A few Liberal friends are very interested in Nathan Cullen. He’s the only NDP leadership aspirant with the brains, and the guts, to openly discuss merger/coalition/cooperation.
I stand by my view: this isn’t going to happen, principally due to the hubris and stupidity of many Liberals and New Democrats. As such, get ready for TEN MORE YEARS of Harper, Robocon Con or not.
My apologies about how today’s column reads, in the paper and online. It’s like one big paragraph. Not sure what happened there, but it’s visually very Doestoevsky-like. Without the existential misery and despair.
It’s never the break-in. It’s always the cover-up.
In politics, that Watergate-era aphorism has come to describe a well-established principle: Voters will often forgive the first sin. But they’ll rarely forgive repeated lies about the sin.
The burgeoning Robocon scandal is a classic example of that. Had the Harper regime reacted to the first allegations of vote suppression with calm and clarity, they’d be in better shape right about now. They’d be happier if they had simply said, “We are very concerned about what the media is reporting, and we pledge to co-operate with Elections Canada on their independent investigation.”
Instead, they have adopted Paul Martin’s approach — the infamous “mad as hell” strategy. When Jean Chretien left 24 Sussex, you may recall, the sponsorship mess had been the subject of an RCMP probe for nearly two years — and the Liberal Party of Canada had been polling above 50%. It wasn’t a big deal yet.
But when Martin assumed the post of prime minister, he started shrieking, coast-to-coast, about how he was “mad as hell” about sponsorship. Voters therefore got mad, too — at him. In one extraordinary week, the Liberal party lost 15% support. It never recovered.
Martin blamed “rogue bureaucrats.” His craven, cowardly staff accused Chretien of concealing criminal wrongdoing — off the record, of course. They blamed fellow Liberals. They blamed everyone for the mess. Except themselves, naturally.
History tells us what happened next. A big majority, to a minority, to successive losses — and, now, a rump in the House of Commons. That, among other things, is what happens when you pass the buck.
Stephen Harper and his minions are now attempting to pass the buck, too. In the days since these allegations of election fraud became known, Harper’s gang has closely resembled Martin’s in their attempts to cover up.
Federal Liberals did well, in May 2011, in any locale where a post-secondary education institution is located.
Therefore, this logical question: how extensive were vote suppression efforts in those areas? Anyone know?
Trust me, the question isn’t academic.
Quote:
“I suspect that at the end of the day, if Elections Canada has the resources to do a proper investigation, they’ll find they’re themselves significantly responsible,” Saskatchewan MP Maurice Vellacott said in a statement.”
Oh my Lord God – you can set your watch by this one! They’ve blamed Liberals, rogue staffers, the media, and even denied it happened at all.
It’s 2004 all over again!
Martin rejected calls to name those 14 or so bureaucrats believed responsible for the scandal, saying the public inquiry he has called will uncover all information on the matter.”
It’s like Putin’s weekend “win,” too, except that one at least had election observers! Anyway, I love this thing. For progressives, it’s the gift that keeps on giving.
(The Robocon Cons won’t love my column tomorrow, however.)
We didn’t do it. The Liberals did it. It happened, but it’s exaggerated. It was a rogue staffer. It can’t be us, because it happened in Calgary. It’s taken nine months, so it has to be made-up. Elections Canada is biased against us. We didn’t need to do it, we were going to win. It’s all hysteria. It’s all media bias.
And so on and so on.
Those are just a few of the excuses that Conservatives – looking worried, sounding frenzied – have offered up in the growing electoral fraud scandal. There are more.
I need your help: I want to do a round-up in the Sun on Tuesday about the various Con excuses in Robocon – and, if possible, what noteworthies are making them.
Fill comments with your picks – and thank you!
Code Yellow: Claim average people don’t care, and say it’s time to move on to more important subjects, like the economy.
Code Orange: If that doesn’t work, toss a young Tory staffer under the proverbial bus, and say the matter’s closed.
Code Red:Blame the media, blame bureaucrats, and screech about Adscam, coalitions, the NEP and the perils of socialism. Rinse and repeat.
An important part of this process, usually, is to cite the words of commentators who defend the Harper regime. So, as the RoboCon scandal continues to spread, we can expect to see Conservative MPs getting up on their hind legs in the Commons, and quoting scrupulously neutral oracles like L. Ian MacDonald, who this week declared that “Harper won the election fair and square,” and that fraudulent phone calls about the location of polling stations wouldn’t have changed the outcome.
The problem, however, is that it increasingly looks like the Harper Cons didn’t win the election “fair and square.” It looks like they cheated. And, moreover, in ridings where Liberals were defeated by small margins — such as Nipissing-Timiskaming (18 votes) or Etobicoke Centre (26 votes) — the outcome could have been quite different, indeed.
Assorted Reformatories have swarmed this and other web sites, winged monkey-like, to contest the 31,000 complaints of electoral fraud figure, below.
Whatever. Knock yourselves out, monkeys. Halve that number, and halve it again and again.
The sponsorship affair resulted in six prosecutions (none of which involved an elected Liberal, by the by). But those six prosecutions were more than enough to help wreck the Liberal brand for a decade and counting.
So, have at it, winged monkeys. It could be 31,000 cases, or it could be 31. Any way you slice it, your team is well and truly fucked.