…but I’m going to make my decision today.
As I slowly recover from my nasty flu bug (I still feel woozy), I will take some fresh air and head for the advanced poll, open today.
I will be voting Liberal…as if any of you really doubted otherwise. ;-) Allow me some post-sickness, random rambling…
After watching the English-language debate (under the influence of many cold meds), I believe that Stephane Dion did well. He looked calm, content, and he committed very few English flubs. He managed to make his points, and he even managed to shut Jack Layton up on two occasions…a rare talent. Hell, he even laughed and smiled with the most genuine warmth of anyone at the debate table.
Green Party Leader Elizabeth May was even better. If she achieved anything, then I hope it was the the fact that she proved she could be a better MP for her Nova Scotia riding then the wanna-be-Dauphin/yes-man Conservative Defence Minister Peter McKay. I hope she drives him AND his little dog out of town.
Gilles Duceppe looked like he was going to throw off his jacket, crawl across the table, and throttle Stephen Harper. What was going on? Jacket undone, lazing back, looking irritated and agitated…did someone put itching powder into his suit? Was there a new poll indicating Quebec supported Federalism over Seperatism 10-to-1 that took him by surprise?
Jack Layton was smarmy and annoying. Nothing new there. Move on…
Harper looked ill. His eyes looked dead (then again, this isn’t the first time he has modelled corpse-chic). He actually spun around in his chair, like some sort of trapped, tired animal. He looked at Elizabeth May as if he couldn’t even believe she had the audacity to speak to him…and he never once addressed her in return. In no sense did Feckless Leader look Prime Ministerial that night.
It was an outcome I was satisfied with…and it was a debate that actually felt like a satisfying discussion…and not a form of annoying, reality-TV roundtable combat.
With ten days to go, the question is…Conservative majority or minority? Thinking rationally, I believe the debate sealed a minority for the country…but I’ve been wrong before. There’s a cynical, frightened core within me that says Canadians might abandon all sense and deliver us our own version a Reagan/Thatcher neo-con nirvana we will all come to regret. Then again, it could be my cold meds doing the thinking…the grey matter has been through quite a bit of physical and emotional turmoil over the past week. Let’s hope such bleak thoughts are the dregs of sickness, and not the fruits of reality.
But let’s keep it simple: don’t vote Conservative. Don’t even consider voting Conservative. Drug anyone you know who is planning on voting Conservative and lock them in your basement. Then…we will be safe. :D
But let’s leave the last word to Margaret Atwood — Canada’s Queen of Letters, who tore a strip off of Mr. Harper in a recent Globe and Mail editorial:
“Mr. Harper has demonstrated that he has no knowledge of, or respect for, the capacities and interests of “ordinary people.” He’s the “niche interest.” Not us.”
