Mike Duffy's counsel may have declared war on the Harper government yesterday. Today it's Duffy's turn to take the battle onto the floor of the Senate.
My guess is that Duffy will deliver a carefully scripted statement that will put the Senate itself and especially Harper's senatorial henchmen on trial in the Court of Public Opinion. LeBreton, Tkachuk and Stewart-Olsen, Harper's senatorial front bench, are logical targets. If Duffy is prosecuted, the trio will play an integral if unwilling role in his defence. He will implicate each of them in whatever wrongdoing he is claimed to have committed.
Duffy may also seek to show the Senate is being used as a smokescreen for the prime minister and his PMO. If he chooses his words well, as I suspect he will, he can probably persuade an already skeptical public that the real villains who should be suspended are those pushing for his own ouster.
Bombshells? There could be one or two but I wouldn't count on it. This is not the time to be sacrificing a knight or a bishop, not when a pawn will do.
A couple of Tweets from former Mulroney chief of staff, Norman Spector:
- Does anyone truly think Duffy would have agreed to Wright's plan if he didn't think Wright was speaking for Harper?
- There's something vaguely behind-the-iron curtain-during-the-Cold-War about all the maneuvering surrounding the Duffy affair
2 comments:
I think Norman Spector has a point, the way this Harper government operates has for some time reminded me of what I used to watch from the Soviet bloc nations during the Cold War, and especially since this matter with Duffy started to blow up in the Spring. I agree with you on not to expect any bombshells at this point, and I especially agree that the real show is not the Senate but what happened in the PMO. We have real grounds to believe a serious criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice at the absolute minimum occurred between Dec 2012 and June when 2013 once Wright was forced out as the PM 's CoS. The idea that ANY CoS to a PM would be involved in something of this nature with a sitting Senator without having ANY discussions about it with his boss is clearly beyond credibility, especially given the nature of the 90G "gift" put up by Wright.
I have not allowed myself to be diverted by what is going on in the Senate from what is the true core scandal, the actions of the PMO regarding the attempts to protect both Wallen and Duffy through surpression and worse bribery (I cannot call that "gift" anything other than a bribe, nor do I believe any reasonable person without a political axe to grind could either), clearly criminal behaviour at the very heart of the PMO/government, something we have not seen a living memory that I am aware of. The idea that things like Adscam even comes close is laughable, we have what appears to be the most contemptuous of process and rule of law government in the history of this nation from the very head on down starting with PM Harper. We also know that Harper more than most party leaders DOES involve himself in minutia and decision making far more than is normal, and for something with the level of political ramifications as the issues surrounding Senators Wallen and especially Duffy that this one time he stays absolutely ignorant completely breaks any rational concept of believability.
While there are some real issues with the Senate involved in all of this, to allow any of them to take priority over the PMO aspects aids Harper IMHO. I believe that the NDP made a major blunder when they decided to make the Senate the issue because it could have some strategic possibilities for them, I find that being very much penny wise dollar idiotic. This was the best chance for the LOO to put his foot on Harper's neck and keep it there, but he saw the shiny distraction of the Senate and in my view has seriously split the focus and allowed Harper some breathing room on something that should NEVER have been given any slack whatsoever regardless of the political affiliations of those involved.
Sorry, but it really infuriates me how much people who should have known better are letting the Senate aspects muddy the waters for the public on what the true scandal really is here, the clearly possible criminal actions taken by at the minimum of the CoS of the sitting PM. I know of nothing similar at least in living memory, do you?
sun media will protect harper in all of this. Sun Media are harper's whores.
Duffy was the scapegoat.
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