Neocon Canadian PM went onto Fox News even though Canadian soldiers

[applegrove]

were insulted by Fox News last week. Steven Harper is an idiot. He should have avoided Fox and just gone to CNN and all the other networks he went to.

[Joe the Liberal]

1. How could the Canadian people have elected this guy? n/t

[applegrove]

3. neocons fool people. But not the majority. Harper still hasn't a majority so he cannot implement his

neocon agenda. He has to make nice and pretent he doesn't intend to social engineer the country.

[Joe the Liberal]

11. I know they fool people.......

That's the only way they can ever hope to win, they don't care about actually helping anyone.

But I've always thought Canada was a pretty liberal place, more so than the US anyways, it's a very successful social democracy like many other countries (in Europe for example). I just don't see how a conservative right wing nut job could have gotten elected in a place like that. The people who live in countries like that with good social safety nets should know better than to vote for people who want to get rid of (or dislike) those safety nets many of the citizens enjoy so much.

[applegrove]

14. The vote was split between 3 parties on the left. That is why Harper has

only mustered a minority. But yeah...in an Ontario riding the majority of people may have voted for liberal (voted for the Liberals or the New Democratic Party) policies and the conservative candidate ends up winning.

Plus in Quebec they have the bloc quebecois who takes the majority of Quebec seats.

The Liberal government had a sleezy sponsorship scandal where money was flowing in all sorts of creepy directions in Quebec (sports heroes given a million dollars to wear a Canadian flag or something). There was a referendum at the time in Quebec and the Liberal Canadian government decided to spend its way into the heart of quebecors. Which they did. Then a few years later it got found out. Many Canadians were disgusted. Then there was a election in the middle of the investigation and the Tories (Harper) won a minority government.

But they cannot do better than that because the people of Ontario already have had a neocon in power (Mike Harris in 1995) and they know a neocon means a creepy social engineer will get into power and gut everything that is good about government.

[Ken Burch]

4. It's down to the first-past-the-post electoral system that elects the Canadian Parliament

over 60% of the Canadian electorate has NEVER voted for Harper's party(a party that has never won a parliamentary majority).

It's also down to the second-largest party(The Official Opposition)in the Canadian House of Commons, the Liberal Party, that has voted to keep Harper's government in power on over fifty measures that were "questions of confidence" in the government. If they'd joined the other opposition parties in voting against even ONE of those, a snap election would have been forced and Harper's party would likely have been defeated.

[Joe the Liberal]

12. I guess I don't understand their system.........

the parliamentary system to be exact, but a conservative has no business running the show up in Canada. They (neocons) are a plague it seems, that has spread world wide to many successful social democracies and are hard at work to try to fuck up everything.

[LynnTheDem]

5. 2/3rds of Canadians didn`t.

That`s what happens when the vote is split; two-thirds of Canadians voted for various liberal parties. A minority voted for the idiot fool rightwingnut moran harper.

Tyranny of the minority in fucking action.

[NYC_SKP]

6. Also why splitting the left is such a popular thing to do.

And especially sad when we do it to ourselves...

[LynnTheDem]

7. That`s the inherent problem with true democracy (ie leftwing);

we don`t march in lockstep.

And sometimes that can be severely frustrating.

But it`s sure better than being lockstep marching rightwingnuts!

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

9. Canadian politics are virtually indecipherable - but I will try,

Historically the NDP was a European style Christian Democratic movement with wide rural and labor support - now it basically the "white urban douchebag" party having alienated its labor and rural roots - without their historical base they could never be a credible "government in waiting"

Historically the Liberals were a rightwing party and often further to the right than the Conservative Party and various points in their history. Their swing to the left began with Pearson and Trudeau in the 1960's

The Progressive Conservatives have a very confused history and for decades had a very influential leftwing, "the red tories" they also were highly dependent on their supporters in Quebec who were federalists or states rights oriented in the American sense of the terms.

In the 1993 election the Conservative Party imploded and out of its remains came the Reform Party and Bloc Québécois, the Conservatives then spent the following decade trying to put themselves back together however as of the present they have never recovered their full strength since their supporters in Quebec and the "Red Tories" never returned to the fold, without them they don't have the strength to form a majority government.

For the part of the Liberals began their decline due to a multi-generational battle between the Martin family and Jean Chretien. When Chretien retired his campaign machine evaporated and Paul Martin was left with few resources with which to fight a campaign. Throw in a fake outrage scandal and Martin was reduced to a minority government like the one Harper has now and was ultimately defeated.

So the situation the Canadians find themselves in now would be as if both the Democrats and Republicans were so mortally wounded that neither could govern. So for the foreseeable future the Liberals and Conservatives will just swap positions as the hapless minority government of the moment. In time it is likely the Liberals will recover with the right leadership - the Conservatives on the other hand have as much support today as they can ever hope to. The Bloc supporters and Red Tories are never coming back. If they couldn't form a majority government against the weakest liberal party in history last go-around they never will.

[smalll]

10. Interesting, and nicely done. "White urban douchebag" party --

down here, we might call them Mac-using arugula-eaters. But I get where you're coming from.

[depakid]

8. Actually, that's what happens when a party is in power too long

and grows corrupt and arrogant. The Liberals had one scandal too many....

[Joe the Liberal]

13. "2/3rds of Canadians didn`t." ........... Figures......

I knew they (conservatives in Canada) didn't get elected by the majority of the people, they can't win honestly so they have to find other ways to weasel their way into office. It makes me sick to see some conservative leading Canada.

[Canuckistanian]

2. This very question is now being asked by media watchers

And Harper's response?

He was only appearing on a "serious, respected show", not some cheesy "comedy show that comes on late at night".

Perhaps he's never heard of a "late night comedy" called "The Daily Show".