Canadia Goes Blue, Zero Electoral Votes Conferred
December 2nd, 2008 by Nick SaintAs proof that I am part of the problem on this issue, I submit that I feel that the most interesting thing about the probable regime change in Canada is just how little interest Americans have shown in it thus far. Sure, Canada is goofy, but we only have two neighbors; you’d think we’d pay attention to who runs them. Yet all of the following stories are receiving more attention in the American media right now, as measured by the headlines on my Google News home page:
1.) The Hillary appointment, which everyone but me knew was coming over a week ago.
2.) Plaxico Burress has been charged with shooting himself in the foot. The shooting is old news by now, but the charge is new. The case against him seems pretty air-tight, but I suspect Suge Knight.
3.) Post-Thanksgiving-Weekend shopping was up from last year’s levels.
4.) Post-Thanksgiving-Weekend shopping was down from last year’s levels.
5.) Those horrible things really did just happen in Mumbai. The news here isn’t really news, as such, but this is the one issue that actually merits the attention it’s getting.
6.) Colleges continue to play football games against each other.
I like making fun of Canada as much as the next guy, but - especially with a president-elect and a secretary-of-state-in-waiting who spent primary season yelling at each other about NAFTA - we might want to take major shifts in their political situation slightly more seriously.
Mark Steyn - one of them, so he would know - has a summary:
what David Frum calls “the Harper government“* is about to fall, and the fellow set to replace him as Prime Minister is the October flopperoo Dion, reborn as leader of a freakshow coalition of Canada’s three opposition parties - the soft left, the hard left and the separatist left, all of whom have figured out that what they have in common (unbounded love of big government) is bigger than what divides them. Which is true. Quebec separatism is mostly one almighty bluff, a giant racket by which the francophone minority screws out of English Canada a hugely disproportionate share of the spoils. The Bloc Quebecois are separatists who have no interest in separating: no matter how wide you open the stable door, the flea-bitten old nag refuses to bolt. Granted all that, it’s weird to see the Liberals, until recently the most electorally successful party in the western world, reduced to climbing into bed with separatists and socialists.
I never said it was an invective-free summary.
