#ndp #elxn41 #jacklayton #cpc #toronto
The recent smear on Jack Layton isn’t going to work. Remember Bill Clinton? His extra marital affair was used by his conservative enemies to undermine his office and tried to impeach him from office. Hardly a treasonous offense, but his Republican enemies figured they had the galvanizing issue to motivate the people for some sort of uprising. It didn’t happen. If nothing else, it made the former President more human, as everyone is guilty of bad judgement from time to time.
Now its Jack Layton. It’s alleged that he used the services of a bawdy house in Toronto. He says it was just for a massage. His wife knew about the appointment. Wether or not it was innocent or not, it happened in 1996. Those that would use a morality based wedge issue like this with only 2 days before an election would be well cautioned about Bill Clintons experience. Its was damaging and humiliating, but not political.
Bill Clinton survived alright, he was re-elected. The whole fiasco actually harmed the social conservatives who sought to gain from the fiasco. Democrats made unusual gains in the 1996 election.
There’s little doubt what the Layton smear is all about. He is in striking distance of winning the first ever NDP government in Canada. His Conservative and Liberal opposition are beside themselves in hysteria at this notion and will go to any length to stop him. Including bringing up a 15 year old mishap. If that’s what it really was.
The sheer fact that this bomb was dropped so close to election day is an act of desperation.
But it can’t work. The political world in Canada has already shifted. Morality based votes are already in the conservative party fold, there aren’t any to pull from the NDP. And the liberals that have shifted to the NDP are the progressive ones. Harper wants to knock the ‘blue liberals’ loose and vote conservative. But the facts are that those blue liberals are already gone. All this stunt will do is reaffirm support for the conservatives by those already in the blue camp. It might though, trigger some more support for the NDP by those still on the fence and really mortified by how negative and destructive the conservatives really are. Its already started.
This pseudo-scandal might flip a narrow loss by the NDP into a narrow win thanks to this smear.
