TPM Reader DR updates us on the Tory trainwreck up North …
Nice of you to notice, given the amount of time I’ve spent reading TPM for the last year…the best source ever for US election politics.
Anyway, the answer up here is Hell, yeah!
Stephen Harper didn’t so much win enough seats to form a minority government in October; the Liberals simply lost dozens of seats because of a terrible campaign and a weak leader. Now that leader is poised to become prime minister of a coalition government.
Harper, who admires Bush’s politics and tactics, is actually smarter than Bush. But he’s much nastier, and chose a poor time to try to stick a machete into the opposition parties by cutting off their public funding for election campaigns (can you imagine Obama, upon assuming office, trying to eliminate public campaign financing?) and the entire civil service by banning their right to strike. That, and being the only G8 country to not initiate any financial stimulus for the economy.
Like Bush, Harper has contempt for government. Unlike Bush, that contempt extends to public spending: he hates it and would be delighted to see government as little more than a placid flow through mechanism for the private sector as it does whatever it wants.
Look north for the next few days…it’s going to be fun!
I really can’t think of another political leader of late whose hubris has had such immediate consequences.
