Canadians have been entertained through the spring by the amazing antics of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his cabinet of mentally challenged blowhards as they try to cope with a tsunami of problems, many of their own making. Among the latter are their flipflops on tax policy and, especially, the half flipflop on the environment that has left them with a policy on greenhouse gasses that is no more credible than the one that was laughed off the stage in the fall. Now Harper is in Europe for the G-8 meeting, trying to sell this empty policy as the salvation of others as hapless as himself.
Then along came the Afghan prisoners fiasco, where Harper and his minions changed their story minister by minister and minute by minute. To cap that off, the leaking of the 200+ page handbook on how to disrupt parliamentary committees to silence opposition (and any other) criticism. All this has the Tories plummeting in the polls: far from nudging upward into majority territory, at time of writing they are statistically tied with the Liberals in competition for minority status. But that is not all: the most recent Decima poll, which asked those surveyed for their second choices in an election, reveals that the Liberals have much more room for growth than Harper and his neo-cons.
So Harper is stalled. The one thing that all the recent polls say loudly and clearly is that the country is not willing to give him a majority. And the Decima poll confirms what many of us have long suspected: if in a campaign Harper should be perceived as coming anywhere close to a majority, tens of thousands of votes will peel off the NDP and the Greens and go to the Liberals. All the Liberals have to do is stand aside and sound reasonable, even with Dion as leader.
Of course, Harper will fight back, but he will do so by stubbornly persisting in the self-destructive courses he has been following. His immediate response to the disaster of the Afghan prisoner debacle was, predictably, a flying visit to Afghanistan for some photo-ops, where he hinted that Canadians will remain in that country well beyond the legislated pullout date of February 2009. Just what electoral demographic is he appealing to?
The House of Commons resumed business on May 28, amid suspicions that Harper will prorogue parliament (close the current session early), blaming the opposition for obstruction. (Harper is a two trick pony-- go to Afghanistan, blame the opposition.)
Sure enough, on the 28 th, the government cranked up a noisy campaign of blaming the opposition. It fizzled out in day or two, however, as someone or something (secret Tory polls perhaps?) suggested, in all likelihood, that early prorogation would look like both a lack of an agenda and a lack of backbone.
So the sesssion will bitch along until the House rises on June 22. In the meantime, the Conservatives have hurled another attack ad at Dion. His failure to take off is the only thing Harper has going for him . Harper knows that if Dion does catch on, or worse, does not and is replaced, the scenario of four paragraphs above will be played out in one way or another. The most likely way is the Tories sinking so low in the polls that all three opposition parties will see themselves making gains at the Conservatives’ expense.
Harper will have to devote the long hot summer to yet another extreme makeover tour while cobbllng together a throne speech that outlines a new agenda for a new session of parliament in the fall. Let bygones be bygones. However, while prorogation may be able to mute the opposition, events will continue to unfold inconveniently, at home and everywhere else, such as Afghanistan. And he will meet them in the same paranoid way he has met the events of the past twelve months. The pratfalls will accumulate until suicide is consummated in electoral defeat.
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