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Saturday, June 12, 2004
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STOPPING STEPHEN HARPER
No matter what happens on June 28th, the political career of Prime Minister Paul Martin is over. The way that Liberal polling has fallen to pieces, largely due to Martin's own political ineptitude, has ensured that even in the unlikely event of another Liberal majority, his days are numbered. The federal Liberals have long memories and a well deserved reputation for ruthlessness. And Martin, better than anybody, understands their willingness to eat their own.
In one of the most shocking political developments in my lifetime, after having watched Paul Martin spend 13 years devoted to destroying the career of Jean Chreitien, he turned around and destroyed his own in less than 7 months. Should there be an outright Liberal loss, Martin will announce his resignation by the end of the week.If there is a minority Liberal government, it might take about 18 months for the party's machinery to chew him up and spit him out, most likely through a leadership review. At this point, I'm not even sure that a small majority would ensure Martin's survival. The only way he is guaranteed to stay at 24 Sussex Drive is a massive majority, anything over 190 seats should do it. And there is no way he'll get anywhere near 190. But this campaign has been run in such a brutally stupid manner as to make it impossible to allow Paul Martin to long remain as leader.
Paul Martin not only entered office with certain expectations, he has spent the last decade promoting those expectations. And they are now impossible to meet. One should be careful what they wish for and how they go about getting it. Paul Martin learned this lesson a little late in life and it is about to bite him. Hard.
Whatever the outcome of this campaign, Paul Martin is doomed. He's a political carcass that hasn't had its death certificate signed yet.
Every single poll has the Liberals behind nationally and in most places, behind regionally as well. In 2000, the Liberals won 100 of Ontario's (then) 101 seats. As I write this, the Conservatives are ahead by 10% in Ontario. For the Liberals to be doing this badly in Ontario, their natural fortress, is a signal of a total national collapse. Even I, devoted to loathing the Liberals for my entire adult life, never thought it would come to this.
Martin and the Liberal Party of Canada are now running the only race left to them, run hard to the left and scare the hell out of everybody about Harper. This could very well be effective. The Conservative caucus, if not so much Harper himself, are pretty scary. They insist on bringing up social issues that historically have not won votes for the campaigns that raise them. As I've noted before, this is equivillent to actually daring people to vote Conservative. This tactic is either fantastically arrogant or unbelievably stupid, I just can't figure which as of yet. But the strategy seems to be that the Liberals are so thouroughly discredited that voters will take anybody over them.
There are a couple of giant holes in this strategy. Firstly, the Conservatives cannot sustain a minority government for more than ten minutes. There is no party to co-operate with them. Only the Bloc Quebecois is anywhere near ideologically compatible with the Tories, and they have said that they will support the Conservatives on an "issue by issue basis." A government cannot be long supported like that. If, as the polls indicate, Harper is heading toward a minority government, Canadians will face yet another election, probably by the end of the year. Harper should ask Joe Clark how well that worked out for him.
Then there are the Liberals, who are not burdened by an actual belief system and long record of doing whatever it takes it to win. If they can properly exploit the fear that the Conservative caucus seems determined to instill, they can very easily peel back 3-5 points from the Tories. This would be enough to form a Liberal minority, supported by the NDP.
NDP leader Jack Layton has said that the Liberals will have to meet specific conditions to win his support. Of course, this is nonsense. Layton is a canny enough politictian to recognize that, if things play out like I think they could, he will have gone from being the house kook on an already kooky Toronto City Council to being the most powerful man in Canada in less than a year. On the other hand, the Conservatives could make this campaign about Layton being the kingmaker of the next Liberal government, but they're far too stupid. The Tories have yet to see that nobody is voting for them as much as they are voting against the Liberals. This is very soft support and that could shift in the next two weeks.
As things currently stand, here's my projection: Liberal minority....a bare minority. 135-140 seats.
This could go either way though. This is the first federal election in Canadian history where none of the major parties seem to have a professional as leader.
But what was expected to be the coronation of Paul Martin is turning out to be something very different. It has become the most interesting Canadian race in my lifetime. And it's not half as interesting as what's going to happen after the ballots are counted. Within 2 years, both Martin and Harper could be purged from their parties.
Who knew?
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