Could Stephen Harper be taken down by the growing Senate scandal?

Sure he could. Of course he could. His poll numbers are dropping, his caucus is rebelling, and his trade-and-economy message is a fading memory. In recent days, he has looked simultaneously enraged and astonished that his authority is slipping away from him.

The fabled Conservative communications discipline is no more. Conservatives are attacking Conservatives, and caucus members are resisting Harper’s agenda. In political strategic terms, PMO is operating like a monkey with a machine gun.

The names of Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau – once the stars of the Conservative fundraiser and talking head circuit – are now synonymous with scandal and sleaze, in perpetuity. They know it, and they’ve decided that, if they’re going down, they’re bringing all of their fairweather friends down with them.

Now, it is true that scandal stories get overplayed all the time. The Opposition, and those of us in the media, consider scandal to be far more important than the public does.

Case in point: Toronto mayor Rob Ford. Media report he smokes crack cocaine, he writes letters of reference on official letterhead for convicted criminals (one of them a murderer), and he regularly shows up to work after lunchtime. But, serial scandals notwithstanding, polls suggest his white angry male constituency remains (for now) with him.

Why should anyone think, then, that Harper’s Senate scandal – because it is now indisputably his, whether he was briefed by his senior staff or not – could fell him? Because, mainly, Harper is in the middle of a perfect storm. For some time, he was being buffeted by two storm systems – and then, to make matters appreciably worse, the Duffy-Wallin-Brazeau cyclone hit.

One the one side, Harper was losing support to the same thing that every government eventually faces: he was nearing the ten year mark. After a nearly decade in power, Canadians were wearying of him. His partisans were becoming less loyal – and his detractors had stopped merely disliking him, and were starting to hate him.

On the other side, Justin Trudeau appeared. Conservatives arrogantly and foolishly dismissed Trudeau’s appeal. They did not take seriously, even for a moment, the durability of the Liberal leader’s popularity with older Canadians (who still revere his father) and younger Canadians (who have been seduced by his undeniable charisma).

As Ipsos pollster Darrell Bricker has said to tin-eared Conservatives: “Trudeau is the real deal.” He is young, positive, energetic and progressive – in effect, he is the polar opposite of Stephen Harper. And he arrived when (see above) many Canadians were getting sick of Stephen Harper’s face.

That, then, is why the Senate scandal could indeed hasten the end of the Conservative Party’s time in government. Not because the scandal, in and of itself, is deadly. Because the scandal has come along at precisely the wrong time.

Politics, like comedy, is all about timing. For Stephen Harper’s fading Conservative regime, the timing of the Senate scandal could not possibly be worse.

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It’s embarrassing, actually.

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More, just because some of her backers are already irritating me (my name won’t be on the ballot, morons).

There’s a lot more where this comes from. Link here.

 

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Says plenty about (a) her truthfulness and (b) where her true allegiance lies. Link here.

 

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Selfie in SoHo, in September. Bought the tee at Yellow Rat Bastard the day before. Kind of was hoping I’d run into Mr. Reed. Didn’t. Won’t.

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Political scandals aren’t like viruses — they are, in fact, viruses.

For those wielding power, the objective is to avoid getting sick — or, at the very least, to prevent the virus from infecting vital organs.

For the critics of the powerful, the objective is always to encourage the spread of the virus.

It’s an unpleasant metaphor, but surveying the wreckage wrought by the Conservatives’ Senate scandal, it fits. What started as a one-day story has now metastasized. The Senate scandal virus is spreading, and it is edging inexorably closer to the one man the Conservative Party of Canada cannot afford to lose — Stephen Harper.

The opposition and the media love political scandal viruses.

The media, because we are drawn to bad news — if it bleeds, it leads. The opposition, because they take their cues from the media.

All of this is so basic, so obvious, it barely merits saying. Which is what makes the Harper regime’s inept response to the spreading Senate scandal virus so mystifying.

Harper and his followers seized power because of a scandal and the Liberal party’s inability to rebut that scandal. How they did not heed that lesson — how they did not inoculate themselves against the likes of Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau — is beyond understanding.

If you are a sane person, you do not watch parliamentary proceedings every day. But last week, it was worth tuning in — first, for Duffy’s Checkers-like discourse, in which he sought to shift blame to the man who appointed him to the Senate.

And second, for the government’s pathetic response to Duffy’s unproven allegations.

One part of Duffy’s statement has been quoted widely.

On Feb. 13, he said he met with Harper and his chief of staff, Nigel Wright, to discuss inappropriate claims for living expenses.

Duffy insists Harper said the following: “It’s not about what you did. It’s about the perception of what you did that’s been created in the media.”

Harper ended the discussion, Duffy said, with this: “Pay the money back.” The CBC and others called it a “bombshell,” but it wasn’t.

One could easily picture Harper impassively listening to Duffy’s lame protestations of his innocence with Wright as his witness and then saying what many a political boss has said before to an underling they were readying to discipline or fire: It’s not what you did, it’s the perception of what you did. And then: “Pay the money back.”

Where, exactly, is the “bombshell” in any of that? In his Senate tour de force, Duffy was clearly attempting to infect Harper with the Senate scandal virus.

Harper’s response to opposition and media questions, therefore, should have been equally clear.

He should have said the following: “I met with Mr. Duffy.” (Don’t call him a senator, and thereby give him legitimacy.) “I did so with a witness.” (To insinuate Duffy was not trustworthy.) “I told him that his explanations and his rationalizations did not matter. I told him that he was seen to have done wrong.” (And, of course, an army of auditors and the RCMP wouldn’t be probing Duffy were this not so.) “I told him to pay the money back.” PAY THE MONEY BACK.

Duffy, by quoting Harper uttering these words, thought he was placing a prime minister in the proximity of a dangerous virus.

In reality, he was providing Harper with the best talking point of all: “I told Mr. Duffy to pay the money back.”

Why Harper didn’t personally say that — why he relied on his useless parliamentary secretary to make matters radically worse in question period — will be a mystery historians will ponder for many years.

Mike Duffy and his free-spending cabal were a case of the sniffles.

By forgetting the lessons of the past, Stephen Harper and his minions have turned them into a raging virus.

And they are a virus that is lethal.

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Son Three: Dad, did you ever noice 9/11 and nine one one are the same? Is that a coincidence?

Son Two, sighing deeply: I find conspiracy theorists so tiresome.

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The newspaper of record notices.  To wit:

“It began as a seemingly mundane dispute over expense claims from four members of Canada’s Senate, an appointed body rife with patronage and long a source of minor scandals. And while the amount of money involved is not vast, it has become a major political scandal for Canada’s prime minister and his government.”

What effect is it having, if any, on voter opinion?  We shall see, obviously.

But it’s a classic case of what I said on Sun News this week: big political graves are dug with little shovels.

 

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Thank you, Andreas Papadopoulos!

The snaps below – of the Star and Globe front pages, 20 years ago – come from Andreas’ personal collection.  Andreas had what I couldn’t find on the Internet.

Twenty years! What a night that was.  And I can’t believe how old I am.

In my advanced age, I comfort myself with being a small part of six big wins (three Chretien, three McGuinty), and a few smaller ones, too.  Time to retire. (Or do new things – stay tuned.)

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