All things Canadian.....

He asks this question after the Leger poll - which is related to my last post:

A Léger Marketing poll asked respondents whether they were "afraid" of Stephen Harper's positions on "abortion, the death penalty and same-sex marriage" and 39 percent answered yes. Does this mean the Conservative Party is too 'extreme' and
needs to moderate its stance on these issues?

As Laurent isn't a Star or Globe reporter, the first thing he doesn't do is ask other people why they are worried about Harper or the CPC and these terrible poll results....

Before answering that question, we should first ask ourselves what are the positions of the Conservative Party on these issues. If we look at the Conservative Party's policy declaration, a 45-pages document adopted last March during its party convention, we see that abortion is only mentioned to say that "[a] Conservative government will not support any legislation to regulate abortion" while the death penalty is nowhere mentioned. Finally, the Conservative Party would bring in civil unions, similar in principle to the registered partnerships adopted by many European countries, which would give homosexual couples access to the benefits enjoyed by married heterosexual couples. While one may disagree with these positions, it is hard to see what is extreme or frightening about them.

You know what, I was going to summarize the rest of his entry but I'll just copy it all here so you'll be sure to read it - it's not proper blogging etiquette to copy the whole entry - but if Laurent threatens to sue me then I'll remove it:

Paul Wells pointed out in an article last month that there were two kinds of people who didn't vote for the Conservative Party in the 2004 elections: the Unconvinced and the Terrified. The Terrified, who must form the major part of the 39 percent who said they were afraid of Stephen Harper's positions, are ready to believe the worst about the Conservative Party and, as Paul Wells points out, it is a waste of time and resources for the Conservative Party to try to convince them. Conservatives should accept that it is impossible to please everyone.
The flip side of this poll is that 43 percent of respondents said they were not afraid of Stephen Harper's positions on "abortion, the death penalty and same-sex marriage" while 18 percent said they did not know whether or not they were afraid. Of course, this total of 61 percent is much higher than the support the Conservatives usually get in polls (about 30 percent) The Conservative Party should concentrate its efforts on this 61 percent.

If you don't read Le blog de Polyscopique, then go on over and take a look.