“Make a hard Right-turn at the Town of Wedgepolitics and keep going Straight until you’ve reached the City of Bigotry and Political Strategy.” Directions for Harper’s recent wedge-issue of choice, driven to distract, that questions the validity of marriage licences granted to non-resident couples in Canada.
This issue is too risky for such a clever PMO to just throw out there. I think that their timing reeks the foul smell of a “Red-Herring“and here is how:
The Northern Gateway Pipeline, Canada and the Tar Sands’ backup-plan after Keystone XL took a hit from actions of resistance at home and in the US, is facing some setbacks because Enbridge (the manufacturer of N.Gateway) just had a gas pipeline leak in Louisiana and people aren’t biting on the “radical environmentalist” tag-lines. No take that and combine it with the fact that the Harper Government has been pouring tonnes of effort and resources into selling the idea of the pipeline project to Canadians.
Tar Sands oil falsely linked to gay rights in Canada
The Harper Government does not want people in Canada to connect the dots, so they ‘leak’ some information on an issue that many Canadians feel passionately about and
that will really piss a lot of them off. After a couple of hours, they emerge from media firestorm telling everyone that nothing is going to change about the rights of same-sex couples and that the media jumped to too many conclusions. So, say that they are being honest and do not want to infringe on the rights of same-sex couples, the damage is done and people in Canada (and in the United States like Dan Savage) have already been alerted of such a controverisal issue — moving away from magnified discussion on Northern Gateway. This buys enough time for Enbridge to do damage control and for the Harper government to take the issue out of the spotlight for just enough time — and bring tar sands back down on offensive argument regarding “Ethical Oil and Gay Rights in Canada.“
Harper, the PMO, et al. are too clever with strategy to just make a misstep while in the midst of a MASSIVE Tar Sands campaign — cooked up by long-time friend of Harper’s PMO Ezra Levant and formerly run by now Head of Planning in the PMO, Alykhan Velshi. Just follow the Tar all the way to the Prime Minister’s Office. Writer Lawrence Martin, in Harperland, notes that “[Harper] once told a friend, ‘I think about strategy twenty-four hours a day,’ and it was only a small exaggeration.” Given the Prime Minister’s tactical political maneuvering in Ottawa over the last 5 years, I suspect he will continue to use controversial issues like same-sex marriage (or changing the national anthem) is another way to keep The Left in Canada from organizing to effectively Stop Harper.
That’s all I have to say
for now.
