Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Del Mastro redux. . .

As I have said all along, the strength of the Harper regime is also its weakness. Being controlling and secretive can serve you well under certain circumstances but when people begin to suspect you of something wrong or illegal, such attitudes begin to seem suspicious and even dangerous. The robocon scandal is rooted in the ruthless drive that the CPC (under its present leadership) has to win at all costs (even illegal ones) and to destroy any opposition. Under this obsessive drive, a political party (any political party) becomes dangerous to the nation and to itself. Democracy gets in the way of power and the people get in the way of your interests until the very people that you are supposed to represent begin to fear and despise you. Thus, a group like the Harpercons seems to go to almost comical lengths to smear others and divert people's attention away from what, to any rational person's mind, is a tremendous scandal which common sense tells us leads directly to the offices of someone in the CPC. Like underworld thugs, the worst elements of the CPC are so mindlessly driven to have their way that they have little idea of what they are actually doing, what the consequences might be, and just how off the rails they have gone. And the worst part of the story is that no one in the Party has yet been willing to stand up for the very principles of honesty, fairplay, and honor that they claim to represent.

The unbelievable blowhard, Dean Del Mastro is the worst kind of thug - ignorant, dull-witted, and profoundly ambitious. In the past week he has proven himself to be comically incompetent as he has attempted to divert the attentions of Canadians away from a scandal in which his party is clearly implicated. First he was caught out lying to the house about the entirely legal and ethical phone practices of the Liberal Party. Then, daring the Liberals to reveal their phone records, he was clearly caught off guard today when the LPC began to do just that. However, when asked if his own Party would reveal its records Del Mastro said they would not reveal their records because his party is obviously innocent of any wrong doing. This is a remarkable exercise in Orwellian double-speak. He demanded the records of a party that any rational person in the country suspects of nothing, while holding back his own party's records in a scandal that most people are certain leads to the doors of the CPC. It is almost Nixonian in nature, as if Del Mastro is suggesting that anything that the Harper regime does is, by its very nature, legal.

Yet things are looking bleak for Del Mastro and his corrupt and ruthless party as four out of five Canadians think that a judicial inquiry is appropriate. Thus we return to the question of a strength becoming a weakness - the secretive and controlling nature of the CPC under Harper cannot bring itself to treat this matter in a way that would, at the very least, create an image of honesty and an interest in justice. Instead, everything the CPC and its spokespeople do makes them look more guilty than they otherwise might. This is because while a controlling effort in politics can be an effective way of getting elected, people begin to get pretty edgy when their government looks like they are a petty, third-world dictatorship.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

they are trying hard to make it seem like noone cares and this is a non-scandal.

even nanos polling came out with some bullshit polls that 'despite the robocall scanadal, conservatives are still in the lead with 35% support amongst Canadians - in fact Canadians are most worried about the jobs and the economy'

Kirbycairo said...

The polls mean very little at the moment. It takes months for a scandal like this to make a significant impact on the polls anyway. And people tend to forget that even with the Sponsorship scandal hanging over Martin's head he was in the lead until the last two weeks of the 06 election and seems to have lost the election in large part because of the RCMPs illegal and unethical smear job on Ralph Goodale. History is generally a pretty good teacher on matters such as this and it suggests that the scandal tolerance of the people will be quite worn out three years from now when election time rolls around - if we get that far. But it is always a gradual process and who knows, by then the opposition may have united and the CPC will face a very different enemy at that point.

Edstock said...

When you consider the number of ridings hit, and the amount of planning required for set-up and execution,

this wasn't election fraud,

this was a coup d'état.

Kirbycairo said...

@ Ed Stock - Though I entirely sympathize with your point, I don't know that most people would see it as that drastic. On the other hand, I am certain that they would be perfectly willing to undertake a coup to maintain power, and remarks by Baird at the time of the so-called 'coalition' certainly point in that direction. It is funny how people read history and are surprised by the victories of authoritarian groups in taking over governments. But here we have it in action and it happens quite easily amid mass ignorance and apathy. In the late 20s and early 30s numerous people warned about the rise of fascism (including Churchill) and people just called them alarmist. Unfortunately when people realize what they have lost it is often too late.