Too far right

"Comparisons in the media between Harper and Richard Nixon are getting to be old hat. There are some startling parallels. Both men were incapable of forgiving criticism from party ranks (trust me — I know). Neither man had the skill or the inclination to court the media. Both were very good at posing as right-of-centre politicians for the party faithful when, in fact, they were always pragmatic power-seekers."

Can Harper stop being Harper before it’s too late?

“There is a tide in the affairs of men,” Brutus tells Cassius in Julius Caesar Act 4, Scene 3, “which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune … Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.”

I don’t know if Stephen Harper knows that passage; I doubt it. It might ring a distant bell with Tom Mulcair. Justin Trudeau probably knows it (he did teach drama, after all). Being politicians, of course, all three gentlemen know what it means: there are times where the tide of history can be turned by human hands — but only if you know how to spot the moment.

If that tide is turning now, neither Mulcair nor Trudeau will have to act with particular haste or decisiveness to exploit Harper’s weaknesses. The prime minister — with the help of his enthusiastic but inexperienced staffers — is doing the work for them.

This week could be the watershed. The Mike Duffy trial is winding up with even more revelations from the dark corners of the PMO. What we’ve learned from the trial already has been depressing enough: Harper’s PMO, staffed by bright young things with more nerve than knowledge, believes it exists not to assist the government but to be the government — and to hell with the executive and legislative branches.

READ MORE: http://ipolitics.ca/2015/08/24/can-harper-stop-being-harper-before-its-too-late/