Harper did a great job in his speech.
He said they only thing he could have said, had he been more specific, the eastern media would have claimed that he was not telling the truth.
Harper played his cards correctly !! Fk the eastern media !!
Many in the Eastern Media that are slamming Harper are Conservatives. How do you rate them - Perhaps misguided?
Perhaps they have ethics? Perhaps they average Conservative east and west of Manitoba are not real Conservatives as they refuse to drink the Kook Aid.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com...n-tandt-harper-leaves-loyalists-in-the-lurch/
Has anyone seen a copy of the cheque? No. Does anyone, other than perhaps Wright and Duffy know what the latter was expected to offer or do in exchange for his extraordinary windfall? Did Harper himself approve of the transaction, if not in its specifics, then generally?
In the House of Commons yesterday, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, temporarily reverting to his former role as partisan fire extinguisher, said no, Harper knew nothing about the deal until, like other appalled Conservatives, he saw it on the evening news.
Strangely, Harper himself did not say that in his speech to his caucus, at least the portion of it that was public. Nor did Nigel Wright on Sunday, in his resignation letter. Nor did the PMO last week. In his remarks Harper ignored the payment entirely. In the other two cases the language was ever so carefully crafted to allow for some knowledge on his part, though not of “the means” or “the details.”
Why the discrepancy? Those cursed with skeptical minds might wonder if the deviation was deliberate, designed to give Harper a wee bit of wiggle room, in the event evidence eventually emerges he did know and approve, if only in general terms. Otherwise, why would he not rule that out himself?
“Nigel Wright is a man of honour,” Conservatives Tweeted through the weekend, upper lips suitably stiffened, as though saluting Harper’s departed chief of staff somehow adds a veneer of uprightness to an otherwise tawdry situation. But no one has questioned Wright’s honour. The unknown now, and it is waxing not waning, is whether the PM himself understands the meaning of the term. For if he did, would he not have apologized, or at least shouldered some responsibility, for the mistakes made on his watch, and for which every Conservative MP in the House of Commons is now paying a price?
It was Harper who elevated senators Patrick Brazeau, Pamela Wallin and Mike Duffy. It was Harper who stood in the House of Commons to defend Wallin’s travel expenses, to the tune of $321,000 in less than three years. And it was Harper’s most senior aide, his right arm, who made the payment to Duffy. At best, the PM has shown poor judgment in his choice of appointees, and shoddy management of his office. At worst he approved of a backroom payoff that gives the lie to everything he claims to represent. Yet the best he can muster is warmed-over rhetoric about the sponsorship scandal?
There was much private Conservative chortling, during the 2005 Christmas campaign, about former prime minister Paul Martin’s tactical ineptness, in particular his establishing the Gomery inquiry into that scandal, which set the stage for his later defeat. But through that time no one, that I know of, ever questioned Martin’s moral courage in doing what he did. Following his speech Tuesday, Stephen Harper can’t say the same.
For someone who won power on an explicitly moral platform, that is shocking. More shocking still is that the Conservative leadership, even now, seems unaware this is so. How they extricate themselves, or if they can, is anybody’s guess.
