I would argue that it was going full racist, but indirectly. It was when Mulcair confronted Harper on it, which caused the NDP to stumble in Quebec, and Harper took the opportunity to drive the NDP back into the cheap seats. With the NDP suddenly trailing in the race, fears of a repeat of '11 kicked in, and people turned out in droves to vote Liberal.
I don’t think that Harper lost many votes by going full racist, but in order to win, he had to keep the two left-wing parties in balance, making sure that neither party drew enough votes from the other to take the Conservatives out of contention. He failed in that, miserably.
My guess is that, even under FPTP, the Liberals will keep their majority in the next election, but it’s going to slim down a bit, as the people who would typically vote NDP instead of Liberal swing back. During the four years after that, the NDP and Conservatives’ new leaders will have the opportunity to prove themselves, and the Liberals will end up involved in scandals again. At that point, it’s anybody’s game to win.
I mentioned him because he is our Trump and is already using the lessons learned from Trump’s campaigns. His motivations seem to be pure narcissism and greed, with neoliberal ideology in third place…
He is scary because he is much more intelligent and presentable than Trump, and would sound more credible to educated conservative voters. I really don’t think the PC’s are at the point of choosing someone as awful as Leitch, if only because she is doubling down on the losing strategy of the last election.
Yeah, I don’t think it really hurt him much at all. I think he was headed for the result he got regardless of what nonsense they pulled out. Vice made a video about going on the campaign trail with Harper. As dismal as the whole thing was, it painted a picture of someone who had gotten to the (borrowing a clever phrase here) palliative stage of politics where he knew it was over and he just wanted to be surrounded with friends.
If anything last election showed that racism plays in Canada. NDP support collapsed in Quebec over Mulcair’s refusal to be racist, and for all we know the Conservatives might have done even worse if they hadn’t gotten out their base using racism.
Sort of like Harper was more intelligent and credible than Bush? I swear Canadians think they are smarter than Americans but really we’re just 6-8 years behind them.
I’m under no such illusion. That’s why O’Leary worries me. If Trump has normalized the election of egotistical greedheads, then the path is open for an egotistical greedhead who can speak in complete sentences.
I’m aware of that. That’s one reason I called him our Trump. (Not that being a successful businessman is any qualification for political office in my opinion.)
No, that’s just the twisted modern version of it. There used to be things like “business ethics”, but they seem to have disappeared along with basic civility and common sense.
And, hopefully, after the beatdown that Harper got, those remnants will convince the others that the party needs to shift back in that direction to win back the electorate.
This month, though, I’m not feeling incredibly optimistic about that.
