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Thursday, October 4, 2018

Brett Kavanaugh, Doug Ford and Stephen Harper: The decline of conservatism

BRETT KAVANAUGH, STEPHEN HARPER, DOUG FORD AND THE TRUTH ABOUT CONSERVATISM

Canada's conservative movement increasingly mimics their Republican neighbours. And that should deeply worry us.
As Canadians watch in horror, American institutions once thought infallible are succumbing to right-wing political forces. Republicans appear willing to do anything, break any rule, and transgress any norm to achieve their goals.
Most recently, the American right has used every political trick conceivable to place Brett Kavanaugh, a conservative political operative and accused rapist, on the Supreme Court, one of the world’s most powerful and influential decision-making institutions.
Republicans have undermined voting rights to cement artificial majorities, deployed billions in secret money to swing elections, tore apart Congressional norms and undermined the courts. These are not the acts of a government committed to the preservation of a functioning democracy, but rather an entrenched elite intent on domination.
American voters are slowly recognizing that for all their high-minded rhetoric, the right-wing movement’s chief concern is perpetuating their stranglehold on power.
It would be easy for Canadians to discount this moment as an aberration, limited in scope to a failed ideology with a death grip on American institutions. We sit back and proudly proclaim that this could never happen in Canada. We are better than them. We wouldn’t be fooled.
But we are wrong. Canada’s right-wing sees in Republicans not an embarrassment to be shunned, but rather a model to be imported.

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