Battle to fix nomination contradicts Harper's Reform roots

[GliderGuider]

Source: Harper Index

Eleven disgruntled (Canadian) Conservatives have waged an expensive legal battle that has gone on since last August. Under the party's new rules, only those who were party members last August get ballots, which made it impossible for many members to contest a nomination battle with incumbent Anders. Elsewhere, any Conservative who has held a membership for three weeks can vote at a party nomination. As a result, Anders will probably be acclaimed.

Anders' history is full of controversy. Before being elected in 1997 he had worked in the United States for the Republican Party for in the 1994 senate campaign of Jim Inhofe in Oklahoma. According to a CBC website, "he spent two months as a professional heckler for a Republican in the 1994 Oklahoma senatorial race and was labelled a 'foreign political saboteur' by CNN. From 1995-1996, he was director of Canadians Against Forced Unionism, a project of the National Citizens' Coalition in Calgary."

Read more: http://www.harperindex.ca/ViewArticle.cfm?Ref=0045

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"Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive."
- the Bard

[MrPrax]

1. Who's the Golden Lake Institute?

Best I can find is:

Who and what is the Golden Lake Institute?

The Golden Lake Institute comprises a group of individuals and organizations who see themselves on the political Left. They feel the Left needs to find new ways to think and talk, and encourage others to think and talk about its political project. We agree with George Lakoff and others who argue that the heart of political strategy is the ability to successfully "frame" issues in ways that appeal to people's deepest values and understandings.

In recent years, the Right, aided greatly by its own financial resources, has successfully promoted its frame, which, according to Lakoff, is based on a strict-father family model. It emphasizes discipline and rewards for individuals, private enterprise and a laissez-faire business environment. The Golden Lake Institute believes a modern Left needs a thoughtful, collaborative, coherent approach to promoting a Common Good Frame and the values, messages and policies that flow from it: cooperation, equality, opportunity, investment, reclaiming the commons, public services for everyone, and more.

...

What is framing?

Framing is the practice of influencing how people think and feel about issues by encouraging them to think about them in a particular way. This is done with language that conjures up and appeals to images and values that people know and understand deeply.

The political Right is masterful at framing issues in ways that glorify business and individual achievement and disparage public enterprise. Consider the words "tax relief" with "tax fairness", "bureaucrat" with "public servant", "troop surge" with "escalation", "conflict" with "occupation". Each pairing presents an issue seen from the right-wing frame and from the Common Good Frame.

Golden Lake Institute

George Lakoff

George P. Lakoff (<ˈleɪ.kɔf>, born May 24, 1941) is a professor of cognitive linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1972. Although some of his research involves questions traditionally pursued by linguists, such as the conditions under which a certain linguistic construction is grammatically viable, he is most famous for his ideas about the centrality of metaphor to human thinking, political behavior and society. He is particularly famous for his concept of the "embodied mind," which he has written about in relation to mathematics. In recent years he has applied his work to the realm of politics, exploring this in his books. He is the founder of the progressive think tank, the Rockridge Institute.

Wikipedia

So a LEFT WING group, inspired by an American, is worried about Anders?

HarperIndex Contact page:

"Note: This site is currently under beta development, set up to view the main content. Other services will be brought on over the next few days."

So beta that they can only post this old story, but not include any specifics on who they are other than "Golden Lake Institute, 2007©"

Any word on whether these Canuck nationalists, who are so worried about US contact with Canadian politics, enlighten us as to some of the alumni at the Kennedy School?

Or is that a type of FRAMING escape the HarperIndex?

[applegrove]

2. Boy he sounds like a "prize" doesn't he.