13 April 2007

Dion Gives Party of 9/11 Fan a Free Pass

It seems like there is no end to escalation of vile things coming out of members of Canada's opposition parties this week. The forthcoming story actually manages to trump the last two head-slappers.

Yesterday it was made public knowledge that a member of the Green Party actually cheered when he saw the World Trade Centre towers collapse and did a fist-pump when he saw the gaping hole in the Pentagon. There's a story in today's Post about this clown and his unwillingness to apologize for those words, yet the more Liberal-friendly media sources are strangely silent on the matter.

Today, Stephane Dion is giving the leader of that party a free pass in her ill-conceived bid to try to unseat Peter Mackay in the Nova Scotia riding of Central Nova.

As the saying goes, timing is everything in politics. Dion's timing on this one could not possibly be worse, the optics are absolutely mortifying. There has been no call by Dion for the revolting Green Party member to apologize to the families of 9/11 victims, no call for the Greens to disassociate themselves from this member. Silence can be deafening, and in this case, it speaks volumes. Dion is so desperate to have somebody, anybody, backing him as the best choice for prime minister that he is not going to run a candidate in Central Nova in order to allow Elizabeth May a better chance to beat Mackay. She's hoping to fare better than the 2006 candidate, who managed to achieve a whopping 2% of the total vote. And he'll overlook the commentaries of the Greens' other candidates in order to secure that support, in addition to May's own views that are in stark, stark contrast to the Liberals' own positions. But hey, they're both "committed" to a greener Canada, so they're practically bosom buddies!

The Green Party is well-known for having more nutbars than a Snickers factory. At the Defence Policy forum that Dalhousie put on during the 2006 election, one of their members got hold of a live microphone and proceeded to go on an incoherent rant about a forthcoming nuclear first-strike against Iran and that Canada should not participate in such a thing. The party's grassroots are replete with people such as this, who hold views--which is certainly well within their constitutional rights, but why on earth would you want to exercise it?--that point the finger at the Bush Administration for orchestrating 9/11 and a myriad of other views that most well-thinking people would not consider to be "normal."

The bottom line: Dion is undermining the credibility of the Liberals as a national party and a rational party in order to get the endorsement of a party that has never elected a candidate to Parliament and won't be doing so in the next election. It is a foolish ploy that only heightens the negative sentiment that many Canadians have of his leadership, and gives credence--in a zero-sum fashion--to a party that believes "9/11 Was an Inside Job" and roots on terrorists more proudly than even Denis Coderre.

**Update** Fixed a sentence that was left completely hanging. I blame the gremlins.

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