if i had been drinking coffee...

this article would have made me spit it out through my nose.

a couple of choice quotes:

"Conservatives tend to use other terms, starting with unprincipled, followed by reptilian analogies, and ending with angry spluttering noises. Beneath a Tory's denunciations, though, there's unmistakable professional admiration."

in other words, we're spitting, sputtering (well, i suppose we are, when we read tripe like this and are drinking coffee, but i digress...) wannabe-connivers. yes, john geddes, you nailed us. we want to be just like those overtaxing, pocket-lining liars currently in office and we admire them.

"Paul Martin's ... sabre-rattling ... looks ... more like a classic Liberal bid to strike a chord with voters who like a touch of anti-Americanism with their Canadian nationalism"

now i can get on board with that. plenty of canadians (and i'm sad to say it, most of them east of the lakehead) don't identify themselves as canadians. they identify themselves as not-american. and to me this is just sad. i have plenty of american friends. they're just the same as you and me. except they actually get to keep their money instead of ostensibly feeding it into liberal coffers.

"The old maxim that the party runs from the left and governs from the right is at the core of Clarkson's argument."

this is where i would have spit out coffee. paul martin governs from the right? is this guy on crack? of course he is--he's in toronto, and they're now giving out free crack kits and able to find them pretty much anywhere. unlimited abortions are a right of centre policy? same-sex marriage? communist health care? tax and spend to buy off the ndp? patronage appointments to the senate, supreme court, and governor general's office? socialized daycare? gun control? from the right? is this guy serious?

and i can't let this one go without comment:

"The Liberal bid to portray Harper's Conservatives as dangerous extremists only started to work, he argues, after the press bought into it."

after the press bought into it? it was the press who portrayed harper and the conservatives as scary extremists. it just took longer than usual for anyone to hear the constant chirping from the cbc.

i suppose an article like this is good for one thing: to keep me laughing.

h/t to neale news.