October 15th 2008
Canada: A Bellwether For McCain?
A
lmost lost in our own election (and economic) news is this news from a country that suffered the rule of Liberals for nearly its entire history:
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper led his Conservative Party to victory Tuesday, but fell short of the majority in Parliament he sought in calling elections last month.
The Conservatives won or were leading in races for 143 seats, state-elections agency Elections Canada reported on its Web site. That would represent a gain of 16 seats. The Liberals, meanwhile, had 76 seats, which would be a loss of 19. A majority requires 155 seats.
The vote was another loss for the Liberals, who led Canada for most of the nation’s 141 years until a scandal four years ago rocked the party, and the Conservatives took over in 2006. (WSJ)
Harper was the target of the same sort of nastiness from the left that McCain and Palin are suffering today, and was not popular with the liberal Canadian media. He was accused of being another Bush (hence the stencil above). He got sideswiped by the global economic crisis and a statement which, like McCain’s healthy fundamentals comment, was ridiculed. (In Harper’s case, he was guffawed for saying the falling Canadian stock market presented buying opportunities. It will, of course, but it’s still about $3,500 below where it was in early September and it fell further today.)
Oh, and the main gripe about Harper’s Liberal opponent, Stephan Dion, was that he lacked the experience necessary to run the country.
Oh #2: Voter turnout was low because Canada – which apparently lacks an active ACORN motor-voter lobby – recently implemented much stricter voter ID requirements.
Is this a warm wind for the GOP blowing out of the north?
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Comments
October 15th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
That’s “bellwether” my friend…
October 15th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
I wish I could say I knew that …