Flaherty: Nuts to fiscal conservatism, let’s buy votes!

Remember when Jim Flaherty was a fighting fiscal conservative at war with the tax-and-spend ways of the McGuinty Liberals? Those days appear to be over: Flaherty has offered financial help to GM. I’m just guessing here, but if you tune into tonight’s At Issue” panel on The National, you’ll see Andrew Coyne, the guardian of fiscal conservative purity, get his knickers in a knot, and Chantal Hébert wryly pokes fun at him. Fiscal conservatism looks like it’s about to hit the wall. Tax breaks appeal to voters when their wallets are flush, but when people lose their jobs, a tax cut is far less interesting, since it would only apply to their EI cheque. So politicians buy votes with subsidies in the hopes of propping up the jobs. In recessionary times, Common Sense Revolutions tend to give way to common sense.