Stephen Harper is stocking his office with fanatical loyalists and delivering red meat speeches about the "dangerous" opposition. Clearly he is preparing to go to war -- not in Syria, but at home. And that tells you a lot about the man. He does not see that he is the author of his own folly.
Lawrence Martin wrote back in May that "serial breaches of trust will doom the Harper machine." The Wright-Duffy affair is only the latest in a long list of abuses of power:
Much has been written about their odious record on ethics and abuse of power. But there’s a common thread to the narrative that is more offensive. At almost every turn you can find attempts by them to subvert the system to their advantage. The real scandal here isn’t excessive expenditures by Senate members — though given the involvement of the Prime Minister’s Office, it is serious enough. The real story is serial violations of the public trust. These Conservatives haven’t just breached it, as one MP said this week. “They’ve stomped all over it.”
There are countless examples, some still coming at us. One which did not get the notice it deserves — due to being overshadowed by Duffygate — is the ad campaign the Harper machine has launched for a job grants program that does not yet exist. The ads, running in prime time and costing exorbitant sums, are being paid for with public funds. The program is nowhere near being approved by Parliament, let alone by the provinces.
It’s an outrage right out of ‘fake lake‘ territory. It’s almost in a league with the Tories’ use of civil servants as stand-in stooges for a bogus citizenship ceremony a couple of years back. The full North Korean, as it was called.
Psychologists have a word for it -- projection -- blaming others for your own mistakes. And, to make sure there is no evidence of those mistakes, you make sure there is no paper trail, no documentation to provide clues to wrong doing. It's straight out of Richard Nixon's playbook -- like those edited volumes of what was on the White House tapes. And, when investigators got too close, he simply erased eighteen minutes of tape.
Obviously, Mr. Harper believes that, when the prime minister does it, it's legal. And the best defense is a good offense. Bring on the dogs of war.
