The half-week in Tory scandals
The Conservatives in Ottawa have been doing their best to march in lockstep with the Bush administration in Washington, from using similar tactics on the Kyoto agreement and other climate change talks internationally, to using, and often abusing, national security issues and the military domestically in an attempt to garner votes.
Recently, evidence has surfaced of another similarity between the two administrations.
Reading the news the last few days, the media has finally picked up on the fact that the Chalk River shut-down and isotope shortage was a manufactured crisis, and the Conservatives decided to make matters worse by blaming and then firing the nuclear safety commissioner Linda Keen in a political snit, seriously degrading the perception of independence and objectivity of our regulatory bodies.
They've also been tripping over the feet in their mouths over the detention of prisoners in Afghanistan, and bumbling along with cheque-is-in-the-mail excuses for equipment shortages.
On top of all that is word that the PM's spokesperson and another long-time Tory backer and organizer were intervening on behalf of a real estate developer in Quebec, and Harper making a clumsy attempt to imply something about the guys Greek heritage.
That's from headlines this week, and it's only Wednesday!
The similarity with the Bush administration? They've piled on so many different scandals, with more coming out of the woodwork all the time, that the opposition and amnestic press is likely to lose focus by trying to hit everything at once, Those paying close attention suffer outrage fatigue and the public tunes out all but the latest of the outrages, allowing the previous ones to slide by without a thorough examination.
Given how well such things work, you have to half-wonder if they planned it that way.
