"We've Already Got One," Say Torrie Slugs

I have to respond to the current message track of the Conservatives - as I know Mr. Harper is waiting for me to do :)

His current popular sound bite is that Stephan Dion doesn't have the right to become prime minister. He needs to be voted in by Canadians, not some people in a back room.

He seems to forget that we have a well established parliamentary democracy - and nobody is making up new rules on this.

The prime minister is not on the ballot of any of our elections, and just like how nobody voted for Dion nobody voted for him either. Nobody votes for PM - we vote in a party (his only received 38% of the vote BTW), and the leader of the party (parties?) in power becomes the PM. As usual someone needs to point out to Harper that we do not live in the United States. If the GG asks another group during a minority to form a government, the leader of that group, as chosen by our elected representatives, is the PM. There's no dirty tricks involved, its just how it works... and it's a lot better than going to the polls. Surely he isn't suggesting an election is a better path forward out of their self-dug hole.

I'm always disgusted when he starts throwing around the word "Canadians", it is invariably insulting and divisive, in that he is telling us what to think, and invariably it's something diametrically opposed to how we are thinking.

Plus this constant, constant need to try and contrast the trailer-park, tim hortons crowd against a bunch of lounging greeks with palm fronds and grape-feeders is a pathetic excuse for constructive debate. It's a page right out of the American's republican playbook.

When talking about the funding for parties this morning on CBC's "The House", Pierre Pollievre was doing it as per his script. He says, hockey teams and church groups (or some similarly parochial groups) can raise their own money, so our political parties can as well. As usual - 'salt of the earth folk' against 'silk and velvet ensconced elites'. That is SO Karl Rove.

Well in truth, our parties are supported by a tiny amount of cash from the federal budget to decouple their viability from cheques handed out by powerful businesses seeking favours. The conservatives have no shortage of those from the Alberta oil sands, so they are happy to cut the greens and NDP off of the funds they need to represent their constituents. As I've said before - their prime motivation is to hamstring the Liberals at a point where their finances are already low.

I don't believe in any of the parties' magical abilities to get us out of this current financial situation, but if there's one thing I do believe, it is that these current bums thinking that the best response to the crisis is to claim they fixed already fixed it a year before it started is one of the stupidest things I've heard in my life of listening to political theatre.