Musings on Greenwood

This blog is almost two years old.

For two years, I have provided scathing political critiques of Stephen Harper from a right-of-centre perspective.

My brother Ben’s blog is now just over one year old. He has provided trenchant and brilliant analysis of Canada’s economic situation also from a right-of-centre perspective.

http://www.theeconomicanalyst.com/

Usually, that has been very unkind to Stephen Harper and his crew in Ottawa.

Not to blow our own horns, but every prediction we’ve made about politics and economics has either come true or is in the course of coming true as we speak.

Harper is poison. His crew are a bunch of immature, incompetent buffoons. He has ran an absolutely wretched campaign and will return to power with a weakened minority.

After that, the swords within the Conservative Party will come out of their sheaths and Harper will be removed assuming he doesn’t resign.

I will personally make sure this happens if needs be. Harper is all that stands between the Conservatives and a majority government. Canadians don’t like him and they don’t trust him. They have no reason to warm to him or have any confidence in him.

He has been a disaster for the conservative movement.

It’s painfully clear that things are going to be shaken up on Monday. The NDP now sits at 30 per cent in the polls. Partisan hacks on all sides are flooding my Facebook Feed with dire warnings of what will befall Canada if their leader doesn’t win.

The Liberals are the most amusing of the bunch. I love how they trotted out Bob Rae to explain why people shouldn’t vote NDP. Like that’s really going to endear them to Ontario voters who suffered under his government!

The Tories and the Liberals are right on one point; Jack Layton’s platform is a crock of shit. It was probably drawn up two weeks before the election. He’s also got the same problem on his hands that Bob Rae had in 1990: aside from a hand full of star candidates, Layton’s slate is loaded with weirdos and unknowns who never dreamed they would win four weeks ago.

Now they’re on the verge of power. Layton will have to draw from the ranks that are elected to his caucus. Watching Layton try to lead that gaggle of apes will make you laugh if it doesn’t make you cry.

Unfortunately for the Grits and the Tories, none of this matters. The NDP’s numbers are surging and the rise is starting to spread. They have been ahead of the Liberals for a week now and the public hasn’t freaked out. In fact, the NDP numbers are solidifying.

So, any last minute attacks will roll off Layton. I believe his numbers are much higher than the polls suggest. If they say they’re at 30 per cent, then it’s actually closer to 35 per cent.

When Bob Rae was elected Premier of Ontario in 1990, it was amazing how you couldn’t find a single person who voted for the guy. Polls showed his rising popularity in advance of the Writ but they still didn’t think they would win.

On election night, another eight per cent of voters quietly decided to vote NDP…and they’ve never owned up to that decision since.

I think we’re right back at that point again. People are rightly fed up with Harper and Ignatieff but they don’t want to admit they’re going to vote NDP. This is why the main parties should be terrified about what’s coming.

The NDP will rock this election. It ain’t going to be pretty for either party but especially for the Liberals.

Michael Ignatieff has not ran a bad campaign. It was disciplined, relatively gaffe free and he exceeded everyone’s expectations. That was in large part due to the unbelievably low expectations he had to start with but a victory is a victory.

However, the Liberal message never took off. The fact that it wasn’t a disastrous campaign despite the imminent disastrous results should offer no comfort to any Liberal. It just further reinforces what I’ve been saying for years; the Liberals are spent as the “natural governing party” and possibly even as a national force.

I’m not suggesting they will cease to exist. Not at all. The Liberals will have a strong third place showing and may even work with the Tories to keep the NDP from destroying everything after the election.

The seismic shift in Canadian politics has been the movement away from a situation where the Liberals were the default position of voters to one where they are third amongst three perceived viable options for government.

The Liberals have not been a truly national force since 1982. Lady Luck blessed them with a fractured right in the 1990s. Without that, Chretien would have last one term, if that.

And speaking of the fractured right, one can’t help but contemplate the mother of all ironies.

My views were always more at home in the Reform/Canadian Alliance parties but I remained loyal to the federal Progressive Conservatives to the very end. I supported the merger of the two parties and still do but I was a PC member right up to its dissolution.

I could never explain why but I just didn’t trust the other guys. There was something disingenuous about them that didn’t sit right with me. I’m not talking about the rank-and-file membership but the top brass of the Reform/Alliance.

Harper’s vapid and futile five years as Prime Minister have done nothing but validate all my suspicions. That he and his acolytes would be so unscrupulous (massive spending, dumbass tax cuts like the GST, flip flops on Afghanistan, the senate, crime, etc) is no surprise.

What amazes me is how all the toadies in the blogosphere continue to cheerlead for him. Harper has betrayed every conservative value he ever claimed to believe in. This isn’t open for debate either. How do you square a 50% increase in federal spending with modern conservative principles of limited government?

If someone can answer that, please let me know.

BTW, blind allegiance is true of all partisan hacks regardless of their stripes. They all check a portion of their brains at the door. It’s almost a requirement of slavish loyalty to one party regardless of how objectively awful that party has become.

Harper’s pitiful track record is surreal to me because of the cost and sacrifice it required of conservatives everywhere in Canada to get him into power.

For 13 years, the Liberals ruled like kings because the right was divided. It split when Preston Manning, Stephen Harper and others felt Brian Mulroney had betrayed conservative values.

This division enabled three Liberal majorities. Harper finally wins a weak minority in 2006 in the midst of the most favourable conditions one could hope for in politics.

He has since been unable to secure a majority despite facing Stephane Dion and now Michael Ignatieff.

Jack Layton and the NDP are now on the rise and threatening to really disrupt the apple cart. Harper will be denied another majority and, depending on the seat count, he may not even secure a minority. I think he will but even that is now on the rocks.

So, this is what 13 years of division, followed by five years of Minority “Conservative” rule has produced: massive deficits, bigger government and a resurgent social democratic movement.

Harper and his Reform/Alliance ilk have done more to sustain the Liberals and NDP than anything else. Their intent was to advance true conservatism in Canada. Their legacy was to stunt its growth and acceptance.

As for the NDP destroying our economy, here’s a reality check: it’s already destroyed.

Ben has been blogging about this endlessly. The 2008 recession never ended. It was just buried under a mountain of consumer and government debt. Our economy is riding a massive debt/housing bubble that will wreak havoc on our silly, idyllic notions of Canadian immunity from fiscal reality.

This isn’t all Harper’s fault. The debt bubble started in the 1970s while the housing bubble started its rise in the year 1999. However, Harper has exacerbated these problems by pressuring the banks to let the credit flow freely. That has boosted things temporarily but debt must eventually be paid back.

And then…Boom!

Whoever wins power on Monday will be left holding the bag. The same thing is true in Ontario. Part of me wants McGuinty to win re-election so there’s no doubt or room for dispute that he’s the one who pooched the province beyond recognition.

Again, none of this is news to anyone who reads mine or my brother’s blog. We’ve been documenting all of this non-stop for two years. Our warnings and predictions have gone unheeded.

Maybe it’s time you give us the benefit of the doubt…

Ethan Rabidoux