Friday, November 12, 2010

Potash Corp - politics over principle

William Watson:
There may be a Tory justification for blocking the sale of Potash Corp ...

... There may be a Conservative justification for blocking the sale. ... with the Premier going Danny Williams about the takeover, blocking it may have been politically expedient.

... But there is no conservative case for blocking the sale, despite the best efforts of Adam Daifallah and Dov Zigler to invent one ...

... As so often, principle lost out to politics. But let’s not compound the error by pretending conservatism had anything to do with it.
Right on, Mr. Watson! Politicians, unfortunately, often resort to lying, obfuscation and hypocrisy to avoid or combat attacks from the opposition. It would have been better, if the Conservatives couldn't stick to free market principles, had they at least been able to admit they were selectively compromising them to chase votes in Saskatchewan (ahem, I mean "honouring the preferences of the great people of Saskatchewan", or something). It would be more honest and then supposedly conservative commentators wouldn't feel they had to twist themselves into pretzels trying to justify an unconservative position.

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