Most importantly, last night's result was not a "win" for Stephen Harper. Harper threw billions at Quebec to bolster Jean Charest's hold on power, and "Bozo" lost his majority anyhow. Note that the phrase "lost his majority" contains the term "to lose". Part of this losing now reflects on Charest's prime booster, Stephen Harper, though the commentators who a few weeks ago were claiming that a Liberal cakewalk that would lead to a Spring election are now claiming that Dumont's good showing will serve as a Springboard to the same thing. Facts won't get in the way of their narrative, which is a CPoC march towards their inevitable majority.
But, if anything, this election will serve as a momento mori to the Harper government, as his vote buying binge seems to have bought Charest zero votes (or less), and it may well have been the foolish intervention on Harper's part last week that cost the PLQ their own majority. Our supposed alpha strategist screwed up; the puppet master became caught-up in his own strings. I suspect that with this election gone so far awry Harper will be a little more cautious in dropping the writ federally. The next election he fluffs could well be his own.
Also, claims that the ADQ's newly won ridings are ripe to tip Conservative during the next federal election should also be taken with a grain of salt. The ADQ's performance (as some have mentioned) most resembles Bob Rae's surprise win in the 1990 Ontario election. But most who voted NDP at that juncture did not vote for NDP ideology; it was a pure protest at the fact that the Peterson administration had called a summer election. I suspect that Mario Dumont got a lot of his votes from people who were simply fed up with the status quo and felt he couldn't be as crazy as he talked.
Although, on the other hand, in future federal contests, Dumont's ADQ may be willing to lend the CPoC some of its organizational capacity within la belle province, which can't hurt.
So, not a win, but maybe a draw for Harper.
(Yes, the title doesn't make much sense. Its adopted from an old book by Spike Milligan, and seemed funny at six this morning.)
4 comments:
I don't care if this helps Harper or not, but this is the best thing for the conservative movement in Canada. Super Mario!!!
In that Harper gets tied to a bunch of scary kooks? Thought you guys were trying to transcend that.
maybe their is hope now for the economic basket case that is Quebec.
The massive bloat that is their civil service, the disaster that has been the reign of their trade unions needs to be terminited.
Blessed with huge natural resources, especially renewable energy and creative entrepreneurs Quebec should be an economic powerhouse making Ontario sized contributions to the national equalization program rather than being the perpetual set of huge lips sucking the biggest slurps of federal money.
Think of Mario as Margret Thatcher taking on the coal miners union.
prairie kid:
Look at the popular vote. The ADQ captured 31% of the vote. That is hardly a conservative surge and if part of that was just a protest vote then Conservatives are very premature in claiming such.
As well I would point out that there are 125 seats in the Quebec National Assembly but only 75 Quebec seats in the House of Commons. So this "surge" only puts about 20 seats in play and considering most of the ADQ support is around Quebec City which happens to be where CPC support is concentrated the net gain for the CPC would be minimal if any.
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