Alienating Everybody

Harper wants to blame Ignatieff for losing our Security Council seat?  Maybe he should take a look at how much our relationship with our biggest ally has deteriorated.

In fact, U.S. State Department insiders say that U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice not only didn’t campaign for Canada’s election but instructed American diplomats to not get involved in the weeks leading up to the heated contest. With no public American support, Canada lost its bid to serve. That gives the EU more than 25% control of the body and a strong voting block to ensure EU priorities become global priorities.

And yes, I know the source is dubious, and the paranoid anti-Euro pro Harper stridency is obnoxious, but assuming that 'insiders say' lead has any truth to it at all, it would suggest a certain coolness from the Obama White House, towards the Harper government.

The angst must be intense in Harper land.  Obsequious genuflection to the US is, and always has been a cornerstone of what passes for Conservative foreign policy.  So many thundering denunciations of the Liberals for alienating our dear American friends, or showing insufficient enthusiasm for the latest American military endeavor (Although the Martin Liberals tacked toward Conservative ideas on foreign policy before the end) or not following every tax cutting and public sector gutting innovation that bubbles up south of the border - and now they're in power and after a few blissful years with their ideological soul mates in the Bush White House they have Obama.

And it probably didn't take him long to figure out that the Canadian government he was inheriting from Bush was made up of the same kind of tea-baggers who are baying that he's a  Kenyan born Muslim socialist.

I'm quite serious about that description by the way, it isn't hyperbole.  This is how they behave in a minority.

This is how they behave when they have their first date smile on and they're trying to make a good impression posing as technocratic prudent managers while keeping the craziest members of the Conservative Reform Alliance family shackled and gagged in the basement.

In other words Ministers like Jason Kenney, Helena Guergis and Maxime Bernier were the ones they thought were ready for prime time.  What does this tell you about the talent pool they have to work with in this caucus?  They need barely competent, barely presentable faces of the government who can be trusted not to get caught with a dead girl or a live boy or bay at the moon in public.  

Sky high standards that they still keep failing to meet.