The Conservative bias in the mainstream media (there hasn’t been a Liberal bias for years) has already led to rhapsodizing over Harper’s de facto balanced budget and looming tax cuts. Never mind the fact that this is a made-in-the-cutting room surplus. Never mind the fact that Harper wants your vote in return for shrinking your world. It is the PM’s choice of a ballot question in neon — buttressed by the usual bribes paid with other people’s money.
That same mainstream media (with notable individual exceptions, including the intrepid Canadian Press) is endorsing Harper’s view that Canadians are in imminent danger of being beheaded at the outlet mall by Islamic State. Man-eating pythons rising up from the toilet bowl pose more of a direct threat.
In fact, the third Iraq war is now part of the Conservative party re-election plan — as Harper himself inadvertently made clear when he placed his decision to start bombing firmly in the context of the coming federal election.
Did anyone else notice the quirky little smile on the PM’s face in the House of Commons as he took the country to war? It was as if he were announcing the deportation of opposition leaders, instead of issuing death warrants. The trained seals behind him were also pretty jolly for a crowd that had just opened the bomb-bay doors on an enemy that is, at best, approximate.
And the Trudeau-trashing seems to be hitting its stride. Jason Kenney is apparently spending 20 per cent of his time whipping the shiny new pony on Twitter. Kenney’s staff is in on the act but the minister assures us they do the work on their personal time. (They would never kick the pony during working hours because that would be … well, that would be dirty pool, right?)
And everyone knows the Harperites are big fans of fair play … whether it’s robocalls, the alleged Bribe of Frankenstein to Mike Duffy, election expenses, or making new laws to steal the work of journalists and put them to work for Harper’s re-election machine. Even CTV saw the incipient fascism in that.
The question is whether Harper’s tried and true recipe — chest-thumping over a mediocre economy, fear and trash-talk — will work this time. In an odd way, it comes down to whether something Harper believes — that voters aren’t really interested in ‘details’ — is actually true. As the former head of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, John Gordon, told me: “Harper is aloof and frankly dishonest. He never offers details, just platitudes.”
That’s because he’s sneakier than a honey badger at a beehive. To Harper, democracy is an exercise in crowd control once every political cycle. Between elections, it’s one-man rule.
On one important level, though, Harper is right: His party’s dismal record on truthfulness and ethics, so patently on display in Wright/Duffy and a series of other scandals, may not resonate. And it’s not because the public doesn’t care about lying and cheating. The reason is much more pathetic than that.
It’s because people think this is normal now. Many citizens have long since concluded that deception and sleight-of-hand are generic political traits, not exclusive to any party. We may have reached the point where people even expect politicians to play fast and loose. If you’re looking for the reason fewer and fewer people vote, look no further than the place politicians occupy on the popularity index — just below stock-brokers, just above journalists.
So if it turns out that Harper is right, he might very well be taking out at least a short-term lease on 24 Sussex Drive after the next election. But if he has it wrong — if Canadians are interested in the details that comprise his record after eight years in office — he’ll be lucky to be crashing in Stornaway after the next vote. There are so many points of vulnerability in the Conservative party’s shopworn playbook of fear and loathing.
Take the economy — chugging along in second gear, sometimes making it into third before dropping back again. Harper has bet everything on his belief that Canadians will mindlessly applaud the mere act of signing free-trade deals — while he cuts their pensions, health care and veterans’ benefits.
This PM throws a party and asks for applause even when he makes such deals in principle. No one knows how they will work out in practice — no one. It will take years for the real report card to come in. It won’t take as long for people to figure out that blowing $300,000 on free plane rides for foreign dignitaries to help his re-election campaign was not a good use of taxpayers’ money.
With the Canada-Europe CETA deal — which remains a work in progress, no matter how many press releases they’ve issued — we’re told that Canada’s GDP will go up 32 per cent. No mention in that bald prediction of who will benefit, or what it will cost. How many subsidies will the federal government have to pay to people like cheese producers? How much will seniors end up paying for their pharmaceuticals if the Europeans get their way? Judging from his past performance, Harper’s deals will be good for the five-carat wedding ring set. For lesser mortals, it will come down to a chicken-wing in every pot.
As for his latest fear project — there’s every chance that this latest Iraq mission will turn into something entirely different from the surgical air strikes that are supposed to go on for six months. For starters, there’s nothing ‘surgical’ about them; airstrikes always amount to holding a 12 gauge against a pumpkin and pulling the trigger. Officials in Iraq are already asking for 10,000 U.S. troops on the ground for the defence of Baghdad. And this is after coalition forces have flown hundreds of bombing sorties against Islamic State already.
Even U.S. military officials are fretting that, without boots on the ground to identify targets for pilots, the bombing is far from effective. If the war drags on — shapeless, bloody and inconclusive — who wears it? Fear of Islamic State could turn into loathing of Steve in a heartbeat. No one wanted to get out of Afghanistan only to trade it for Iraq. After all, in the name of protecting Canadians, the prime minister has already exacted a heavy price — the erosion of civil liberties and a billion-dollar palace for unaccountable bureaucrats to spy on their fellow Canadians. More war abroad will ultimately mean less freedom here.
As for trashing Justin Trudeau for being inexperienced or having poor judgement — does Harper really want to go there? A debate about judgement? Does he really want to revisit all his least statesmanlike moments — from recruiting his staff from the ranks of guys who have done time to turning Libya into Thunderdome?
What about the multiple fairy tales he told to Canadians about the Senate scandal? Was it good judgment for his party to lie to Canadians during a federal election about the true cost of the F-35 fighter jets — and when it caught, to lie some more?
Even in this winter of discontent of contemporary politics, there is a limit to what an exhausted, inattentive and cynical public will endure. It would take a great deal of indifference to endure more Harper.
Just look. The devil is in the details.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca/
Author: Michael Harris
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