As if to once more remind people of how hollow its claim to being Canada's national newspaper is, the Globe and Mail has offered an endorsement of Stephen Harper. Its reasons for recommending that the electorate (or at least that portion lacking critical thinking skills) give yet another mandate to Harper and his regime would be laughable were the stakes not so high, and once more amply demonstrate the journal's increasing irrelevance to the Canadian political discussion.
I am reproducing a small portion of its rallying cry for the Conservatives to illustrate. The bolded portions are my own:
Only Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party have shown the leadership, the bullheadedness (let's call it what it is) and the discipline this country needs. He has built the Conservatives into arguably the only truly national party, and during his five years in office has demonstrated strength of character, resolve and a desire to reform. Canadians take Mr. Harper's successful stewardship of the economy for granted, which is high praise. He has not been the scary character portrayed by the opposition; with some exceptions, his government has been moderate and pragmatic.
It is because of this kind of fatuous thinking that I have not spent a day regretting my decision late last year to cancel my subscription to the once venerable paper.
I found the most appalling moment in their reasoning to be the part where they declared that although the "greatest strike" against Harper was his disrespect for Parliament, he was the only one of the leaders who could be trusted to "restore" Parliament.
ReplyDeleteThe reasoning is asinine enough that it's clear there actually was no attempt at logical reasoning. Someone told a subordinate they had 15 minutes to rattle off 500 words that would vaguely fit under the headline "Go Harper!", and this is the swill that they produced.