The US Election race is heating up with bad-boy Karl Rove conceding that even John McCain has crossed the line in his Republican ads against Obama. Meanwhile, our Canadian Federal Election is coming up in less than a month (October 14th).
In 2006 shortly after Stephen Harper became Prime Minister, he passed a law that ensures election dates are fixed, and that the next election would be in October 2009. The law would prevent the Prime Minister (i.e. himself) from calling an election in between this fixed period.
At the time, Harper claimed (From this 2006 article on CBC):
“Fixed election dates prevent governments from calling snap elections for short-term political advantage. They level the playing field for all parties and the rules are clear for everybody.”
“Because the government could be defeated in the Commons before the end of a four-year term, “the will of a majority in Parliament will always prevail,” he said.
“But fixed election dates stop leaders from trying to manipulate the calendar simply for partisan political advantage.”
Now that Harper has broken his own law and done exactly what he was trying to prevent when he created the law, I’m left to wonder whether his word can even be trusted.
Meanwhile, down South, John McCain has shot himself in the foot by choosing Sarah Palin for his running mate. He was obviously trying to capitalize on the Clinton votes by taking in one Sarah Palin, but her inexperience and hard-line stance is coming back to bite him. It now appears that Palin is more attractive to the ultra religious right-wing voters than the moderates that would have supported Clinton (These are the ones McCain was most likely targeting before he made his hasty decision to take in Palin).
Both elections are sure to be interesting episodes, with the US election being one of the most important elections ever.
Watch Matt Damon share my concern over the possibility of Palin being President:
Jim;
What a rant! I’ll try to get you back on the right path, don’t worry. ๐
a) Re: Flip-Flop – I guess only in Canada would we be so allergic to democracy to call having an election a bad thing. Harper called Dion & Duceppe’s bluff – they’ve no one to blame but themseleves for the need to move on an election after months of table banging about bringing the gov’t down over this or that.
Not to worry though – it’s an election, right? Cast your ballot accordingly.
b) You can’t be serious. Matt Damon is your source for critizing Palin? A guy who takes direction well? Oy vey.
Ok, aside from the fact that his tirade is mysogynistic, elitist, uninformed, bigoted and ignorant, it’s also irrelevant and a demonstration of how desperate the left in Hollywood have become that they need to resort to vulgar ad hominems.
I prescribe a quick read of the following WSJ article to provide some perspective and brief history of other veeps’ experience.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122152769721840385.html?mod=rss_opinion_main
After this, I also suggest some Hayek and maybe even Howard Fast’s “Being Red”… ๐
(I’m yanking yer chain…)
Chris.
Chris,
The “right” path? By right you mean right vs. left right? ๐ You couldn’t possibly mean right path as in the “correct path” ๐
This is the same “right” that took the US into a war it cannot win that is costing $200 million a day, the economy is collapsing, human rights have been flushed down the toilet?
With respect to Harper, I was taking the words from his mouth and showing that he did exactly what he said he was trying to prevent. I have nothing against elections. This is just a matter of keeping your word or breaking your word.
With respect to Palin, I shared my concerns about Palin’s lack of experience in a blog last week. See: http://urbancountry.blogspot.com/2008/09/sarah-palin-for-president.html
The Matt Damon interview is not even close to being a “source” of information. Matt Damon was agreeing with some of my arguments about Palin’s track record. There’s lots of information out there about what Palin has done, and I don’t believe Palin would make a good President. End of story.
-Jim
PS: Your article doesn’t in the slightest change my opinion that Sarah Palin would make a bad President.
Having lived in both the U.S. and Canada, one of the things I like about the Parliamentary system is that it makes the election season brief, like six weeks. In the U.S., there were Presidential debates 18 months before the election.
I didn’t even know that Harper passed a law for a fixed date for the election. If so, it was a bad law. He reminds me of Republican Congressmen who pledged self-imposed term limits of six years in 1994, and then broke their promise in 2000. Stupid and unethical at the same time.
I don’t care what CRC says, this is the best piece I’ve seen on the whole sauga.
Another good read this morning:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/opinion/05rich.html?hp
Her, McCain, and Harper even, scare the bejesus out of me too – I couldn’t relate more!
Talk about desperate: they’ve now resorted to the flat-out T-bomb (pun intended) against Obama!