Death of a thousand cuts

Slowly but surely various minor scandals, spending and policy blunders are slowly catching up with the Harper Tories. Over the summer, the Tories have sank again down towards their core of support under the weight of various ministerial mini-scandals, million dollar fake lakes, billion dollar security tabs, multi-billion dollar prison costs, elimination of the long-form census, etc. etc. It would seem that this is the Harper Tory Achilles heel, it certainly isn't the Liberal party, who pretty much need the Tories to sink to be neck and neck with them. It is beginning to look like it won't be one thing that takes out Harper. It will be, as the past year or so has shown, a bunch of relatively small things. Things that individually might be ignored as minor lapses in judgement or inexperience in government. Taken as a whole however, these events from prorogation to Helen Gurgis, from the lions share of stimulus money going to only Tory held ridings to a law and order package that will cost the taxpayer billions for no net benefit show a negative side to the Harper Tories even the conservative press can no longer ignore. It's beginning to show Canadians who aren't locked in a "vote Conservative" mindset that the current PM and government of Canada are either dangerously blind ideologues, dangerously incompetent or worse, both. This will be Harper's eventual undoing, unless of course the opposition in general and the Liberals in particular find a spine between now and the next election.

Harper of course will spew out the same lies and rhetoric he has in the past, that is it's all the Liberal's fault, that if you don't vote for him and illegal coalition will form, cats and dogs living together, etc. etc. This also won't help as he has been spewing them long enough that no one other than the cabal of yes men that make up the Conservative party and conservative movement in Canada is listening. Harper knows this, of course as well as knowing his party is bleeding in dribs and drabs from many tiny cuts. Which is why he wants a fall election, even if the polls suggest he won't get a majority. There is no gain for Harper to delay an election. The cuts in his support will only continue and if the Auditor General's report on the stimulus package that comes out in the fall says that the taxpayer isn't getting value for dollar, that will only increase the bleed. This is why Harper put Baird in as house leader. Harper needs to manufacture another election and fast lest people eventually figure out that he and his government are dangerously ideological incompetents and cause enough of his core supporters to stay home on election day to allow the Grits to sneak by the Tories on election day. Or worse yet for the Tories that Ignatieff starts to get traction with Canadians as a viable alternative to Harper or the Liberals dump Ignatieff for someone more popular and charismatic.

The bright side to all this is that the Harper Tories will eventually implode under the weight of their own arrogance, ideological blindness and incompetence even without any active effort by the opposition. Though it would help if the opposition would start doing their job. So some rare unsolicited advice for the opposition:

1) To the Liberals: stop caving in whenever the Tories spout out how bad you were in the past. The past is the past and it's time for you to move on. The Conservatives and conservatives tend to live in the past, you don't have to since the rest of us don't.

2) To Michael Ignatieff: really, you need to try to be different from Harper in terms of policy in some way. Without a contrasting set of policies to show Canadians that you can be not only better than Harper, but actually different, no one's going to shift their vote to you. Here's a hint, that 25-30% of vote the Tories always seem to get isn't going to shift to you. They're the ones that only see the Conservative candidate on ballots and call your party the Lieberals. No matter how far right you shift, they aren't going to vote for you. Heck some of them are still holding a grudge about the NEP so you know how irrational they are.

3) To the Bloc Quebecois: hunt down the last remaining true separatists in your caucus and ship them off on an ice floe off the Ungava peninsula. Then during an election use some of the free air time you get to show that you see that Quebec's priorities can be Canada's priorities too. This will go a long way to letting the air out of the whole Tory socialists and separatists argument. Naturally this will only leave the socialist part of the argument but I'm sure you're OK with that.

4) To the Liberals and the NDP. Where it makes sense to cooperate, cooperate. This means, and I'm speaking mainly to the Liberals here, that if in a riding the ND candidate lost by 200 votes behind the Tory and the Grit candidate was 1500 behind, don't try to convince the ND's to not run in that riding. YOU not run then negotiate a coalition once the Enemy is defeated. Unless the Liberals can get figure out that cooperation doesn't mean that the NDP won't run in the election, cooperation won't and shouldn't happen. I'm not too confident that the Liberals will so this is likely not to happen.

So there you have it, my take on the whole Harper incompetence filled summer. I return you now to your regular programing already in progress.