LETTER TO THE EDITOR: CONSERVATIVES MUST STICK TO MORAL VALUES
by Sarah Sonne
Sudbury Star, April 30 2009
In Canada, the Conservative party has, notwithstanding some of its members of Parliament, already moved away from aggressively pursuing moral issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion.
I actually think this is harming the party, and costing it votes, as it attempts to reach out to new voter pools by abandoning current ones. The MPs that consistently win by the biggest margins are the ones who have clear socially conservative stands on moral issues. Why would someone vote for a liberal version of the Conservative party, instead of sticking with the Liberal party?
However, a pro-life Liberal will move his/her vote to the Conservative party if that member promises to aggressively work to restrict abortions, as we've seen in campaigns such as Rod Bruinooge's from Winnipeg-South.
The emotional/moral issues are what get young people engaged. Whether it's decriminalizing marijuana, criminalizing abortion, or re-defining marriage, the values that shape our culture are what will get the average non-voting young person out to the polls.
As a socially conservative young person, I know that if the Conservative party strongly defines itself on the moral issues, young people will take interest and get involved.
As a recent front cover story on Maclean's magazine showed, studies are seeing a shift in the young people of Canada away from extreme liberalism and towards more traditional "right-wing" lifestyles. At the very least, they are more in the middle than they've been in decades.
The Conservative party needs to remain strong on all of its fronts, sell itself based on its values in every area, and resist the urge to abandon emotional issues at the very unlikely chance that it will gain them more votes than it costs them.
