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View Full Version : 'Conservatives not afraid of self-examination,' says Manning on Ron Paul's Headlining Role




sailingaway
03-15-2013, 01:20 AM
http://www.hilltimes.com/sites/hilltimes.com/files/story_image/2013/03/_74P1465W.jpg


Former U.S. Congressman Ron Paul is either loved or hated, but his appearance at the Manning Centre Conference shows “conservatives are not afraid” debate ideas, says Preston Manning.

“What you should observe from this conference is that conservatives are not afraid of self-examination. We don’t just have conferences to self-congratulate ourselves on previously established positions, which I would argue is the dominant characteristic of the Liberal leadership [race] right now,” Mr. Manning, the centre’s founder, told reporters following Mr. Paul’s address.

Manning Centre director of communications Olivier Ballou told The Hill Times some criticized the decision to invite Mr. Paul. “There was also controversy—we had people who were very upset that he was invited,” Mr. Ballou conceded. “People either love him or hate him.”

Mr. Ballou said student registration is up nearly 50 per cent over last year and credited Mr. Paul, the retired U.S. congressman and libertarian firebrand, with being a major reason for the increase in youth engagement at the annual conservative networking event. He credited Mr. Paul’s candidness and “anti-establishment” persona for the appeal.

Mr. Ballou said that about 30 per cent of this year’s 900 registrants for the weekend conference at Ottawa’s Convention Centre are students. In the past, Mr. Ballou said, students have typically accounted for 20 per cent of convention registrations.

“He speaks to youth,” Mr. Ballou said. “He has a very loyal following and we at the Manning Centre are interested in using that to get people who might not otherwise come to a policy conference.”

Mr. Ballou acknowledged that Mr. Paul’s views may be hard to implement, but he attracts young people to debate conservative ideas.

The 77-year old retired obstetrician represented Texas districts in the U.S. congress for more than 20 years during which time he earned the moniker “Dr. No” for refusing to support so many federal legislative initiatives throughout his career. Mr. Paul ran as the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate in 1988 and more recently sought the U.S. Republican presidential nomination in 2008 and 2012.

Despite never winning the Republican nomination, Mr. Paul commands one of the most loyal followings of any U.S. politician, with many of his supporters organized online and drawn from college campuses across the United States.

It was standing room only in the Ottawa Convention Centre’s Gatineau Salon for Mr. Paul’s keynote address.

In a wide-ranging speech, Mr. Paul hit on many of the key themes that he has become known for during his recent presidential nomination races: individual liberty, free market economics, and personal responsibility.

“I don’t see rights as designated by women’s rights, or gay rights, or minority rights. It’s individual rights. Everybody has an individual right to their life and they should be treated equally under the law,” Mr. Paul declared at one point, igniting applause from a large and noticeably younger audience.

“If it’s your life, if it’s your liberty, wouldn’t it be correct to assume that the fruits of your labour are also yours to keep?” Mr. Paul enquired of the audience in a classic libertarian appeal. “[D]oes this mean there wouldn’t be an income tax? That’s right. We wouldn’t have income tax because it would be your money.”

Mr. Paul has in the past equated taxation with slavery. His provocative views are a major reason for his appeal with youth—a fact that wasn’t lost on him.

“Exciting change is especially with so many young people as I go tour college campuses. There’s a recognition that what I’m saying is true,” Mr. Paul told the audience.

Low taxes and personal responsibility may be conservative sacred cows, but some of Mr. Paul’s other views are clearly at odds with the Republican establishment in the U.S., as well as Stephen Harper’s (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) Conservative government. His views on foreign policy and the U.S.-led international war on drugs are more aligned with the far left.

Mr. Paul has argued against foreign intervention by the U.S., particularly in the Middle East. He has also called for an end to the war on drugs. In his address he rallied against the “irrationality of the drug laws that tell people what they can put in their mouths and what they can put in their bodies.”

“I think drugs are very, very dangerous, but if you compare the so-called illegal drugs to prescription drugs, a lot more people die from prescription drugs,” he stated.

“Once the government gets into the business of producing economic equality and making you morally a better person, you have sacrificed the principle of liberty and you have given the government too much power. Inevitably throughout all history, governments, when they get that power, always expand that power, until there’s the next revolution. That’s what we have to stop,” Mr. Paul said, before the room again erupted in applause.



more: http://www.hilltimes.com/news/politics/2013/03/08/ron-paul-a-polarizing-figure-but-conservatives-not-afraid-of-self-examination/33961

sailingaway
03-15-2013, 01:41 AM
This other article isn't really about Ron, although it makes points using him as a foil, so I won't give it its own thread:


What is the point of a conservative government?

There was a joke filtering around Centre Block Thursday about how the prime minister performed in question period. Prime Minister Harper had stood to take the first question from the Liberals, lobbed for the first time in recent memory by the assumed future leader of the third party, Justin Trudeau. Harper, normally a strong question period performer – especially against someone like Trudeau – stood to answer, and totally flubbed it, referring to Trudeau as the “minister” from Papineau. Twice.

Sitting across the chamber, above the opposition benches in the visitor’s gallery, watching it all, was American libertarian (and recent failed contender for the Republican presidential candidacy), Ron Paul. So, the joke went like this: Maybe Harper wasn’t actually bothered by Trudeau. Maybe he was just nervous because for once there was a real conservative watching him.

It’s been said – probably best by National Post columnist Andrew Coyne at last year’s Manning Centre networking conference – that the Conservative party is not acting all that conservative. “Transportation and telecommunications remain as protracted and over-regulated as ever, while your support for supply management in agriculture borders on the hysterical,” Coyne lectured last winter. “To be fair, you have not actually nationalized anything. Oh, except the auto industry.”

The question he put to conservatives then – “before you ask, where is conservatism going, perhaps it would be better to ask: where has it gone?” – is, more or less, still worth asking a year later. And very little about the 2013 Manning Centre networking conference made any effort to answer it.

When he took the stage Saturday afternoon, Preston Manning told an anecdote about his early days of management consulting. Manning was forced to tell his first client that the car-crushing machine he wanted to buy for their scrap metal business wasn’t affordable. It wasn’t the kind of news his client wanted to hear. “This raised the question that every political candidate and leader must also address,” Manning said. “Do you tell them what they want to hear, or do you tell them what they need to hear?”

The Canadian answer, he said, was “do both.”

But over the course of the two days in Ottawa, conference attendees largely only heard one thing – what they wanted to. They heard quite a bit less of what they might have needed to. This was especially apparent listening to the foreign speakers, who to a man (they were all men), lauded the Canadian conservative movement. Mostly, the Americans did so by comparing it to the struggling Republican party, and former Australian prime minister did it by telling reporters that every conservative government in the world has something to learn from Canada’s governing party and prime minister.

Perhaps it’s unfair to expect an ideological political conference to constantly be addressing the problems with the fundamentals of its credo all the time. It might be that the conservatives don’t feel the need to look back at what was once promised from their flagship federal party because, hey, they’re in power now, everyone is on board, and it’s all gravy.

If this was the point of it all – simply to win power and coast – then the conservatives are doing a fine job. If the point was about winning power and then practicing what you preach, then it would make sense that having someone like Ron Paul staring at him could be nerve wracking for the prime minister.

http://www.ipolitics.ca/2013/03/09/what-is-the-point-of-a-conservative-government/

tod evans
03-15-2013, 01:41 AM
Conservative politician engaged in "self examination"...

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