In the wake of the gross bipartisanship and press-galleric cosyness at the unveiling of John Crouton’s portrait the other day, a few Ottawa journalists slapped themselves upside the head and remembered just what an enemy of parliament the ti-gars was, especially toward the end. It’s helpful to remember, as we fall over ourselves coming up with new ways of describing Harper as a fascist, that PMSH has always taken his lead from a man who was such a dictator that one prominent Ottawa columnist put him on the cover of his book mocked up to look like Pinochet.
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A principal reason for this low ranking is that Mr. Harper tends to emulate Mr. Chrétien’s weakness instead of his strengths. He seems to feel that running roughshod over the system with ruthless tactics will score him points. — Lawrence Martin, today
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The Conservatives are in power, but the danger is not that we have elected someone who wants to be George W. Bush. It is that we have elected someone who has no problem with a benign dictatorship, as long as he’s the dictator, for whom principle and politics are like church and state, if not oil and water. We have re-elected Jean Chrétien. — Me, four years ago
