It was Sunday evening before Labour Day and the only guy in Canada wearing a suit and tie with no funeral to attend was looking like he knew he was laying an egg, and trying hard not to show it. Jason Kenney delivered this pathetically thin personal attack on Michael Ignatieff in response to the release of a pre-writ ad wherein Ignatieff dons the powerfully Chrétienish blue shirt and waxes all sweet and cuddly about us great Canadians.
(here is the ad - try not to fall asleep watching it):
Still awake? While the ad provides little substance, it does subtley fight fire with fire by extolling the virtues of having a broad international view of the world, negating the silly and niggardly provincial argument that Iggy is somehow a bad Canadian for having lived and worked abroad for much of his adult life. That argument didn't wash and the Cons seem to be realizing it.
So now they want to paint Ignatieff as being phony. And they yanked a bland quote, presumably from somewhere in a 2005 Harvard professors' lounge or some such place - wherein he is telling his then-colleagues that he will have to present himself differently as he enters the world of politics. And the Conservatives think Canadians will find this terribly shocking? As if Harper himself doesn't measure every word and gesture in public? As if we voters are such babes in the woods that we wouldn't be able to conceive of a public official having to act accordingly when espousing party politics, as opposed to ruminating on public policy from an academic perspective?
It's another example of the Cons' small-mindedness, and it appears to play right into the Liberals' game-plan of creating a contrast between an outward-looking, confident Canada we can all be proud of on the world-stage; and a petty, snippy, combative Canada that can't even summon enough respect for other world leaders to show up on time for the group photo-ops.
So Mr. Kenney, if that's all you've got, you ain't got nothing. I think you know it, and I look forward to seeing more of these nervous, desperate Conservatives trying to sell us on their laughably lame lines of attack.
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1 comment:
Hi Scott...excellent post. You know when I saw Kenney delivering that unbelievably crazed diatribe, dressed in that brown suit and sweating like a pig, he reminded me of one of those televangelists you see on late night TV. It was that HORRIBLE.
We are truly living in crazy and dangerous times.
But I am glad to see that they have stirred you out of your blogging siesta and that's EXCELLENT !! :)
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