The Official Opposition seems to have lost its way. No one has the foggiest idea of what Canada's Liberals stand for, save for a return to Pearsonian diplomacy and Team Canada missions. Having so badly bungled such policy issues as the carbon tax in last year's election, the party is literally afraid to advocate new initiatives. Having committed an act of transcendent political lunacy in agreeing last winter to a coalition with the NDP, with separatist support, the Liberals have left themselves far more vulnerable to the “hidden agenda” card than Mr. Harper's Conservatives have ever been.A wonderful new era dawns for Canada...
(...)Three previous Conservative prime ministers have failed to achieve the success that is almost in Mr. Harper's grasp. Sir Robert Borden's Conservative government was ground up in the muck of Great War battlefields and conscription. The most charitable interpretations of John Diefenbaker's squandering of his majority involve hard times – a very long recession – and the dilemmas of Cold War politics; another view is that he self-immolated in paranoia and ineptitude. In the late 1980s, Brian Mulroney's attempt to forge a permanent Conservative majority floundered over Meech Lake and Canadians' resentment at transparent pork-barrelling, sleaze and his government's overriding image of phoniness. So far, there is no evidence that Mr. Harper will fall into similar pits – although it would not hurt for Conservatives to remind themselves these days how easily power and spending corrupt.
Perhaps the cruellest problem the Liberals face is the fading of Quebec as the crucial national battleground. Whether or not the Liberals get their Quebec act together, the Conservatives are on the verge of being able to form a majority government even without effective Quebec representation, a prospect that will be more evident in future years after parliamentary redistribution.
What a striking contrast to the calamity currently gripping the United States.
Five years ago I would've said about such a scenario, "Yeah, right, sure, that'll be the case in five years... and I'll be married to Ann Coulter by then.".
Well, I'm still single and Ann Coulter likely doesn't even know I exist, but it does appear that the other stuff is actually happening.
