There’s that old aphorism, credited variously to Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw or Winston Churchill, that goes something to the effect: If you’re not a socialist when you’re twenty, there’s something wrong with your heart; if you’re still a socialist when you’re forty, there’s something wrong with your head.

I’d like to riff on that, thinking about modern day conservatives. If you’re a conservative these days, regardless of age, eighteen to eighty, there’s something wrong with both your ticker and noggin.

I mean, how else to explain that a good 30% of the Ontario electorate are still telling pollsters they are willing to vote for Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives in next month’s provincial election. This, a week+ into his campaign of the axing our way back to prosperity plan. 100,000 public sector jobs gone. Corporate taxes slashed to the lowest in North America. LRT plans for Toronto, Mississauga, Hamilton and Brampton? Gone, gone, gone and gone.

Never mind that none of this is good or sound policy. His 1, 000, 000 Jobs Plan is laughable even by some of his strongest supporters. While his threats appear to be real, his promises are empty.

Now, there are all sorts of reasons to want to see the governing Liberals chased from office. But Tim Hudak isn’t offering a better alternative. He’s merely being spiteful. It’s vengeance, he wants, not better governance.

What do his supporters think this would accomplish? Zero economic benefits, at best, and there’s a lot of wishful thinking and blind faith going into even seeing that as a possibility. His transit plans for the GTHA won’t make a dent in the region’s congestion woes. He’s even admitted there are going to be bigger class sizes in schools if he has his way.

To what end?

The eradication of the province’s deficit and any semblance of the last decade of Liberal rule, it seems.

Neither of which, by almost every count, will contribute in any positive way to the daily lives of average Ontarians.

That’s kind of the very definition of cutting off your nose to spite your face, isn’t it?

Even while his policy announcements raised more eyebrows than they did serious consideration, Mr. Hudak has been applauded in some circles for his forthrightness, his no pulling of punches, his boldness in laying out his plans.

“But its value is mostly for what it signals of his resolve,” writes Andrew Coyne in the National Post, referring to the pledge to cut 100,000 jobs for the public sector.

The resolve is the thing, you see. Not its effectiveness or necessity. Who cares about the economic results as long as you do what you say you’re going to do, ridiculous or not.

Now, let me state right here that I’m in no way comparing Tim Hudak to Adolph Hitler aside from a stylistic similarity. Whatever else his faults might’ve been, Hitler was a politician of certain resolve too. He offered up a few solutions of his own, back in the day. So what if one in particular was a little genocide-y? He said he was going to do it. He did it. You can’t fault the guy for a lack of resolve.

What is the appeal of a politician full of bad ideas, unflinchingly out there promoting them? Bad ideas are bad ideas whether you yell them to the mountain tops or keep them to a parlour whisper.

What exactly has the conservative voter become that this is now seen as a constructive attribute? Loudly, proudly pronouncing nonsense. Has it really come down to a case of my guy, right or wrong? Positive change isn’t their goal so much as any change, good or bad, is better than no change.

I get why nearly 3/4s of us want to see a new government at Queen’s Park. The stench of scandal, misspending and cover up hangs over the Liberal government. But frankly, I’d take that over the smell of scorched earth which I feel is what’s being offered to us by Tim Hudak. It isn’t an alternative. It’s a vendetta.

— fearfully submitted by Cityslikr