I love it when the dailies do that tongue-in-cheek reporting thing:
Most Conservatives were furious last year when Belinda Stronach moved to the Liberals and took a cabinet job.
Saskatchewan Conservative MP Maurice Vellacott, who said Ms. Stronach was prostituting herself, described Mr. Emerson carefully yesterday.
"I understand the pragmatism of it," Mr. Vellacott said. "But to be honest, I feel a bit uneasy about it."
Vellacott has every right to feel "uneasy", given that in 1995 he was a Liberal candidate in Saskatchewan's provincial election, before switching to the federal Reform party in 1997. Of course, maybe his turncoat-itis doesn't really count because a) he has a penis and b) he was never elected as a Liberal. In fact, it wasn't until he switched to Reform that he was elected to public office at all.
Remember exactly what Vellacott said? After Stronach defected from the Conservatives in May 2005, Vellacott accounted for her actions with a dismissive, "people prostitute themselves for different costs or different prices. She sold out for a cabinet position," later backpedaling by claiming that prostitutes weren't necessarily female and that no one would've minded if he were talking about a man.
I guess I see Vellacott's point. I mean, it's not cronyism when you ask not to be given a cabinet position:
Saskatoon MP Maurice Vellacott has penned an open letter to Stephen Harper asking for a "modest" role in his new Conservative government.
It's not unusual for members of a new government to publicly seek their desired roles as the cabinet is being built, but Vellacott has taken it one step further by putting his requests on paper and distributing it publicly.
In his two-page letter, Vellacott says he'd prefer to be appointed either a vice-chair or chair of the human resources, aboriginal affairs, foreign affairs or health committees.
Vellacott's concern was that a cabinet post would prevent him from "speaking his mind on certain issues such as ethnic outreach, marriage, family and life":
"Because I'm an avowed fiscal conservative, but also a social
conservative ... I don't know to what extent a more senior role would
tie my hands on certain foundational issues for our country," Vellacott
writes.
He says he's open to being the deputy speaker someday, but only if that
does not prevent him from advocating on behalf of his constituents.
Of course, no one is really sure what "ethnic outreach" is, and that whole "life as a certain issue" thing is a bit tautological, but none of that really matters. As weird as a public issuing of his requested assignments was, Vellacott's actually done the country a favour by taking himself out of the decision-making pool, given that he's an anti-choice, anti-day care, anti-same-sex marriage, anti-gun control, pro-shame, rabidly paranoid Godbag.
It was Vellacott, don't forget, that accused - in a press release - his electoral rival Chris Axworthy of "practicing the black arts of politics" and hiring "his friend George Laliberte" to slander Vellacott on-air with accusations of sexual assault. While the call was traced to Axworthy's campaign office, Vellacott's "evidence" for Laliberte's involvement consists solely of an anonymous tip from someone "100% certain" that the voice heard was Laliberte's. This, it appears, is enough for the litigation-prone Vellacott to justify slandering someone else.
So, in addition to being an anti-choice, anti-day care, anti-same-sex marriage, anti-gun control, pro-shame, rabidly paranoid Godbag, Maurice Vellacott is a defaming, self-serving, uncharitable (and hence, definitively unchristian) hypocrite.
And to protect myself from similar accusations of uncharity, I end with a note that despite his considerable slipperiness as a politician and general anti-women and anti-logic rhetoric, Vellacott is not purely evil - he's also a strong supporter of midwifery in Saskatchewan.
