One Principle Too Many
It's always a bit of a fool's game trying to predict elections, particularly when there are still so many weeks left for Liberal communications point man Scott Reid to step on his tongue again.
But this one you can take to the bank, or at least to your favourite bookie: Stephen Harper will never, ever become Prime Minister of Canada, not even if the RCMP traces the latest insider-trading intrigue all the way to the PMO. It will simply never happen, because Stephen Harper is just too principled for his own good.
As criticisms go, you could do a lot worse.
But what became clear over the weekend is that the Conservative Party's Great Right Hope has one piece of baggage attached to his heel that will never allow him or his cobbled together gang of neo-cons and frustrated progressives to cross the finish line closer than second, no matter how much of a running start the Liberals give them. It's same-sex marriage, the issue that Harper just won't let lie, no matter how beaten to death it already is.
It's an issue that Harper has been trying to keep quiet on, aside from a "no hidden agenda" clearing of the air the first day of the election, when he admitted that he'd open a recently closed wound one more time and re-examine same-sex marriage legislation.
Since then, not a peep.
Instead, we've been treated to a parade of clear, concise policy proposals, and a carefully crafted platform portraying a man who follows his fiscal and ideological principles. And while said principles lean rather disturbingly towards the sort of tax-cutting, put-money-in-the-hands-of-the-middle-class-and-watch-the-flower-of-prosperity-grow kind of thinking that is working oh-so successfully for our friends to the south, they sound at least sane compared to the seismic shifts between fiscal conservatism and glad-handing giveaways that has marked Paul Martin's approach to political survival.
Harper has come across as a man who means what he says, and will do what he promises, which for many in an integrity-starved campaign is a rather attractive state of affairs.
But it's also a double-edge sword; for just when things are looking rosy, along comes Charles McVety and David Mainse, evangelicals both, to jog the memory of a remarkably silent but sympathetic Harper about his promise to re-open Pandora's box one last time, and remind the rest of us of that other thing he's being honest about, and will do because he promised to.
It caused his handlers no end of fits trying to shoo away the cameras before all their hard work at a Harper image makeover unravelled into that of a bogeyman, one that kept most in central Canada tossing and turning during the last election with nightmares of a socially regressive Canada...with a wife in every kitchen and a homosexual in every closet.
They're extremes, but effective ones that the Liberals went to great lengths to create, producing a fear card they can play whenever they're down for the count.
Which they did yesterday -- with all hands on the good ship Liberal in full crisis mode feverishly pumping the bilges after Scott Reid, perhaps thinking the campaign was getting a bit boring, decided to liven things up and blow a hole in his own ship.
Instead of a discussion about the merits of giving parents what amounts to little more than two months worth of free daycare (with ten more months to sort out on their own), or whether investing in a controlled, publicly run daycare service instead of leaving it to market forces and flush parents to solve the problem is perhaps a more prudent course, we have the great beer and popcorn debate of 2005, one that ought to leave the Liberals wide open for a pummelling.
With the same-sex marriage issue being given new life over the weekend, however, the Liberals fired back with the Harper "hidden agenda," asking for clarification about whether he will use the notwithstanding clause, and stirring up fresh nightmares for weary Canadians who thought the debate had finally been put to bed. It didn't need to be like this.
Harper could have admitted defeat on the issue and stated that while he didn't agree with the decision, he had to face up to the reality that between the Supreme Court, a majority vote of Parliament, and majority public opinion that has accepted a new social reality, it was time to move on.
It would have removed the Harper "fear factor" that keeps Conservatives from making any inroads despite painstaking attempts to portray themselves as honest and principled in the face of an opponent happily embarrassing itself in public because it knows it can.
Alas, while the old saying goes that those who stick to their principles sleep soundly at night, no one ever said they'd be sleeping at 24 Sussex.
