Oops, they did it again

Is there any surprise that the Globe and Mail has endorsed the Conservatives?

In small ways, yes. I had expected at least a modicum of restraint on their behalf, and was prepared to bet serious money that they’d declare for a Conservative minority, and against a majority, given, well, everything we’ve seen for five years. The deficit, the dishonesty, the cronyism, criminality, and corruption – and pure, unalloyed contempt, in every sense of the word.

But, nooooo, the Globe maintains its tragic, eternal love for the ethereal, departed ghost of Progressive Conservatism. Pitiably, rather than mourn its demise, the Globe falsely recognises its reincarnation in the Party of Harperland. It’s like seeing Madonna in your toast – stare long enough, and you’ll see what you long for. Sadly, it is only a miserable mirage, though no one will ever convince them of it.

Where is the objective assessment of where the country’s being taken, from the perspective of a newspaper that advocates for fiscal conservatism? Harper’s team may be called the Conservative Party, but these are no Tories. The U.S. Republican populism they employ betrays the “fiscal prudence” mantra time and time again. No intelligent being (and I include dolphins, puppies and bonobo chimps) can honestly consider Stephen Harper a sober steward of the Canadian economy. The historic deficit proves it wrong, and the simultaneous drunken sailor spending, with its “state secret” price tags to-boot, only underline it. Even the long-feared New Democrats would treat tax dollars with greater seriousness, and Canadians in unprecedented numbers are coming round to that, despite the inertial forces holding much of our media back.

The Globe has resisted the centre and the left for nigh on thirty years now, and there’s no reason to have expected they’d make an exception now. What is perhaps surprising is that so many Canadians continue to depend on the newspaper, despite disagreeing so fundamentally and so consistently with its position.

Filed under: Canada, Politics, conservative, election, elxn41, endorsement, Globe and Mail