End Game

It's not like I predicted an impending Conservative swell in my December 13 post -- not in the slightest. I simply noted on how well they had been campaigning up until that point. Trends were fairly suggestive of this Crest, as they should've been. Flat out: the Liberals were being out hustled on every score. It's been a bit pathetic.

As the campaign heads into its final week there appears to be no give in the Conservative's momentum. Paul Martian and the Liberals are, at this point, suffering from a peculiar problem. It's not so much that people are dismayed by allegations of corruption, or that they have simply fatigued at the thought of another Liberal government, it's that the Liberals no longer register. After twelve years in government the Liberals have become government.

The distinction is a fine one. Whereas the Conservatives and NDP can run on the outsider platform that rebukes the sitting government, the Liberals are hamstrung by their inability to offer anything in the ways of a critique, because to do so would invalidate what the Liberals have done for the last twelve years. The Liberals are running on a record that has played too long. (Even if that'’s been a good thing for Canada on the whole)

Monday'’s debate, one could say, was an aberration, conforming nothing substantial save for the biases we already brought. Naturally, Paul Martin was flailing his arms affectedly, like the sailor watching the sea swallow his ship. But true to form Martin didn't miss his opportunity to miss an opportunity. When Stephen Harper was being grilled by Duceppe and Layton about the mysterious individuals donating to his campaign, and looking considerably flustered, to the extent that Stephen Harper can look flustered, the moderator offered Martin a piece of HarperÂ’s flesh, an opportunity to strike. Martin brushed aside the offer with an effete gesture to say, inexplicably,"I would like to talk about the Notwithstanding clause"”.

The 'Brian-trust' at the Liberal war room sure has its finger on the pulse of the common Canadian. When was the last time you and your friend got into a contentious argument about the Supremacy of the Parliament and the jurisdictional impositions an independent and unelected body places on Provinces through the Charter? Doubtless the chatter around the water cooler the following morning was all about that ignoble clause.

Other highlights in the Debate were Stephen Harper'’s tightly controlled coif, his incrementally better attempt at conveying humanoid characteristics; Jack Layton'’s piercing snake charmer's gaze, the effect of which was to project that silent and desperate intensity commonly associated with used Car salesmen --– but he sold it; Giles Duceppe's wildly fluctuating inflections, later settling into that grizzly curmudgeon we grown to disdain and love all at the same time.

And then came the Liberal attack ads, which were baseless, deplorable, and pretty much correct. Spliced with quotes from an erstwhile, politically inept, Stephen Harper, the ads materialize into a direct focus of Harper'’s suspect and tragically deformed eyes, implicitly asking us whether or not we could trust eyes like this. The short answer is no. But change is a tough thing to stop. I'’m crossing my fingers blue for only a Conservative minority, given that the NDP, and ironically the Liberals, will have the balance of power. All bets may be off, though, since it appears that the Conservative's could be heading for a majority. Gulp.