Taboo terms: “Quebec separatism”, “Islamic terrorism”

All through this week’s "crisis", the Anglo and Quebec media punditry, the Lib/NDP/BQ coalition, the BQ, the PQ and other sensitive souls have been waxing alarmed about the use of the word "separatist" inflaming Quebec separatism. Here are some sensible responses to that loopy line of thinking:

Ezra Levant: Separatists aren't the separatist threat. People who point out they're separatist are

...the new line is that it's "divisive" to point out that the coalition contains 49 avowed Quebec separatists.

...The separatists are divisive by definition -- they literally want to divide Canada.

Robert Fulford: The Normalization Of Separatism

Jeffrey Simpson wrote in The Globe and Mail yesterday that Harper, under threat of defeat, "whipped up anti-Quebec sentiments outside the province."

No, he didn't. He whipped up anti-separatist sentiments, a quite different matter -- though for some people, the new eminence of the Bloc has made the distinction hard to remember.

This is reminiscent of media "sensitivity" to Mohammedan hyper-sensitivities to references to "Islamic terrorism" and the consequent p-c sanitizing of the term by the media - as in Mark Steyn’s "Jews get killed, but Muslims feel vulnerable" in yesterday’s OC Register.

An Australian precedent?

Mark Steyn is keeping his American colleagues up to speed on what's happening here in the wilds of Canuckistan. He cites an interesting example from Australia back in 1975 where the Aussie PM considered having the Queen fire the GG before the GG could fire him. The PM was too late - the GG got to the Queen first.

I doubt that Harper is seriously contemplating anything along those lines - the people and media would go ballistic. Nevertheless, Steyn's concerns about the potential for lasting damage to the Canadian system seem real.

Harper’s stupid blunder? I don’t think so.

There seems to be near universal acceptance by media pundits that the Harper/Flaherty economic update was pure blundering folly. The inclusion of cuts to party financing was, supposedly, a stupid error, a "toxic gambit" that precipitated the present crisis. This view has been repeated endlessly in MSM commentary and news and is taken pretty much as incontrovertible truth by nearly everyone including many loyal Tories who are supposedly angry with Harper. But is it true?

Stephen Harper has been called a master political strategist and tactician. He doesn’t do anything without thinking it through. Would he make such an apparently careless blunder? I don’t think so.

Consider the possibility, if not strong likelihood, that the opposition had planned to make their takeover bid no matter what was in the economic update. Based on what we heard in Layton’s conference call this hardly seems unlikely. Consider further that the Conservatives, professionals that they are, had their ears to the ground and knew or strongly suspected what was coming. This is not unlikely either.

So, assuming this scenario, what could the Conservatives have done to protect themselves? They could have sought consensus with the opposition before tabling their update. The Tories claim to have done so. But with a takeover plot in the works, the opposition would certainly not co-operate in helping the Tories create their economic plan. They’d do the opposite, if anything. So, given the Tory expectation of an opposition bid to defeat them following their economic update, no matter what, would it not make sense for them to try to poison the opposition’s apparent motives? One way to do that would be to make them appear to be the lazy, grasping incompetents that they are - that they are motivated by their addiction to the public trough for party financing.

I don’t find this scenario at all far fetched. Is it provable? Not directly. Would the Tories admit to it sans proof. Not likely.

I rest my case, your honour.

Poll - Opposition power grab

Latest CTV poll:

_

Secret backroom dealing! This feels like banana republic politics!

Ho-lee shit! Via Blue Like You I just learned of the CTV news item with Robert Fife exposing the secret NDP/Bloc deal to initiate an overthrow of the Tories. Jack Layton is heard admitting the deal was cooked up long before Tory fiscal update last Thursday.

This puts the absolute lie to any claim that the on-going coup d'etat attempt has anything at all to do with the economy and the Conservative fiscal stimulus plan.

There's nothing particularly wrong with plotting to bring down minority governments. It's part of the game. Hell, oppositions have always hatched these plots, but the goal is normally to force an election not form coalition governments.

In this case the opposition has been lying to the public about its motives while secretly plotting to form a coalition government a few short weeks after the electorate put the Tories in power.

These are creepy banana republic tactics. They're a disgrace and if the government should be defeated there must be a new vote not a phony rag-tag 'coalition' cooked up on the fly.

PR anyone?

Bumped: My response to comments on the previous post on polls:

"Yeah, these on-line media polls do lack the credibility of the supposedly unbiased ones done by the professional polsters (and as Alberta Girl notes where are they on this crisis?). But in this case there's reasonable consistency (as Reid points out) with other similar polls. Also, in a small town like Victoria 300 responses (I note it's now up to almost 500) to a radio station's on-line poll is a pretty good sample - and it's against the natural local political grain.

So people are clearly seeing through the opposition BS. Even if they had reasonable justification for ousting a six week old 143 seat minority government(and they don't) there's no way that they can form a more credible or stable minority government with a mixed bag of leaderless Libs and NDP with 113 (76+37) seats between them backed up by a bunch of (50) commie separatists.

Though the opposition can't admit it, it's blatantly obvious that the driving motivation for this attempted coup d'etat is the threatened cancellation of taxpayer funded 'entitlements' for political parties - and for the NDP maybe the no-strike provision for gov't unions.

But as far as I know the opposition doesn't really need a good argument to defeat a minority government. They can do it any time they see an opportunity. However, ordinarily, they have to risk going to the polls. I can't see the GG and/or the Supremes allowing this "coalition" of idiots to form a government on such a thin pretext without a new vote . But it's possible and, as Ted says, "downright scary."

And people actually want Proportional Representation?! Permanent instability and elections every year or so? Nuts to that!"

Poll - No coalition!

Somewhat surprisingly, should it come to that, it appears that even here in lib/left Victoria there's little enthusiasm for a Lib/NDP coalition:
See also: Globe poll, NewsTalk650.

And, should it come to that, here are some catchy names for the coalition.