Tubby Van Loan and the Mighty Mulcair

If anybody still thinks that the Con regime is not out of control, the sight of Peter Van Loan in Question Period today should have been enough to cure that delusion.

For there was Tubby, as his friends call him, filling in for Stephen Harper, clutching a piece of paper with his scripted lines marked with a yellow highlighter.

Sweating like a pig, bellowing like a bull, and turning farce into satire.

In a Parliament  transformed into a fascist circus, where the Con monkeys chant in unison, and fling their talking points like fecal pellets at Tom Mulcair.

In the two days since the Commons returned, MPs, ministers and the prime minister himself have popped up from their seats, all of them resembling a message track Jack-in-the-Box, spouting “carbon tax.”

Harper even took the unusual step of switching from French to English in answer to a question from Mulcair so he could blurt out “carbon tax” in English.

It's a bizarre and frightening spectacle. The repetition of a Big Lie to confuse and fool the dumb and the distracted.

It works on those whose lives consist of early mornings, packing school lunches, long work days, sprints to the after-care program at the school, then an evening on the soccer pitch or at dance class. They absorb their politics in snippets, by osmosis and repeated talking points, television ads played over and over until a perception sticks. 

It works because it gives the party so-called “free media,’’ by engaging journalists who write about a non-issue because it fills a void, it creates debate because it has been injected into the national dialogue by the governing party.

It's outrageous, it's depraved, it's intolerable. It's the death of democracy by a thousand insults. But even in the horror and weirdness that is Ottawa today, there is some good news.

If the Con monkeys think they can bully Tom Mulcair, by flinging their poop at him, they're in for a horrible shock.

What’s becoming clear already, though, is that this tough politician—his roots so deep and complex—might just have what it takes to withstand Stephen Harper’s efforts to tear him down long enough to make theirs the sort of rivalry that could define a political era.

Because he's my kind of guy eh?

Carpenter suggests Mulcair’s staunch commitment to anyone who’s stuck with him is the flip side of his determination to crush opponents. “If he’s your friend, he’s the best friend you ever had,” he says. “And if he’s your enemy, you don’t sleep well.”

And watching him go after Stephen Harper with the cold fury only he can muster, is truly a thing of BEAUTY. 

And an example for us all. 

SMART. TOUGH. NASTY.

Now more than ever....

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