Are Manitoba Fiscal Conservatives being taken for granted?

Fiscal conservatives in Manitoba can be forgiven if they are feeling somewhat abandoned this election campaign. After all, the brand of fiscal conservatism currently on display in Hugh McFadyen's PC party platform hardly fits the bill.

With each passing day of this election campaign there seems to be another PC party spending announcement that, I suspect, is leaving most fiscal conservatives in this province not feeling the love. Moreover, despite McFadyen's constant accusations of alleged NDP "waste and mismanagement" he's yet to demonstrate to his right-wing economic base exactly how ridding Manitoba of such monstrous waste would translate into real fiscal retrenchment and savings. So far? Nothing, ... nada, ... just crickets.

The lack of concrete promises to date by McFadyen as to how he will transform Manitoba's treasury into one fiscal conservatives would be proud to call their own speaks volumes. No word on what social services he will cut down the road. No word on who will have to assume the burden when the state steps away from said services. No word on how much can be saved. It either means that Manitoba's treasury is not, as McFadyen alleges, in danger of imploding; or that he's decided to take his (mostly rural) right-wing economic base completely for granted this election campaign as he makes his big progressive push to capture the coveted political center.

For the greater Tory good Hugh McFadyen has decided there is another way to go in 2011... a very progressive way. And in the meantime, Manitoba's fiscal conservatives have been left on the outside looking in, no doubt wondering what has become of their party.