Credit where credit is due

While I fundamentally disagree with Andrew Coyne on many, many things I think he may be the last sane small "c" conservative in the public marketplace of ideas. He is unquestionably a conservative who favours smaller government, lassiez faire economic policies and fiscal conservatism and no fan of the "dirty hippies." He is not a doctrinaire "my-party-right-or-wrong" movement conservative who toes the party line, but a reasonable, educated and generally sensible man, the kind who disappeared from the Conservative Party of Canada along with Joe Clark and Robert Stanfield.
Speaking on the weekend at the Manning Centre's conservapalooza, he took a horsewhip to the Conservative Party of Canada.

Nevertheless, there was a party, once, that believed in these things, to a somewhat greater extent than the other parties. That party called itself conservative, whether with a small or a large C, so I suppose you could call the things it believed conservatism. But you are no longer that party.

(snip)

That party was against breaking election promises. That party was against patronage and pork-barreling. And that party was against corruption and political dirty tricks. I don't know whether you are still that party.

This isn't a question of incrementalism, but of going in entirely the wrong direction. It isn't just that you failed to do the things you should have. It is that you did things you should not have. And, what is worse, you did them, not reluctantly or shamefacedly, but enthusiastically. You didn't just sell out. You bought in.

How long before the CPC-SunNews wurlitzer starts calling him a Liberal stooge?

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