{"id":369,"date":"2012-12-28T16:36:53","date_gmt":"2012-12-28T16:36:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/freemasonrywatch.org\/blog\/?p=369"},"modified":"2012-12-28T16:36:53","modified_gmt":"2012-12-28T16:36:53","slug":"369","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freemasonrywatch.org\/blog\/2012\/12\/28\/369\/","title":{"rendered":"National Post: Bro. Trudeau\u2019s incoherent gun registry position is a gift to his Liberal rivals"},"content":{"rendered":"

National Post<\/a>
\nJohn Ivison: Trudeau\u2019s incoherent gun registry position is a gift to his Liberal rivals<\/p>\n

Dec 3, 2012
\nBro. John Ivison<\/p>\n

\"Justin<\/p>\n

Sometime between now and the 2015 election, expect to see a Conservative Party attack ad featuring a YouTube clip of a rookie MP debating the long-gun registry with some university protesters on the steps in front of Parliament.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe registry saves lives,\u201d argues a young Justin Trudeau, passionately.<\/p>\n

Cut to an interview on the Liberal leadership campaign trail. \u201cThe long-gun registry, as it was, was a failure and I\u2019m not going to resuscitate it,\u201d says a slightly older Mr. Trudeau.<\/p>\n

In Hawkesbury, Ont., on Friday, Justin Trudeau threw the long-gun registry under his campaign bus. <\/p>\n

This downright reasonable position simultaneously illustrates how unserious Canadian politics can be, and offers a strange glimmer of hope for improvement \u2014 strange because it\u2019s coming from someone many people assumed, not without reason, was a fairly insubstantial, middle-of-the-road Grit, as wedded as any other to the party\u2019s various myths and talismans.<\/p>\n

A year ago at this time, po-faced Liberals were making political hay out of Conservatives being deliberately excluded from a Parliament Hill memorial for the 14 victims of the \u00c9cole Polytechnique massacre.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think everything we fought for after 22 years is being actively dismantled,\u201d moaned Carolyn Bennett, suggesting the registry\u2019s impending demise was the \u201cultimate\u201d manifestation of the Conservatives\u2019 preference for \u201cideology over evidence.\u201d (This statement itself is the ultimate manifestation of the equation, correlation + policy preference = causation.)<\/p>\n

Cut to a still picture of Mr. Trudeau looking like he\u2019s about to drive off in the getaway car, accompanied by a Conservative Party voiceover: \u201cJustin Trudeau will tell you whatever he thinks you want to hear, whenever you want to hear it. He\u2019s not a leader.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that will likely be the ball game.<\/p>\n

The best attack ads crystallize that nagging feeling people have about a candidate \u2013 that deep-seated concern that turns brows bleak as voters have their worst fears validated.<\/p>\n

They work especially well when they throw the candidate\u2019s own words back in his or her face.<\/p>\n

The only prospect of the above scenario not playing out is if Mr. Trudeau either loses the Liberal leadership or drops an even bigger clanger before it\u2019s over. Both are real possibilities, despite the in-built advantage of the Liberals\u2019 ridiculous \u201csupporter\u201d category voting system, which means you don\u2019t even need to be a party member to elect the leader.<\/p>\n

Mr. Trudeau has already contributed, by his own admission, to the Liberals losing a by-election in Calgary Centre they may well have won without his comments about Albertans controlling Canada\u2019s \u201csocio-economic agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n

Expect to see that one come back to haunt him too.<\/p>\n

Now, he has put himself in a position where he has to reconcile his years of support for the registry with a new position that states it was a failure and he won\u2019t re-introduce it if he ever wins government.<\/p>\n

The case for the defence is that this is the Liberal Party\u2019s position \u2013 that it was a divisive solution to gun control. By coming out against the party\u2019s former orthodoxy, the belief is that Mr. Trudeau has wiped the slate clean and can now bring forward new policy of his own. He has already done this once in this campaign, when he disowned his father\u2019s National Energy Program before heading to Calgary to come out in favour of foreign takeovers in the oilpatch.<\/p>\n

Article Continues<\/a><\/p>\n

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