On the Duffy/Dion thing, but moreso on Harper.

So my blogpost this AM is based on what else, this: “Tories show video to play up Dion’s language difficulties.”

You know, I read a good suggestion from a colleague of mine: Maybe we should release ALL the outtakes of ALL the Prime Ministers ever interviewed, and see how that looks and how they did on national TV. As for Duffy, the fact that several of his media colleagues at Macleans called him out on it speaks for itself.

In my opinion though, the bigger issue here is Harper and the Conservative Party campaign, and their reaction to this, even to the point of calling a special news conference for Harper. A couple of blogposts ago, I talked about how their campaign seemed to be starting to get filled with anger, as is typical with conservatives. We’ve now seen them descending into cheapshots and smears, attacking Dion’s sometime imperfect English and the understanding of it - his second language - as somehow showing he’s not fit into leading the country.

We shouldn’t be surprised about this conduct from this sorry lot.

This comes from a Conservative Party who has muzzled over 100 of their candidates - and told them to follow the strategy of not attending candidates debates.

This comes from a Prime Minister who has been in hiding from facing media scrums, public town halls or even talking to Canadians. He refused to take unscripted answers from the voting public on CBC with Peter Mansbridge. Every other leader - including Dion - did so.

This comes from a Prime Minister whose party has labelled those from the opposition who questioned the Afghanistan mission and its aims and goals as Taliban lovers, and who don’t support the Canadian military because they brought up legitimate questions on torture and detention. This comes from a Prime Minister who tried to smear Liberal MP Navdeep Bains in the House of Commons and associate the Liberal Party with supporting the Air India terrorists. We are seeing more of that Harper mean-spiritedness now, as Don Martin (of all people) in the National Post pointed out.

What we are also seeing is Harper and the Conservative Party desperately trying to use this to find a distraction from the focus and scrutiny paid to them on their woeful handling of the economy and Harper’s uncaring attitude over it toward ordinary Canadians, as he lectured Canadians that these stock market losses are just unreasonable panic, and Canadians should be looking for great buying opportunities. It is this uncaring and neglectful attitude which has caused them to sink in the polls, and which they are now trying to change the channel from. There are other issues as well which they’d rather not talk about, such as the Afghanistan Mission and a whole myriad of issues, as mentioned here, by attacking Dion’s character and leadership skills on outtakes that were unethically released to the public.

Do you know what I want to say to Harper if I was able to do so to his face? What Joseph Nye Welch, a lawyer, said to Senator Joseph McCarthy during Mccarthy’s Communist Party witch hunt hearings while defending a colleague from McCarthy’s accusations:

“Until this moment… I think I never gauged your cruelty or your recklessness..Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

In Harper’s case, I’d say for him and many of his supporters, the answer is no.

Tonight, Jean Chretien will introduce Stephane Dion in the last big rally of the campaign. He knows all about Conservative smear campaigns. He himself was the focus of Conservative attacks in 1993 when he too was an opposition leader, where the Conservatives focused on his distorted one side of his face, which was paralysed from the palsy he had as a child. Public outrage at that was the beginning of the end of the then Progressive Conservative party. This cheapshot done at Dion by Harper and his Conservative sycophants is no different - it may be just as bad.

One hopes Canadians remember that when they see Chretien introduce Dion tonight, and one hopes they will be as equally outraged at one of the most partisan mean-spirited, classless Prime Ministers and Canadian political parties we’ve seen in quite awhile (and I hope Mr. Chretien reminds people more openly about the comparable situations when he speaks tonight). I would also hope it outrages them enough to make sure that, along with everything else wrong about this Prime Minister and this Party, that they remove the collective disgrace of this Prime Minister and his Party currently sitting in our government from power on October 14 when they cast their ballot.

UPDATE @ 10:00 am: Mr Dion responds this AM to Harper’s remarks:

Dion told CBC Newsworld that restarts happen all the time during pre-taped interviews. Harper’s reaction simply shows the prime minister has no class and is trying to hide the fact that he has no plan to help the economy, he added….Mr. Harper’s reaction yesterday is showing again how much this man has no class, and no plan, and is ready to go very low to hide that he has no plan,” said Dion.

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