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COMMENTARY
January 11, 2006
Pinch me
I take it back. I really thought the Liberals were going to pull it out of the fire again. I thought the Conservatives would play into their hands as usual, that the electorate -- well, the Ontario electorate -- would again fall for a “bwahaha”. Pinch me. I do believe the Grits have finally done themselves in. And that their increasingly wild scare campaign is going to backfire, even on NDP voters. If Stephen Harper can avoid rising to any Grit bait in the next 12 days, and maybe suppress that silly smile, we, Canadians, are going to have the most pleasure we have had from an election since 1993.The result appeared to be clinched in Monday’s English-language debate, as Paul Martin began to unravel in front of people’s eyes. No amount of media cover can save him now. One of my woman friends explains. If you thought Mildred down the street was a dishrag, then Ethel tells you she is “really scary”, you give Mildred a closer look. And when, after looking, you become the more convinced that she is a dishrag, it’s not Mildred’s sanity you question. It’s Ethel you start wondering about. The Liberal propensity to clutch onto power by claiming their opposition is “really scary” has worked for them through many elections. Has worked so well, that they thought it would work forever. But the opposition made it work, by panicking whenever charged, and frequently changing its leader. This is what dishrags often do. Truth to tell, the Conservative Party and its predecessors have never been scary. Not even Diefenbaker was scary; not even Meighen. And especially not that puppydog, Stockwell Day. None would ever have dreamed of paddling seriously out of the mainstream. We have a long history of wet cloth, on that side of the House. But to return to our present Mildred, I mean Mr Harper. He has run twice. We’ve had a chance for a good look. And no, he is not scary. There is no grand principle of conservatism that he is prepared to defend. He’ll even shy away from policies that routinely get U.S. Republicans elected. He is a dishrag. (Well, an honest and fairly intelligent dishrag.) Whereas Ethel, I mean Mr Martin, is beginning to put the willies in us. The prospect of losing power is sending him over the edge. As if for the express purpose of confirming this, he went berserk during the English debate, and proposed to reopen Canada’s tin of worms, I mean the Charter of Rights, in order to pull out the Notwithstanding Clause. (We have a new abbreviation! Call it the “NWC”.) Now, even the people who’d like to do that -- and thereby strip Parliament of the only remaining defence it has against the tyranny of fruitcake high court judges -- know it can’t be done, and therefore oughtn’t to be tried. It is a formula for pulling (what’s left of) the country to pieces. Quite apart from being inherently destructive of the democratic order, it would supercharge the separatists in Quebec, in a way not even the Gomery revelations were able to do. And it could easily persuade the phlegmatic people in British Columbia and Saskatchewan to follow Alberta, out another door. It is a proposal that could only fly among the strange, over-urbanized types who live near the core of Toronto -- and from what I hear, even they fell off their chairs when Mr Martin made it. It was in short the purest act of desperation we have seen in Canadian politics in a long time. It was the most adept self-assassination we have watched since John Turner fed himself into Brian Mulroney’s pointy fingers, during their first TV debate. I cracked a chair myself when I heard it on the radio (literally, believe it or not). I had myself thought previously, “Martin is a man who has lost his soul, who might now do or say anything, who has passed beyond the reach of the angels.” But I also thought I was exaggerating. It gets better. (I mean, worse.) It was bad enough if Mr Martin came up with this NWC steamer, spontaneously. That would be temporary insanity. But no, he actually planned it. The Liberals had a press release ready. It became immediately obvious that their strategy was to paint Mr Harper as a “far right neo-con” if he didn’t agree to gut the Canadian Constitution on the spot. Pinch me again. Liberal strategy in previous elections may have been to play to the lower-forty percentile in the Canadian electorate. But now they are counting on victims of lobotomy. Perhaps I overestimate my countrymen, but I can’t picture many of us thick enough to fall for a stunt like this. And ho, what I read in my inbox. My most diehard Grit correspondents are badly shaken. Vote dishrag! Get that lunatic out of power. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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