Never surrender

The CBC reports that neither Prime Minister Stephen Harper nor former Finance Minister Ralph Goodale plans to apologize to the other over the income trust scandal, in which a senior Finance Department bureaucrat was charged recently with breach of trust. This isn't surprising, really - if one side were to give in and say sorry, the other side would throw it back at them:

[Name] Party admits wrongdoing in income trust scandal!

It's like when you're in a car accident: they tell you never to admit liability, as anything you say will be used against you.


So I paid a visit to the Conservative Party website again this morning; perhaps my blood pressure is too low, or something. Of course, there is the usual attack on the opposition, this time with Stéphane Dion's face cropped at about the halfway point. But there were two new things on the site that fascinated me: a link to a Political Training Conference, scheduled for March, and a link to a cBoutique.

The Political Training Conference features seminars on Candidate Training, Campaign Manager Training, Outreach Training, and other ways to Stay On Message At All Times. Sadly, registration is only open to people who have been vouched for. It would be fun to sneak in and learn some of the Conservatives' secret inner strategies, but, of course, that is why registration is monitored: to ensure that softheaded, vaguely liberal Torontonians like me can't snoop.

For some reason, I love the very idea of a cBoutique. Perhaps it's the clash of images in my head: "Conservative" and "boutique" are concepts that don't normally go well together. And there's got to be at least one old-school knuckle-dragging ex-Reformer out there who is miffed because his party is using a French word on the Conservative web site.