Golly. Talk about the showdown at the Calgary Corral, or the redneck Stampede.
The aging gunslinger in the black hat, staring with his cold dead eyes at the young upstart in the white hat, who is preparing to humiliate him.
And while I can only imagine what was going through Stephen Harper's mind at the sight of his hated rival flaunting his growing popularity. Even in his beloved Alberta.
You can be sure it wasn't pretty eh?
Trying to be a good host and failing so miserably...
And it must have made him wonder again, whether he should stay to fight the next election.
Or leave town in a hurry before he suffers the same fate as that loser he appointed to the Senate...
And ends up on the canvas himself, oozing humiliation out of every orifice.
Because as Stephen Maher points out, those recent by-elections suggest he can't seem to do ANYTHING to stop that Justinmentum.
The byelections saw the Liberals increase their vote impressively while the Tories and NDP lost ground, contributing to a growing sense — call it Justinmentum or dauphinmania — that Canadians want Justin Trudeau to lead them.
Which must be driving him crazy. Or crazier.
A feeling of inevitability is settling in around the rise of the Trudeau fils, which doesn’t do anything to weaken the constitutional powers vested in Harper, but can’t be doing wonders for his mood, the mood of his caucus or the legion of political staffers who run the country at his direction. The idea that Harper is a lame duck — a leader with a lot more past than future — is corrosive.
Shattering the sense of confidence of even his most fanatical or most cowed followers.
If that sense is shaken, and MPs become fearful and rattled, they are more likely to go off script, to stop caring so much what the boys in short pants in the Prime Minister’s Office want them to do, to start thinking about what they can do to keep their seats, work on other career plans or try to poodle up to whoever might run the party after Harper.
And of course making the Cons who lust for his job, like Jason Kenney, REALLY restless...
So you might think Harper must at least be considering early retirement.
Or judging by the way he's blanketing the airwaves with porky ads like this one...
At the very least considering a VERY early election before his popularity deteriorates further, Kenney pushes him overboard, or Son of Trudeau humiliates him.
But not according to Paul Wells, who believes an early election is possible. But also believes that the longer Harper waits the better.
The Conservatives have good reason to wait. It is taking time for them to recover from the mess that resulted when Harper’s former chief of staff Nigel Wright wrote a personal cheque to cover Sen. Mike Duffy’s expenses. More time would help. It is taking time for the bloom to come off Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau’s public-opinion rose. More time might help.
The best reason to let the election happen on the date “fixed” in “law” is that this would give the Conservatives all of next summer to campaign, without worrying about spending limits imposed by Elections Canada.
Even though Harper has been pumping out his porky propaganda and his attack ads for years, and all they do now is irritate Canadians.
Even though the Senate scandal is not over...
It could still come back to haunt him and further taint his brand.
And most importantly what Wells and other MSM pundits don't seem to understand, is that while Harper definitely would like to cling to power, if only so he could make it to number SIX on this list.
And that would definitely extend the shelf life of Wells' latest book.
The longer Harper is Prime Minister will only make most Canadians even MORE sick and tired of him and his ghastly Con regime. If that's possible.
And the reason Justin is so popular, and so many are willing to forgive him his mistakes, is that he embodies the change so many Canadians want so desperately.
And has been chosen by fate to be the one to send his
With painful humiliation thrown in like a towel, as an added BONUS.
Because let's face it eh? He owes us.
He has been monstrous.
And it has been a horror show...
But now it's almost over, and will NOT be continued.
Harper can hang on for a few more months, or another year, or whenever. But it will not change the outcome.
That monster's time is OVER.
So Paul Wells is right about something eh?
Enjoy your summer.
Have a great weekend everybody !!!
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21 comments:
White hat in the old cowboy movies always worn by the good guy, black hat always worn by the bad guy.
the kid certainly looks good in his white hat. that alone should get him more than a few votes.
harper's latest court loss makes the cons look like very mean spirited idiots. the wording of the court decision says it all. It was interesting how much time CTV gave it on the 11 p.m. news. Word for word. then to have the Con minister, sans his pointy ears on "trying" to explain lucy--they shouldn't be getting better health care than Canadians. So what he is saying is what so many of us know: Canadians are getting lousy health care and it ought to be better. The Cons have given so much money to their "friends" in the form of contracts and tax cuts we can't afford to give even lousy health care to children, pregnant women, refugees, etc.
the longer this goes on, the more court cases mount up against the Cons. It demonstrates how poorly these idiots understand the canadian constitution. Some may say Trudeau isn't that smart. Well he is smarter than Harper and his herd. He can read the constitution. we need a caring government, which understands the needs of Canadians and puts Canada first instead of every other country.
I really hope you are correct and we could at last be rid of the monster Harper. However, Harper is very much cultivating, the ethnic peoples votes. Harper as a dictator, is far too arrogant and stubborn to step down. Harper has a giant ego and he would have to be forced to resign. Don't forget? Harper has all of the giant corporations support to rely on as well.
As far as Kenny, he chose to lie to us too. He has been aware of foreign workers for years. Don't wait for Kenny to ship the foreign labor back to their own countries. As Kenny thinks 4,000 applicants for ONE resource job, is a shortage of labor. Harper and his so called Conservatives? Lies, deceit and thieving is their mantra.
I feel good, not that I should.
Simon:
Nice post. I went through your links on this one, and I saw something in the Maher one in the comments that just completely weirded me out from a couple of self proclaimed NDP partisans They claimed that not only being more experienced and more articulate than Trudeau (which you can make the case with) that Mulcair was also twice as popular a choice for PM than Trudeau, although they did not cite their source for that, which considering the polls everywhere have shown a consistent Mulcair in distant third and Trudeau either leading or narrowly behind Harper since he became party leader I found truly baffling.
I would have replied to ask for sourcing, but I am one of the few remaining holdouts vis-a-vis Facebook, I refuse to join it. That sort of delusional thinking by some partisans on the left is one of the reasons why the NDP have a real problem, Muilcair may be more experienced, may be more articulate, but also feels more like a typical lawyer/politician of the type we have seen for decades/generations, while Trudeau feels far more like one of us to most people, and that is a truly powerful allure in any time, let alone after such a nightmare as the Harper years have been.
One of the things that is being missed by most of the Trudeau bashers whatever their stripes politically is the massive amount of institutional and infrastructure repair and rebuilding work to the Liberal party at the riding level Trudeau has been doing, something it had been needing for a couple of decades, especially this last one. Not to mention that the fundraising for the party has been impressive with him as leader, and it is more being sent to the national party as opposed to the riding level which is an indicator is is because they are wanting to support Trudeau especially and not just the Libs.
This is important for any opposition party leader to be doing, especially after his party has had the problems it has had for the past decade, and to ignore this evidence of his capability and his leadership qualities in both the recognition of and the clear dedication to working on such serious problems since he became leader creates a massive blind spot in his foes that will come back to bite them hard down the road.
Trudeau has been impressing me a great deal since becoming leader, he did something I did not believe possible election night 2011, he is making the possibility of the Libs returning to government in the next election whether minority or majority a real possibility if not almost a probability at this point, something I do not believe anyone would have seriously suggested as possible that night or in the near period after it. His so called gaffes have not actually appeared to be such.
His abortion policy "gaffe" while I agree was not handled well at the press conference was still party policy as laid down, and clearly did not hurt him or the Libs in the Scarborough riding which had been held by one of the pro-life MPs where the Libs not only won but did so with serious increased support to boot. His so called China gaffe was only ever seen that way by his foes and those in the media out to stir the pot of conflict for their own reasons (which I am not accusing or political partisanship, more being about wanting conflict for story material for their work). The legalization of marijuana policy has clearly not been a negative for him either. So where again is the proof/evidence that he is so inept as a party leader?
Not to mention he clearly is building a strong team around him both institutionally and politically, and that is a major selling point in a system such as ours. I think it will have extra power this time out after the one man band approach the Harper government chose to use unlike any other prior government.
To be continued...
Continuation:
I also think Trudeau is being very clever in picking the fights he chooses with the CPC/Harper, and being willing to take some punches while not responding/counter punching so as to let the other side punch itself out. That does not mean he doesn't hit back, he clearly does, but he does so in ways that reinforce the differences between the way he fights versus his political foes, and that is very sharp politics.
To those that argue that is more his people managing him that way, well then what does it say that he is smart enough to get these people and listen to these people once he puts them there, and shows the dedication to following their advice (which I think is a serious exaggeration of what is really going on, I really think too many people sell Trudeau short on the intelligence and capability elements, I do think he takes advice and follows it when he sees it, but I do not by any stretch see him as anything resembling a puppet/figurehead)?.
Justin Trudeau may not be his father in terms of raw or refined intellect, but few people are after all. Unlike his father though he feels like he understands the average citizen far better, feels far more like someone they could relate to, and in today's political environment that is no small factor. He is also clearly charismatic, and he shows a clear love for Canada that has been sorely lacking in the federal political environment since Harper came to power, especially majority power.
I do not think Mulcair lacks the love for the country, but it doesn't shine through with him anything like the way it does for Trudeau, and the need for citizens to feel that and the hope for the future it brings after a PM like Harper, well I think it is hard to overstate the potential impact of it. I think Trudeau would have given Layton trouble on that front, and in this respect Mulcair is clearly no Layton.
I think it may almost be too late for either Harper or Mulcair to negatively define Trudeau, between the definition he already had thanks to his national profile prior to becoming a politician himself and the length of time as leader where he has been essentially untouched by all the attacks aimed at him from both sides regarding his competence, his ability, his masculinity/strength.
Indeed, in some ways the failures of these attacks have helped confirm his definition, especially since he has not simply resorted in kind nor ignored it all, but instead kept in large part on the positive side of the discourse. At this point I think the window Harper has had for successful re-definition of a new leader has essentially lapsed, as unlike both Dion and Ignatief who by this point in their leaderships were clearly being impacted by these attacks, Trudeau has instead simply shines more and more with the same impressions and definition he has had all along.
To be continued...
Continuation:
I think this makes him almost the certain standard bearer in the next election for the remove Harper forces whatever their usual voting preferences, and I think the NDP made a catastrophic mistake with Mulcair for leader on many levels, including the clear unease within the party base about where their party is headed and under someone without the roots in the party making such changes to party policy, unlike Layton who could command trust and faith because he came from within the NDP core base. I think if the NDP had chosen Cullen they would be in far sounder shape for what may be coming, they still might not have managed to stop Trudeau but I think they would be far better positioned to hold their gains.
I suspect that Mulcair may possibly lose much of what Layton gained the party, especially if we see a wave election anything even slightly near what we saw happen to the PCPC in 1993, and I do think that potential is out there, although not to the extent of leaving the CPC with a couple of seats, 20-30 though, that I could see and a possible major Lib majority. How likely, until the campaign saying so is utterly foolish, but to deny the conditions are not out there for it to potentially happen is equally foolish at this point I would argue, because there are clearly the factors to make it come true out there.
We have in Harper a PM who has been in power for almost a decade straight, and there is always by this point a bit of fatigue with a leader who has been in power continuously for this long according to our federal political history. On top of that Harper has acted in ways unprecedented in our history not just once or twice but almost to the point of calling it routine, something very outside the norm for a PM of Canada, and something that does not normally tend to sit well with Canadian voters who are at heart in the non-partisan/political sense of the word a bit on the conservative side and don't like such radicalism whatever the basis of it, which is why openly ideological parties of all stripes have not tended to do well federally. That was part of what did the Mulroney PCPC in, the inclusion of the nationalists from Quebec and the Constitutional exercises of Meech and Charlottetown, and to a lesser extent free trade and the GST he snuck in during his reelection campaign.
Then you have the personal dislike/distrust Harper has fostered in the country by not just how he has governed but by how he has represented all of us both on the domestic and international stages. The lack of any positive vision of Canada one can say Harper has had, not even his supporters appear able to offer that, there is always some form of negative element to it somewhere. There is the way Harper closed off his government in ways never thought would be seen in Canada by any leader whatever their party, and that clearly has caused major discomfort. The multiple attacks on all independent oversight bodies and regulators and the courts is also something that strikes real discord in the wider public, again whatever their usual political flavour outside the hard right wingers.
Then you have an Official Opposition run by someone who is seeming for many like a Harper of the left (granted a more moderate less destructive version but still someone driven more by hard core beliefs in his way of thinking than in caring about what the citizens want). A Official Opposition party that has never even been that before let alone government, and the discomfort many will have of taking that level of political inexperience and having them be the ones to clean up the massive mess of the Harper regime will be a major factor against the NDP. The Liberals while a much smaller caucus t the moment still has serious experience in federal governing left, and the institutional history to draw on despite a rookie leader.
To be concluded...
Conclusion:
The we get to Justin Trudeau and the Liberals. A party that has traditionally been seen as the natural governing party, and whom most people would say on par did right by this nation (it is hard to explain how we became such a progressive nation under decades of their governing without crediting them for it after all) for the most part. Who despite their own issues with corruption periodically clearly cared for and loved this country and the citizenry. Who governed not just for their own narrow base but for the whole nation as best they could. A party of centrist pragmatism and good government first as opposed to ideology.
A party that has suffered the serious punishment it needed for its arrogance and corruption from the Chretien-Martin years. Now being led by a fresh, dynamic, charismatic son of the greatest Liberal PM in the history of Canada (who is seen by many not just Libs as our greatest PM ever, indeed one of if not the greatest Canadian ever, no small point), who while still new to the job of a leader has demonstrated many of the needed qualities, and not just in the sexy obvious ways but in the hard work nitty-gritty aspects of rebuilding a party so devastated as the Liberals were in the 2011 election.
Take all that together and to not believe the potential for a true wave election does not exist is to deny reality. Will it happen, well there is a long ways to go before anyone should be saying that, but to deny/ignore that the conditions are clearly there and the energy is out there to fuel it is equally denying reality. Underestimate Justin Trudeau at your peril Harper/CPC and Mulcair/NDP and your partisans, because it is that underestimation that Trudeau is using in no small part to engineer your downfall and his and his party's chances of being the next government, possibly a majority one.
I think those by-elections last month not only show a continuing trend since Trudeau became leader for his party, but also bad trends for both Harper/CPC and especially Mulcair/NDP, and to downplay/dismiss that because of the turnout I think will be a mistake for anyone that does so. I would suggest that those results and the pattern they continue only underscores the arguments I have laid out in this even by my standards somewhat lengthy comment here at Simon's.
P.S. Sorry about how lengthy this one got Simon, hope you don't mind too much, but I think a lot of this really needs to be said and you provided an excellent place to do so for me, thank you so much for that. I also tried to break my more usual dense paragraphs into something a little more broken up to try and make it easier for others to read. I know I am good with many lines of text in a paragraph, but I have noted that this is not so true for many others online, so I am trying to learn to make my paragraphs a bit smaller when I proof/edit before submitting. Hope it helps/works this time.
actually watched the news this evening and saw Harper at the Stampede. it wasn't a pretty sight. Waddling up to the stage, big belt buckle with white trash beer belly hanging over it. then he opened his mouth. it was all down hill from there. scripted, not well delivered.
then they showed the kid, walking around, white hat, carrying a small girl, must have been his daughter, looking like any father around town.
some may forget but Calgary is young. they may just identify with Trudeau and vote for him. Harper is another generation and if the opposition parties spend enough time reminding people of all the terrible things the Cons did, people might actually start thinking of them as "cons". the critical thing will be for Trudeau and Mulcair to not start snipping at each other. if this works out, one will be in one nice house, the other in another nice house, and harper, well, he'll be looking for new housing.
if the two contenders start snipping at each other people might get really pissed and just decide to teach all three of them a lesson and vote FEMALE and that gives us Elizabeth May. People ought to remember, Layton got a lot of seats he didn't expect to. It could happen again.
hi Ron...yes I was surprised that Harper doesn't seem to know that, and had both himself and his wife decked out in black. But then I wouldn't be surprised if that reflects how Harper sees himself, as the baddest cowboy in the west. And I do have to say fascist black suits him well...;)
hi e.a.f....yes Justin did look good in his white hat, and it was a decent gesture to introduce his kids to Lord Harp. As scary as that might have been for them. And yes, the string of court defeats tells me two things: One, the Cons have no respect for the constitution and are indeed a rogue regime. And two, if we didn't have the courts we would already be a police state. The Cons are out of control and must be defeated as soon as possible....
hi anon...yes everything Harper does these days is aimed at some community or other. But those communities are not that easily fooled, I know for sure that the Jewish community doesn't vote as a bloc, since some of my Jewish friends are some of the fiercest anti-Harperites I know. And as for Jason Kenney, he has provided us with the foreign workers' scandal, and it's one of the most powerful weapons we can and will wield against them...
hi Steve...yes we all should feel good. As I said the universe is unfolding almost as I hoped jot would. Harper is not the man he once was, and time is against him...
hi Scotian....well I see you haven't lost your unique talent for expressing your thoughts clearly and concisely. Well at ;least clearly. ;) But I don't mind at all. Anyone who makes me look concise is definitely worth publishing. Seriously though, I agree with everything you say, except I wouldn't be so harsh on the NDP as you are. It is a bit unfair since Mulcair has done an excellent job in Parliament of grilling the Cons day in day out. But life sometimes isn't fair, and as I said in my post, fate has conspired to give Justin some natural advantages that Mulcair can't match. One is the fact that he is Pierre Trudeau's son, and his youth and approach to politics makes him stand out from the others. At a time when Canadians are looking for change nobody symbolizes change better than he can. And you're right, Mulcair is an excellent politician but too much like one from another era. Very good at prosecuting the Cons, but not so good at giving people hope, or creating a vision of a brighter future. You're also right when you point out that the Trudeau organization has done a good job at the riding level. For example, in my riding Trinity Spadina he managed to choose the only candidate Adam Vaughn who could have conquered this NDP bastion. I should add at this point that although I like Adam, I was sorry Joe Cressy lost because he is an excellent guy, and I hope he will get another chance to make it to Parliament in the redrawn riding. Still, as you know, I am beyond partisanship. I only desire the defeat of the Con regime, and Trudeau is in the best position to do that. He is fortunate to be supported by boomers who remember his father, and by younger Canadians who see themselves in him. I should also add that if he is able to maintain his position, as voting day approaches I wouldn't be surprised to see many NDP supporters vote for him, like Quebecers voted for the NDP when they saw that Ignatieff was flagging, and thought Jack Layton was their best hope of defeating Harper. So if Justin can avoid making any horrible mistakes his chances look good...
hi e.a.f...yes he was quite a sight flipping pancakes and trying to look like a real Albertan. I honestly don't know how the people of that province put up with such a fraud. But then as you point out, Alberta is changing. It does have a greater percentage of younger voters than other provinces. And since so many come from other places they could eventually break the hold the Cons have on the province. I'm not holding my breath, but the day that happens I'll be putting on a cowboy hat myself.... ;)
Simon:
Regarding your point about Mulcair and my being unfair to the NDP, well I can't deny I have some serious issues with the choices the NDP have chosen to make over the past decade, I've said so many times here and elsewhere over the years. In this comment though I was setting that aside and looking with more of a detached critical eye than normal at them, and one of the things that struck me is that Mulcair may be for the NDP in the end what Dion was for the Liberals. Basically a good man with strong leadership ability (which Dion clearly had, but when you are as undermined by your own side as he was, when you are under the bombardment of attack ads from the outset as he was, AND when you have someone like Mike Duffy abusing his professional position to dig up raw footage designed to make him look inept despite that sort of thing happening in raw footage for many people/politicians in the waning days of an election campaign, well that really undercuts you) and strong policy principles he wants to see. The reason I make the comparison is that Mulcair for all his competence may well be the wrong man/leader in the wrong place as Dion was for the respective environments despite being good and strong people, not in the ways in which they were wrong so much as just in the degree that they were.
The problem with Mulcair and the NDP going on so much about how wonderful Mulcair is in the House is that the House has these days so little respect thanks to the way QP in particular has degenerated that it does not convey the shall we say allure/sheen to a leader it used to. Mulcair also has the problem of continuing the Layton Blarification of the NDP while being an outsider for many of the old school Dippers, the refusal to allow someone with clear NDP connections and credentials as a candidate, the son of a former NDP MP all because of one set of comments he made about Israel and the unwillingness of the NDP to aid his father being temporarily (and from what it appeared illegally arrested) incarcerated for doing something which has always been traditionally supported by the NDP being a recent example of this but far from the only one.
Mulcair also shouldn't have come out with his comment about destroying Trudeau, even if he thought so that came off as both overly cocky and overly aggressive, which for a man with some anger management issues can be a dangerous perception. That said though the biggest flaw Mulcair has is that he does not come across with a positive vibe, he is too intense, too focused in some ways, which is why it is so easy for many of his critics to brand him as angry Tom.
Worse though in some respects I think is that he tends to get a little condescending/patronizing with those he feels aren't getting him or his message,and that I think in many ways is even more corrosive/dangerous for him than the angry Tom image, because how many people find that appealing when they feel it is aimed at them? This is part of why I think Cullen would have been a far better choice in the end for the NDP, he has that ability to give off that positive and hopeful vibe, and he would clearly have been reassuring to the old school base that the NDP was not going too far off from its core beliefs in its quest for power/government.
I remember thinking last year when I was watching so many people rave about Mulcair and his putting Harper's feet to the fire on the Duffy/Wright/Senate scandal and how it was going to give him the indisputable edge for beating Trudeau and the Libs for the anti-Harper vote that this was being way too optimistic, way too soon, and without anything other than faith/belief thinking showing it. I remember thinking that while the Libs and Trudeau questions were not as flashy/prosecutorial, they were good ones for a third party who had far less ability to question the government than the LOO by virtue of the rules of the House.
To be continued...
Continuation:
I also thought that this scandal while serious would not be the key to winning the next election, help in bringing Harper down perhaps, but I am getting the impression and have for a while that there is a clear thirst for a vision of hope/positivity of Canada and for Canadians that has been lacking for some time, and it is there that in some ways Mulcairs ability to hold Harper's feet to the fire actually may be working against him. It is clear that despite everything he did, everything that the pundits raved about during that period last year did not translate into any sustained momentum for either Mulcair personally or the NDP overall, and given how strong a showing he made over such a long period, the fact that it did not actually help him or the party in a sustained manner has to be seriously considered a failure of leadership in the end no matter how fair/unfair it seems to his supporters and those who simply think well of him.
As you know Simon I was always a stop Harper first person, I only kept arguing the Libs for the mechanism because that is the only way I saw it happening going by the history of voting patterns in this nation, not because I was a Lib partisan. This was a point I always made, not that it got believed, but it was and is always true. This cycle is the first time where I am actually feeling like I may end up supporting the Libs because I actually am feeling they deserve/earned my support as opposed to simply being the vehicle I see best suited to oppose Harper with, and Trudeau has had a lot to do with that. I'm still not there yet, but it is closer to being aligned to a party pre-writ than I have been in many many election cycles.
Trudeau for all his issues as a young and new leader also has a spark that hasn't been seen in some time on our federal stage, something not even Jack Layton had (and while I have had much contempt for the way he used his skills and personal warmth/connection abilities I never denied that he had them, indeed that was part of why I was so infuriated by his not using them to stop Harper first), and I think it shines all the brighter because of how dark our political environment has become. The risks of course for Trudeau is that he may be creating impossible expectations to meet if he becomes PM, but he doesn't appear to me to be nothing but empty rhetoric in selling himself and his party as I found Obama to be in the 2008 primaries and general election, and I think it may be because Trudeau and his people saw how much of a two edged sword that approach was.
I am glad to see you understood what I meant about the proof of Trudeau's leadership at the riding level, he is making strong decisions there and sticking to them, and he clearly has done much to rebuild the needed machinery for the Liberal party to be competitive for the next election campaign. I think Trudeau may be able to create a true voting coalition in the centrist part of our spectrum with strong appeal reach to both left and right who would in elections past vote NDP or PCPC/CPC first, which is part of that wave potential I was talking about. I truly believe the possibility exists, I certainly see enough conditions needed to cause one, especially after having seen it happen with the PCPC in 1993, and that party was less branded to Mulroney than the CPC is to Harper, since he basically birthed that party and shaped its core message from the moment of its inception.
To be concluded...
Conclusion:
Mulcair is clearly a capable politician, and a competent leader, but is he the right man in the right place at the right time? I would have to argue no to all three given what we have seen happen since he became leader. I've always made a point of distinguishing between the private person and the public politician, and I'll give Mulcair credit for sincerity, but I just do not see him inspiring people beyond his party's loyalists, and even there I think his appeal is less powerful than it needs/should be, because he was not someone with long roots in traditional NDP ground. Politics has always been at least as much about perception as substance, and this is where Mulcair falls flat it seems, the perceptions he creates of himself tend to be two edged swords with negativity as one edge, he lacks the ability from within to truly inspire positive belief, positive hope, positive change. He can say the words but he cannot seem to sell them, and that is I think a fatal flaw for him, especially against Trudeau.
I also think that this belief on both left and right that it is only a matter of time before Trudeau self-destructs for them is incredibly risky to begin with, and premised on perceptions that I have not shared. I think Trudeau is far less likely to come off as Palinish (the amount of comparisons I have seen between Trudeau and Palin from critics on both sides just amazes me at times) in the election campaign and debate(s) as so many on both sides appear to be seeing as a lock. Is he less than polished a political leader than the others, yes, but that may actually end up being a selling point for him if he manages it correctly, and so far he has. Counting on your opponent to self-destruct for you in politics is always risky at best, and can be a massive blind spot in the end allowing that person to beat the living crap out of you, and that is what I see partisans from both the right and left doing with Trudeau.
Well Simon, it seems I did it again. I do appreciate and thank you for your kind words regarding my content, and I agree, I am not all that concise, but I do like to think I am thorough and well thought out, and provide strong structure to my positions. Part of my problem with modern politics is how shallow it sounds to me. Too often people overly simplify, forget context, all because of that 30 second sound bite or 140 character twitter limit, and there are things that I feel this does a disservice to, especially in the realm of politics.
I like to feel I provide a voice/play a role/fill a niche out here that tends to go unfilled much of the time, both in terms of the way I write as well as what I write, as I truly am one of the old school unaligned centrist swing voters who so many hear about but not so many (partisans especially, but not limited to) seem to hear from/listen to. I like to think I represent those who think for themselves and are not comfortable with being a partisan of any party/leader, indeed the closest I ever came to being a partisan was in my decade long quest to stop/remove Harper from power, and that was only because of how incredibly dangerous I saw him being not just to the progressives but the centrists as well.
I am grateful to your patience with me because I just do not have it in me to do regular blogging anymore, and I was always better at being a commentator than a blogger I thought. Yours is a blog which sees a lot of traffic, and so I know my words have a chance of being read here, and I appreciate that. So thanks again Simon for putting up with this long winded fool who still believes in a Canada where substance and character still matters, and that where we still want to have the better angels within ourselves to be our voice in politics, as we have so been throughout our history until recently.
Videos:
Fed. court rules on restoring refugee claimant medical care (July 4)
http://www.ctvnews.ca/video?playlistId=1.1900183
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http://www.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=392792
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Court: Gov't cuts to refugee health care 'cruel and unusual' treatment
http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/court-gov-t-cuts-to-refugee-health-care-cruel-and-unusual-treatment-1.1898922
Federal Court Ruling
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1212674-t-356-13-cdn-doctors-v-agc-judgment-and-reasons.html
I would so love if Elizabeth May and her party were garnered more traction, they deserve it, and she is smarter then both trudeau and harper:)
thanks for the great analysis Scotian!
I too disliked Jack Layton for that moment in time, that he had the opportunity to stop Harper and he instead worked with him, I couldnt like or respect him after that, even though he had smarts and charisma, it was a weaselly move.
I love Nathan Cullen and I wish he had been able to win the nomination and he wanted to work with the libs too and form a coalition(one that can only help beat harper.)
I still really like Mulcair because he is putting Harper in his place, I wish more folks could appreciate his style, I dont think he is angry, I think he is passionate. I still get that this wont work for him in the world of politics, and that Trudeau has a gloss that so buys the votes, but I wish folks could appreciate how hard Mulcair works to get answers from this corrupt govt. I know you do, but I bow to your expertise, that Trudeau is the likely saviour to Harpers corrupt regime
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