Oh, methinks the Cons are worried - very, very worried. Preston Manning, self-styled Grand Dame of movement conservatism in Canada, can see that Stephen Harper's pseudo-democratic reform package is a rancid loser.
The former Reform Party leader spoke out against a provision of the government's proposed "Fair Elections Act" in a speech Saturday, hours after the bill's sponsor, Democratic Reform Minister Pierre Poilievre, appeared at the same conference.
Conservatives are increasingly not viewed as the party that most champions democratic values, Mr. Manning said, a development that is "most worrisome for me personally and calls for, I think, immediate and serious attention."
Manning's fondness for democracy in Canada is sort of a dollar short and a day late, as though he'd been cryogenically frozen these past eight years. He hasn't expressed any concern, much less outrage, at our fascist government shutting libraries or its relentless war on science or sequestering the public service from the Canadian public or wielding the levers of power within the PMO to pervert the Senate or, well, almost anything. Only now - when it appears the public has had its fill of Preston's authoritarian protégé and the Conservative brand is heading for the crapper - is Preston speaking out.
