A few weeks ago he was spotted at an Ottawa McDonald's, trying hard not to be recognized, and apparently content to be living in well deserved obscurity.
But appearances can be deceiving.
For in fact Stephen Harper has been desperately trying to raise his shrinking profile,
As the new chairman of the right-wing International Democrat Union he has heaped praise on Viktor Orban the virulently xenophobic Prime Minister of Hungary.
He has appeared in a full page ad in the New York Times, saluting Donald Trump for pulling out of the Iran deal.
And now he is praising himself, and saluting the Con party he created, and seemingly returning from the dead.
Which has some people even wondering whether he wants his old job back.
For he seems to be suggesting that he could still "easily" be Con leader, and that he only surrendered the position for the good of the party.
Stephen Harper says he could still “easily” be leader of the Conservative Party, but he chose not to amass too much power in order to secure the party’s fortunes in the future.
Because he didn't want to turn the Cons into his "personal vehicle."
“I could have wielded a lot more power. I think I probably could still easily be leader of my party if I wanted to. I mean, I’m de facto the founder of my party,” Mr. Harper said during a 55-minute discussion at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in Stanford, Calif.
Which of course is hilarious, since he spent hundreds of millions of dollars glorifying himself and moulding the party in his own image.
But the idea that he might want it back must have Andrew Scheer in a panic...
For he's no Great Leader, and no matter how hard he tries to imitate him...
Harper's message, paid for with OUR money, always seemed to pack more of a punch...
So one really has to wonder why he is raising his profile. Is it because he's hoping to replace the hapless Scheer when he goes down in flames?
But while one can't rule that out, I think Andrew Cohen has got it just about right. Harper has decided the time has come to unleash his sharp conservatism.
Two and a half years after losing power at home, Stephen Harper has found a new voice abroad. Freed of the shackles of government, he has become more loudly and sharply conservative than he was as prime minister.
Or his inner beast.
There is nothing subtle here. Mr. Harper is returning to the unvarnished, hawkish conservative he was as an academic and parliamentarian, who managed to contain those instincts in his 10 years in office. Now, he no longer has to compromise as he once did to govern a moderate, centrist Canada.
He's no longer got anything to lose. Justin Trudeau has destroyed his legacy.
He no longer has to hide his brutish views behind murky words.
And of course, that's Andrew Scheer's nightmare. For everything he does now will be compared to what Harper is doing or saying.
And Canadians will be reminded that it's still Harper's Party.
He didn't get the message they sent him, or realize that his time was over...
And neither did Scheer.
So they are both going to end up in the same place...
And all I can say is, it was always the Harper Party.
And good riddance to bad rubbish...
Wow, a mere couple of weeks after Trudeau says "it's still Stephen Harper's party," the bona fide Bond villain comes right out and admits it. Ernst Stevero Blowhard, aka Stephen Herpes, the disease that never really goes away. Just like how Trump is the product of Nixon cronies like Roy Cohn, Paul Manafort and Roger Ailes, conservatism in the U.S. is a reactionary backlash to the 1960s while its clone in Canada is a reactionary backlash to Pierre Trudeau. Including the backlash against his son. I hope someone is working on the movie version. (Still a better love story than Twilight.)
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't surprise me that he chose Hungary as a target for "consulting" work. Poor old Michael Ignatieff is the dean of that university run by oft-mentioned boogeyman George Soros that the fascist Orbán wants to shut down. Sooner or later, I'm sure Herr Legofuhrer will really let his Nazi flag fly and run campaigns for the AfD, The Law & Justice Party of Poland, maybe have a brief reverse-Casablanca encounter with Marine Le Pen...
But I wonder when Steve and his ventriloquist puppet Andy will take their Springtime for Harper vaudeville act over to the American wingnut webfare circuit (YouTube seems to be where all the "cool" fascists are hanging out these days). Or maybe they'll adopt an old-school approach as "consultants" for Fox News. The Carmen Sandiego of Canadian fascists. "Where in the world is Stephen Adolf Harper?"
Hi Jackie...yes, the timing was perfect. A week after our shabby Con media is spluttering about the way the Liberals were reminding Canadians about Harpers legacy, the man himself appears. And now more reactionary than ever. I wrote about him for almost ten years, and while the MSM whitewashed him, he never fooled me. He had hung out with right-wing extremist groups during his Reform Party days allegedly hiring them to do security at party events, so I knew he couldn't be trusted. It just took a little longer than I had thought it would take before he emerged from his pod. And Scheer is in the same boat. He is far more reactionary than our useless media has ever portrayed him, and it's only a matter of time before his past comes back to haunt him...
DeleteMr. Harper is returning to the unvarnished, hawkish conservative he was as an academic and parliamentarian...
ReplyDeleteHarper was an academic?! Since when?
Pretty sure he has a B.A. What more do you need?
Deletehi anon@12:53 PM...Harper has a master's degree in economics, but to call him an academic is absurd. He used that degree to portray himself as a Great Economist Leader, but his appalling record speaks for itself...
DeleteHi jrkrideau...well he certainly was a Bullshit Artist, and he is cashing in on that degree now. I'll never forget when he was invited by the Republican bag man Sheldon Adelson to give a presentation at his Las Vegas mansion, on how he merged the Reform Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives. And after he finished Adelson said, oh, really, thank you, next....
DeleteMaybe he had somebody read a book to him; does that count?
ReplyDeleteHi rumleyfips...Since Harper once said that he was more interested in what God thought of his legacy than the verdict of his people, I can see Jason Kenney sitting at the end of his bed reading selected passages from the Bible. The parts where Moses went into the wilderness, and came back with the Ten Commandments, and the Straussian theory of austerity. So Harper could claim divine knowledge, while making it up as he went along...
DeleteIf Harper was still in power he would have moved our Israel embassy to Jerusalem as well.
ReplyDeleteI know it's complicated but I feel like Canada isn't doing enough to stop the violence in Gaza. I remember a while back the students at McGill university were trying to get a BDS movement going, which Trudeau condemned in a tweet saying enough is enough and he's disappointed.
hi anon @4:20 PM...Harper has been gushing about Israel on his Twitter page, but while the situation in the Gaza strip is horrifying, there is nothing Canada can do to improve the situation. We have made it clear that we don't support the moving of the embassy, and that we deplore the violence, but with the Trump regime backing Netanyahu anything we said would be like chaff in the wind. I know it's frustrating, but Canada's traditional role in that region has been to try to be an honest broker, at least before Harper came along. If that hideous conflict is ever to be resolved honest brokers will be needed, so favouring one side or the other is not helpful in that regard...
DeleteI love your fish graphic, but the Con’s xenophobic campaign is a huge threat. A lot of Canadians are low-life racists and same thing could happen here as what happened with Brexit in Britain. When it happened they claimed it was all about globalization, now new studies show it was all about racism.
ReplyDeletehi anon@6:45PM...I know what you're saying, and it's something I struggle with all the time. How to mock the Cons without making them look like a comedy rather than a horror show. And the Con's xenophobic campaign is a horror show. Hopefully over the course of time I will achieve the right balance, because that issue will almost certainly determine the result of the next election....
DeleteThe Con media has been criticizing the Liberals for reminding Canadians what happened during the Harper years, what will they say now that Harper has come back from the dead and showing his true colours? I know, nothing. Sorry I asked.
ReplyDeletehi anon@7:14 PM...I don't blame you for being cynical. The Con media has been criticizing the Liberals for daring to bring up the sainted name of the political thug who ruled this country for almost a decade, and one can't expect much from such a shabby lot. However, they have been made to look like fools, and that's not nothing...
DeleteLike his feathered friends Harper smells the potential for political carnage on the Ontario and Alberta battlefields and wants to be close by for the feast. So much easier than battling the global buzzards with their extremely sharp beaks and where you are never sure if you are there to enjoy the feast or to be part of it. Although Cons everywhere are reluctant to share, obtaining the needed political achievement nourishment on home turf is still so much safer!
ReplyDeleteRT
hi RT...As I said in my post, I find Harper's claim that he could have stayed on as Con leader hilarious. Maybe the Cons would have allowed him to stay on, but Canadians had clearly shown they were sick of him. I think you're right though, Harper smells the potential carnage like a buzzard, and is hoping it might relaunch his political career in some form. He no doubt feels that Trump and Orbán and others are the way of the future, and dreams, like a buzzard, of getting a piece of the action. I on the other hand think he's deluded, and can't wait to see the feathers fly....
DeleteHarper’s re-entry into the political fray is perverse because, after having given us one of the worst regimes in Canadian history, his successors appear to have learned nothing from their government’s defeat, completely blowing the opportunity to redeem their predecessor’s faults by rejecting moderate leadership candidates and choosing instead someone who, almost unbelievably, is less likely to win power than their old master was following his first and last majority. The Cons desperately needed to turn themselves around post-Harper, and they failed, probably the most significant failure in their relatively short history (only the Greens have shorter).
ReplyDeleteThe new leader, Andrew Scheer, needed only to appeal to a beset, self-righteous, moribund and desperately attritting base whose only calculus is to circle the wagons and deport all and any who do not pledge unquestioning loyalty to the ‘family values’ of climate-change denial and xenophobia. Scheer leads by these maxims and cannot therefore engage or respond creatively to real events and issues. And that’s the rub because the shrinking Con base was never big enough to seize power, anyways, without creatively advantaging political tumult among rival parties who were struggling with various difficult leadership circumstances of their own. When those difficulties were resolved the Harper successes—two minorities and a single majority—were revealed as the default wins they were.
I estimate Harper is more capable than Scheer in the evil genius department, and perhaps it was more than Harper could stand to see the party he created chalk up one embarrassment after another under Howdy-Doody Scheer. But inserting himself to save “his party” still doesn’t solve the basic problem: without matching attrition with recruitment of younger voters, the (Neo-Right) Cons continue to become marginalized. It is truly a desperate position because Harper cannot attract younger voters without going Alt-Right low, and even then he’s tainted with an establishmentarianism he probably wishes, in the circumstance, he wasn’t encumbered with.
And it couldn’t happen to a more deserving party.
hi Geoffrey...excellent comment. I think you have put your finger on the Scheer Con's biggest problem. They can keep pleasing their bigoted base, but it is shrinking from attrition, and they will not attract much support from the millennial generation that will play a a big role in determining who will rule this country in the next ten years. However, I don't want to minimize what might happen if our borders are swamped with asylum seekers. It's a powerful weapon for the Cons to use against the government, and the Liberals are going to have to be very firm, or they will be in trouble. I saw what happened in Britain with my own eyes, and what xenophobia has done to that country should serve as a powerful warning. The next election will be a fateful one, and failure is not an option...
DeleteMinor quibble, I think the Greens have been around longer than the Conservative Party of Canada in its currant incarnation.
DeleteDefinitely, Harper is a more capable evil genius. He really likes to see people suffer. See the various criminal code changes and mandatory sentencing, or, on a more individual level, the treatment of Omar Khadr, especially once he made it back to Canada.
Scheer is a nasty piece of work and some of his "policies" are vicious and evil. but I don't think he is actively malevolent in the same way.
Harper cant let go, he does not know how quit Scheer.
ReplyDeleteHi Steve...I agree that Harper can't let go, he is too much of a political animal to be happy just making lots of money. But I doubt he has much loyalty for Scheer, he's not that kind of guy. If you remember the appalling way he treated poor old Jimbo Flaherty it's clear he only thinks about himself. My guess is his bitterness has eroded his critical judgement, and he is now only a legend in his own mind...
DeleteMargaret MacMillan suggests that politicians who are in basically unchallenged power long enough develop a feeling of hubris that isolates them from parts of reality. The example I heard her discuss on a CBC programme was Margaret Thatcher. It looks like she has an entire chapter on hubris in her book History's People.
DeleteI think Harper has long since succumbed to hubris.
Harper is a pig. Apologies to pigs.
ReplyDeletehi anon@11:04 PM...Well I'm glad you apologized to the pigs, I have to do that all the time. :) But yes, an even more reactionary Stephen Harper is definitely a creature to avoid...
DeleteThanks for apologising to the pigs! Everytime I want to call, say Margaret Wente by the B-word, I think of all the sweet lady dogs I've known.
ReplyDeleteI suspect Harper is back and out and about because no one else wants him. He was P.M. of Canada, but he does not appear to have been picked up for any lucrative job elsewhere. having lived the life of a P.M. for 10 yrs, its hard to go back and be just an regular citizen forced to live on his pension. Not fun.
ReplyDeleteGoing to Hungary was not so great, its not a rich country, English is not the second language, there was nothing there for him beyond a few fleeting moments. Russia isn't interested in him, so there is no extra money to be had.
As to becoming the next leader of the Cons. not going to happen. His time has past. there are younger people who want the job and they'll have their knives out for Harper if he tries.
What is boils down to the Trumpsters didn't hire him.