Everybody knows...

If you listen to a radio, watch a television, or peer into the sky to determine patterns in the clouds, you know that Canadians don't want an election right now. Our media trumpet this out at every opportunity, even as politicians of all stripes are out vigorously campaigning.
Martin's revealed his election strategy: depict Stephen Harper as a man who seeks to destroy Canadian values. This approach, after all, has been extremely successful in past campaigns. They do it every time: play pin-the-demon-on-the-Tory. And the media gleefully plays along.

You never see Liberals labelled extremists, even when they are. (There are several members of the Liberal Party who have uttered epithets...on camera, even!...to rival anything ever blurted by the most ardent Reformer. Ask Tom Wappel how he feels about gay marriage and you'll swear you're hearing 'Parson' Manning answering you.) How many people even know who Tom Wappel is? Yet it's common knowledge in Canada that Harper's Conservatives want to criminalize homosexuality (and maybe punish it with the death penalty). Just like it's common knowledge that nobody wants an election right now.

God, I hope it's not because voting is such hard work. After all, eighty percent of Iraqis braved umpteen credible threats on their lives to cast their ballots...

I simply refuse to believe that so many Canadians besides Jack Layton actually endorse the criminal and corrupt culture of the Liberal Party of Canada. That leaves two alternatives: either they believe our lame duck PM when he said we should wait for Gomery to expose EVERYTHING, or they fear the Conservatives so much that they'd rather see thieves in charge of the country.

I know why the media is so intent on stalling an election: because it's possible Harper could win it. Harper would probably gut the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation; he would certainly upset a great many intelligentsia along the Toronto-Ottawa axis, the people who have always considered themselves the guardians of 'Canadian values'. These are the people who interpret the government for us, always looking to paint us Liberal red.
There'd be a lot of cushy government jobs cut. Yup, that's why the media doesn't want an election now.

But why are so many Canadians buying the media line?

Look: Justice Gomery isn't going to come out in November and tell us that space aliens are responsible for Adscam. As much as some people would like to see it, he won't find that American spies sent by George W. Bush stole millions of Canadian taxpayers' dollars. No: he will find the Liberal Party guilty, guilty, guilty as sin. The only question is whether or not Gomery will uncover a smoking gun that directly ties Paul Martin to the sponsorship scandal.

My guess is that more than a few Ottawa paper shredders have been working overtime, and that nothing so blatant will emerge from this inquiry. My further guess is that this is why Paul Martin chose to call the last election, thereby ridding himself of a Public Accounts inquiry. Hmmm.

Never mind if Martin is actually found to have been complicit or not. God knows enough of his party was. Shouldn't we be throwing the buggers out on their ears? Like, yesterday?

Well, says Martin, not just yet. You see, if the media keep up with this sordid Gomery reporting, eventually Canadians will tune it out and elect me back. Besides, all those people who stole all that money were Chretienites...not my sort of Liberals at all.

Which again brings up that all-but-standing ovation Martin gave Chretien after the latter testified before Gomery. That was a CRITICAL error. Paul should have been stern and reproving. He should have called Chretien's display what it was: contemptuous and despicable. Instead, he cheered, leading those of us watching to believe the two of them were thick as...well, thieves.

Martin is confident of three things: one, no smoking gun will be found; two, that enough daily reporting of the Gomery inquiry will cause many Canadians to simply block the whole thing out; three, that Stephen Harper can be portrayed as the living antichrist. The Prime Minister is also willing to sacrifice the credibility of his Finance Minister by radically altering Goodale's budget, just so the Liberals can cling to power a little longer.

It's sickening, is what it is. And I for one would like to know what exactly is lurking in the Conservative platform that's so much worse! Is it the silent pledge to find some kind of happy, functional medium between our ailing health care system and that of the United States...say, something along the lines of a Swedish or French model? Is it the promise to grant same-sex civil unions? Is it the radical idea that we should try and work with, not against, our biggest trading partner?
Could it be that Harper wants to abolish that gun registry, you know, the one that keeps us all so safe from gun crime? Or that he wants to get tough on our darling criminal element?

You know what I think it is? I think it's that daring "tax cut" plan of his. He wants to give us our own money back, to spend as we please. That's so clearly un-Canadian! Our money is supposed to be siphoned up in endless government initiatives, like HRDC, the gun registry, Adscam...everyone knows that!

Everyone!

Right?