The Right Wing: Screwing Itself Into Irrelevance, Part Two

None Dare Call it "Coalition"

Oh is this ever going to be awkward

Anyone remember a time when a few other parties were talking about forming a union of parties to wrest the wheel of government from the singularly incapable pack of rethreaded loose screws currently steering our country into the $#17ter? And what did the Right Wing call it? Ah yes: "TREASON". That was the word they screamed shrilly from their blogtops.

What did the PM say about that effort? Ah yes:

"My friends, such an illegitimate government would be a catastrophe, for our democracy, our unity and our economy, especially at a time of global instability."

~Stephen Harper, back in the days when Coalition was a bad word.

There was talk of making common cause with "socialists" and "separatists". And now? Well I guess they're all about teh compromise, eh? A kinder, gentler sort of dictatorship. Presumably this was what they had in mind when Harper FIRST proposed such a joining.

Harper's switched positions more times than twin hookers on $5-a-shag night in a logging camp. It boils down to one thing: Stephen Harper stands for Stephen Harper, and what Stephen Harper stands for is whatever will keep Stephen Harper in power.

He sold whatever Conservative credentials he had (and he hadn't many--most of his claims of "Conservatism" were just an unrelenting love for the Reform Party's dumber positions) with the budget, in which the "Conservative" (whose friggin' thesis concluded that governments should never try to spend their way out of a recession) decided to blow the money he hadn't already tossed down the boghole in order to keep power, knowing that a majority of his opponents required at least a symbolic sop to the nationwide fear of the recession he helped spend us into.

So now conservatives hate him too. And since he didn't have a hope in hell of a majority, it's likely his bum'll be polishing a rocking chair ere long.

The NDP can't support him and maintain any credibility when they used to crap on the Liberals for voting cynically to support the government rather than trigger an election. The Bloc Quebecois runs the risk of the same if they support the guy they were willing to sign up with the Liberals to help defeat last fall.

So Mr. Harper, I direct your attention to the south, to the US, where the Republican party is crumbling like Dracula in the sunlight. Look to your future, sir. You certainly haven't been looking to the country's.

However, I'd like to put the Liberal Party and NDP on notice: We are, we must be, better than this. Better than the fear, better than the loathing of that which is different, better than the fear of change, better than fear of the future. Start showing some goddam vision, please. Quit trying to imitate the Conservatives just because they didn't suck enough to get voted out last time.

I want a party with vision, and perhaps when we come back after this messag I'll tell you what that means.

Meantime, here's an unrelated commercial. And why not? We all have to spend ourselves stupid to help this economy, right?