[MarchHare]

Any Conservative supporters on CP want to defend Harper for doing this? Or is it, as I suspect, absolutely indefensible?

If this is how a desperate Stephen Harper goes out, it will be an exit for the ages. It will never be said he didn’t pull out all the stops. It will be acknowledged he mashed the keyboard just as hard as he could, and never minded the bollocks.

He borrowed the niqab as a wedge issue from Quebec; he issued dire warnings of brothels competing with pot-dispensing convenience stores on every street corner; and then on Saturday night in west-end Toronto, he flashed a final emphatic middle finger to his critics and to principled conservatives everywhere, in the form of a rally — well and enthusiastically attended — hosted by catastrophe mayor Rob Ford and his somewhat more respectable brother Doug.

[...]

And then, there was Saturday night — a brand new low for a conservative party that has abandoned so very many of its conservative principles. Drugs or no drugs, the Fords’ politics is a flailing, nihilist mashup of spite, fantasy and delusion masquerading as “Respect for Taxpayers.” The Tories wear that now. If they lose on Monday, they will have utterly debased themselves doing so. And if they don’t lose — if embracing the Fords motivates the GTA voters they so desperately need, or if they conclude that it did — then one can only wonder what further debasements might await them, and us, down the line. They’ve come a long way, baby.

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-co...ate-themselves