Now that the sad news of Harper’s Conservatives winning his long coveted majority has waned ever so slightly, it’s time to get out of the depression and back to blogging.
Progressives and small ‘l’ liberals are in for a long four years – and maybe longer if the Liberals and NDP don’t get over their respective egos and unite the left (unless they wish to hand Harper majorities on a silver platter for the foreseeable future) – but that’s fodder for a different blog.
Right away, Harper showed his true duplicitous colours by appointing three losing Conservatives to the Senate. It’s an incredibly hypocritical move by Harper. In the election Harper kept on harping on the fact that the Conservatives would respect the mandate given them by Canadians. in his attempts to fight of a possible coalition, he specifically kept referring to the fact that the party with the most votes should lead the government. Period.
He was unequivocal on that fact. He was doing it to try make any potential coalition appear illegitimate, but by placing such a big moral emphasis on the pure math, he unknowingly made a mockery of his morals by then plucking three losing candidates and rewarding them with plumb Senatorial appointments.
By his own standards, Harper should listened to what the voters said. Those candidates were all losers and therefore – by Harper’s own logic – should go quietly away in the dark. Instead, they got rewarded big time. There was some outrage, but for the most part the story just went away.
One would think that Harper, with his bold promise to reform the Senate, would have upset conservatives by so flaggrantly thumbing his nose at democracy, but no one in the conservative media had anything critical to say about Harper’s controversial appointments.
Harper’s appointment of three losing candidates to the upper chamber exposes Harper’s breathtaking hypocrisy. But once again, he is showing that he will gladly steamroll over his ethics if it helps him politically, and stacking the Senate with cronies does just that.
