I was reading this article done by Tonda MacCharles, and I couldn’t help but be struck that this can be summarized as an attempt to try and convince the Conservative base that Prime Minister Harper hasn’t turned into a closet economic fan of John Maynard Keynes as was asserted yesterday – witness the hurried assurances by his mentors from out in Calgary:
“He is still an economic conservative at heart,” says professor Frank Atkins of the University of Calgary. “But he’s a pragmatic politician.”…Still, Atkins is aghast today at how some are interpreting Harper’s new talk of running a budget deficit and going along with a G20 pledge of “additional spending” as part of a global economic stimulus package. “No, no, no, no. He’s not discovered John Maynard Keynes,” Atkins says, referring to the 20th-century economist, and adding that Harper’s thesis was “adamantly anti-Keynesian thought.”
You can almost smell the panic and see the haste that is being taken to reassure the base that he’s still one of them.
