I’ve been pretty busy these past few days, and today is no exception. So today, I’ll just reprint an editorial I read this morning in the local Sun newspaper. For all the flak this paper takes, I find it a refreshing change from the predominantly-liberal media elsewhere in this city (hell, in this country).
They must really be getting nervous in the back rooms of the Liberal Party.
With a series of recent polls — the latest one done for Sun Media — showing support for the Grits in freefall, the party’s marquee candidates, including two cabinet ministers, have taken to showing up at rallies for Conservative Leader Stephen Harper to heckle him and try to embarrass the official Opposition.
Normally at this stage of an election campaign, big guns like Veterans Affairs Minister John McCallum and Immigration Minister Judy Sgro would be working to shore up support in their own ridings, and making guest appearances on behalf of other Liberal candidates who are in tough fights.
Instead, as the Harper bus rolled into Ontario, a Liberal mainstay in recent elections, there they were, shouting questions and doing their best to grab the media spotlight.
Normally that kind of attention-seeking is left to mobs of nameless, faceless party supporters, who heckle from the background and try to get their candidates’ signs in the newspaper and television pictures.
At the rate this campaign is deteriorating, we’re beginning to wonder what we can expect next. Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan tossing a pie? A challenge to step outside to settle the election in the alley?
Prime Minister Paul Martin attempted to defend his cabinet ministers yesterday, attributing the altercations to simple frustration. He said Sgro and McCallum were annoyed with Harper because he is avoiding a debate on issues like abortion and the economy.
We believe that about as much as we believe Martin’s claim that the two ministers showed up in a spontaneous act initiated by themselves — a contention that was almost immediately shot down by a top party official who admitted Sgro and McCallum were actually sent by the Liberals.
Is it any wonder that Canadian voters have been tuning out from the whole political process in record numbers? We have a right to expect more than schoolboy hijinks from candidates who are asking for the right to run the country.
An election campaign lasts just five short weeks — time which should be spent providing the electorate with an understanding of party platforms so voters can make an informed choice when they go to the polls June 28.
Instead the Liberals are resorting to acts of desperation as they contemplate life without limos, executive jets and the other perks of power.
Shame on them