democratic reform as opposed to someone we can trust to deliver it to us.

Stephen Harper has become the very enemy to accountable government that he claimed to be fighting against. He has lost almost the entirety of his intelligent, thinking base and is left with nothing more than a voting block on which to chop populist issues, and a chorus of uninspiring partisans cheering on from the bleachers. Harper is bathing in the bath of his own arrogance right now, and he is sowing the seeds for the destruction of the very united right that he shepherded into existence.

And Greg Vandermeulen:

The announcement to prorogue parliament until after the Olympics is particularly hard to take for rural, Conservative voting Canadians.

Many of us have watched sympathetically as the Conservatives told us their stories about trying so hard to get important justice bills passed, about how opposition party members are opposing them at every turn.

They told us they were in favour of justice reform, of getting to the bottom of the prisoner abuse claims in Afghanistan and remaining vigilant when it comes to the economy.

And we bought it, hook, line and sinker. We believed because we wanted to see Stephen Harper as a responsible, ethical leader. Instead we see greedy political opportunism taking the place.

Harper and his MPs (unless they have the courage and integrity to speak out against it) have told Canadians they care so little about their own bills, about passing harsher sentences for drug dealers, about providing economic relief, that they are willing to let all those bills die.
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This decision by Harper shows a massive level of disregard for taxpayers, and a great level of disrespect for his own party, his own platform and his own initiatives.

If Harper and his fellow Conservatives can't even take their own ideas and bills seriously, how can we expect them to seriously consider any of ours?