The Canadian Federal Election of 2011

[Al Czervic]

Great Rex quote on Harper...

He’s almost an anti-Obama. He excites real animosity. He has an almost Mulroney-esque capacity for exciting oversized anger – even contempt from his opponents. But for all the scorn he has had to take, from those who like to think him just dumb and mean – he’s out maneuvered all the “smarter” people in the room....

[NAB]

...and another, this time with respect to the Green Party..

Rex Murphy: One Green seat out of 308 is not ‘historic’

Rex Murphy May 14, 2011 – 8:43 AM ET | Last Updated: May 13, 2011 1:55 PM ET

‘Winning one seat when 308 were up for grabs is no more historic than winning at the weekly parish bingo game. About the same odds, too.’

People are using the word “historic” to describe the election of a Green party candidate to the House of Commons. That the candidate in question was the leader of the party, Elizabeth May, perhaps aided the hyperbole. The press tends to be kindly to the (political) lone free-ranger. But hyperbole it is, and grossly so.

The repatriation of the constitution was historic. The moon landing was historic. But can we rightly land the full weight of that fine adjective on Elizabeth May’s third go at winning a riding — each one in a different time zone? Winning one seat when 308 were up for grabs is no more historic than winning at the weekly parish bingo game. About the same odds, too.
Perhaps the term historic was meant as a verbal ointment to soothe over how badly the Green party did everywhere else. It was victorious, its cup overfloweth, in the most western-most redoubt of Sannich-Gulf-Islands. But elsewhere? Elsewhere, the rain barrels were nearly as dry at the end of the campaign as when it began.

Far from historic, the Greens did terribly. This is their third full national campaign. They have had the benefit of their “high-profile” leader, and a largely sympathetic press for their overriding cause of global warming. They have enjoyed the subsidy-per-vote, which gave them over a million dollars last time.

In the election just previous, Ms. May, furthermore, had the great benefit of a pass from the Liberal party. Stéphane Dion, seeing an ecological soulmate, withdrew a Liberal candidacy in her riding. This left her facing Peter McKay undistracted by any meeker rivals. (She lost anyway.)

In short, up to now, the party of ecology, the warming earth and all the daughters of Gaia, has had every card in the political deck to help it along.

What has it accomplished? In three general elections, the Greens have run about 300 candidates each time. Essentially, that means there have been a total of about 900 district elections in which Green candidates have solicited Canadian voters to elect them. In 899 instances, voters have said (rather forcefully if you check the numbers): “No, thanks.”

This year only, they have, finally, elected one. And that one only after ransacking the country for the most winnable seat, and making the winning of that seat the party’s absolutely highest priority for the entire election. Some may want to call that history. I’d call it an immense concentration of effort for a very limited goal.

What else does it say?

In my view something considerably more significant than any soft claims of historic accomplishment. It says that the point of view embraced by the Greens, their increasingly apocalyptic warnings, and the condescension with which they deal with non-supporters and critics, has not been persuasive. It says their reading of the Canadian public is deeply deficient. That despite the hype of the great Gore machine, and lesser deities such as David Suzuki pounding the message for over a decade, a party totally invested in Kyoto and its economic nightmares cannot in 2011 score more than a single member of Parliament.

Far from global warming, or what they call “carbon pollution” being of deep and serious concern to Canadians, the election of a single member tells us it is a marginal concern at best. I would define marginal concern as one that gets 4% of the vote, its third time out, in a national election.

Why, the NDP did better with a woman who, on her first go, didn’t campaign at all, spent part of the campaign in Las Vegas, and never even visited the riding.

You want historic? Now that’s historic.