The new Conservative Canadian Cabinet's been sworn in; blogging MP Monte Solberg made the cut, but as minister of citizenship and immigration (the Canadian analog of INS director?). He had been finance critic while in the opposition, but former Ontario treasurer Jim Flaherty got the finance minister post.
By the way, Googlites, Solberg's Norwegian; I get about one "Monte Solberg Jewish" Google a week. This Canadian Liberal site has him down as Evangelical Free; that would make sense since E-Free has Scandinavian roots. I went to Midland E-Free for a while and met my wife in part due to a singles Bible study that they sponsored.
To further put him in the Gentile camp, he mentioned napping in church-"I think of this as an especially reverent form of worship because it speaks to a real level of comfort with God, don't you agree?" I'm not sure; that's a post in itself.
PM Harper (we now can drop the incoming/designate modifiers) chose well by picking Peter MacKay as foreign minister. As the head of the old PC party, he'll help squelch putting a "neocon" persona on Tory foreign policy; try thinking of a young Richard Lugar as an American analog for MacKay. There's almost an echo of a coalition government there, putting the head of the junior partner into the foreign minister post.
The eyebrow-raiser was picking up an ex-Liberal, David Emerson, as minister for trade; he had been minister of industry in the Martin government. He's from Vancouver and will have the 2010 Winter Olympics preparation in his portfolio as well. He was a rather centrist Liberal, being a businessman and banker before getting into politics.
Of course, that brings up the sheep-stealing analogy to Belinda Stronach's getting a cabinet post for defecting to the Liberals two years ago. However, each seems to be unique; Stronach found being a Liberal a quicker route to power after getting shut out of the new Conservative Party, while a centrist Emerson might have felt more at home in the Conservative Party and got to stay in cabinet for good measure.
Don't be surprised to see a few more defections. This reminds me of 1995 in the US, when the Republicans took control of Congress for the first time in a generation-plus. At that time, a lot of moderate-to-conservative Democrats defected, as the one main advantage to being a Blue Dog, being in the party of power, vanished. Now that the Liberals are no longer the Natural Party of Government®, more centrist business-types may lean Conservative.
The other head-shaker is picking campaign co-chair Michael Fortier as public works minister; he isn't an MP at present and will be appointed to the Senate. It's awkward but legal to have a Senator in cabinet; IIRC, the same legal-but-pseudo-taboo applies to having a British House of Lords member in cabinet. Fortier's slated to run for a MP seat in the next election.
That one seems a bit fishy. Picking your campaign guy to oversee public works seems to be a recipe for handing out contracts to your contributors; the Liberal sponsorship scandal came out of public works. It reminds me way too much of the US tradition of putting one of the president's big fundraisers in as Commerce Secretary.
As irked as I am about David Emersons stunt today, I think Harper went small 'c's for cabinet. (All cabinets grow - I doubt this one will be an exception)
He doesn't have a choice if he wants to steer for a couple of years and he'll tick off half the country no matter what he does.
Defections? Perhaps. They will be about power, not ideology and I think MPs and their constituents are saavy enough about federal politics to know that. We can still spell Stronach. Conservative Liberals jumping ship might be good for the individual in the short term, but the dust has not even begun to kick up over Emerson, so I suspect everyone will stay in their seats (so to speak) for awhile.:^)
Posted by: Bene D | February 06, 2006 at 10:35 PM
Harper hubris, or Does Harper have a tin ear?
The conventional wisdom now seems to be that Stephen Harper is a political genius, of the same ilk as Napoleon, or Churchill, or – pick your favourite. But what if Harper’s cabinet-making is not a politically astute move by at all, but simply a sign that he has a political tin ear?
After all, sometimes the past is predicator of the future: in 2004 he misread the electorate with some of his comments about the Liberals – especially Martin – and his premature triumph speeches about the West taking over. And in Parliament he has sounded a bit screechy and overly self-righteous. Then there are those stories about him being a one-man-band, who does not need a mentor because, one observer says he said, he never met anyone as smart as he is ....
So, perhaps this was just Harper being Harper, and marching to his own discordant band?
If so, wait until the second Act: gonna be a lot of fun for Libs and NDP, and a lot of buyer’s remorse by many voters in Ontario ....
And meanwhile, the Bloc will crouch in the wings, nursing its wounds, and waiting for the right time to take Harper down – when he is under a cloud of intolerance or stupidity, but before he cements himself into Quebec as Mulroney Junior. Best get rid of him soon, before he becomes a real threat to the Bloc ...
So wait for the right moment, and the ganging up by the three parties who each have good reasons for taking him out of his new digs at Sussex, and who – between them – hold the balance of power.
After all, Harper arranged a mob-lynching of Martin with all three parties deciding to put in the knife on that particular Ides of May. Having shown the way, I wonder if Harper fears that this time the other three parties will cooperate to bring him down?
Better than even chance, I think; and probably before summer ends, too.....
Maybe Harper should let those renovations take place at Sussex Drive before he moves in: might save him having to move twice, eh?
Posted by: CuriosityKilledTheCat | February 07, 2006 at 06:04 PM