Title: Defeated ... But Not Gone
Written By: Robin Mathews
Date: Thursday, November 05 at 16:20
Stephen Harper's forces have been routed by a majority Liberal win.  But ...watch Stephen Harper.  Expect him to use every tactic (legitimate and illegitimate) to return to power.
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Certainly hope you are not right on this one! �Nothing would surprise with this man, but suspect he will go deep underground and work behind the scenes making barrels of money and influencing corporate financial shenanigans�only hope he gets caught out there!

   

seriously? The guy resigned as conservative leader. His quest for power is gone. He isn't Hitler and he never was. Find a new boogey man.

   

A real severe case of HDS.

   

No, Mathews' is a more general form of derangement.

   

Real Canadians have voted for rational and intelligent change. A dark cloud has been removed from Canada. Harper the worst mentally unfit PM this country ever had will be scorned and reviled in the books of history.

   

This is like another Jackson movie after what Tolkien wrote. No offence but we can't take any more of those orc battle scenes. They all look the same.

   

To respond less glibly, I think Mathews needs to focus on Harper as a singular boogeyman, because the alternative, which is acknowledging that for someone occupying his place on the left/right spectrum, all three major parties (not to mention pretty much anyone to the right of Trotsky) are "neoliberal", is simply too much for him to take.

Justin Trudeau is likely to approve the TPP, has expressed seemingly sincere disappointment over Obama's rejection of Keystone, and has kept those on his party's left fringe like Adam Vaughan out of cabinet. I'm sure Mathews sees little real difference between Harper and Trudeau as it stands, and will undoubtedly see them as more alike as the rhetoric of hope gives way to practical matters of governance. Ironically enough, Justin sounds like he'll be more a Turner/Martin Liberal than a Pearson/PET/Chretien one. And the less said about Mulcair's Horwath-esqe grab at the centre, the better for Mathews' blood pressure.

Better to find a single scapegoat and focus for one's hatred and frustration. And for "poets" like Mathews, there's no better statement than overstatement, Godwin be damned.

   

In fact, when I heard about Trudeau extending the courtesy to Harper with the Challenger jet, a weird thought/prediction came to me. I can see Harper and Trudeau striking up an unlikely friendship within the next few years, once the HDS among much of the electorate has faded and Harper has re-emerged as an elder statesman of sorts.

Harper may have had Nixonian qualities, but he was not Nixon, and did not leave office in disgrace. He won't make a second run at power, Robin's paranoid fantasies notwithstanding, but he will be looking for a more dignified coda, modeled perhaps on Preston Manning's post-Reform persona.

   

Poet? But nothing he writes rhymes.

   

Well, I was kind of using "poet" here as a euphemism for "histrionic drama queen".

   

Given that George the Jr.Bush and Slick Willie Clinton are friends I guess anything is possible.