Excuse Me While I Let My Imagination Run Wild In Public.

This is just too easy. It’s hard not to pick on Stephen Harper, but he’s been fairly quiet lately, mostly because Parliament isn’t in session, so this is my first real opportunity for a while.

Without bothering to talk to the rest of the party (well, he is the leader, after all), he’s run a series of targeted ads in ethnic and community newspapers trying to stir up some extra anti-marriage sentiments and swing a few Liberal votes over to the Reform/Alliance/Conservative party. The ads were run mainly in areas where the Tories have few seats so the vote swing might be critical when the current government falls. Sounds like a no lose proposition, yes?

But it seems to be a divisive issue, and a lot of members of the minority communities are understandably upset with Harper for the blatant fear-mongering, pandering to prejudice and throwing fuel on the bonfire of racial intolerance. But maybe a cage match with minority against minority is a good idea to distract them from the real issues hanging around, like child poverty in Canada, or BSE, or the pathetic level of spending on social programs, the military, and just about everything else over the last couple of decades, or even taxes. There are literally dozens, I not hundreds, of real issues that he could be worries about instead of wasting time on something that’s mostly a matter of semantics and is already legal in most of the country anyway.

Now, the ads were consented to by the Party, at least to be made, but the decision to run them and when was 100% Stevie. I guess he felt that the timing was good with both Cardinal Ambrozic and the head of the Sikh Golden Temple both unable to keep their noses out of Canadian politics with attacks on the issue.

Never mind that his Party hasn’t even had a policy convention yet, so there isn’t an official party position, and being against same sex marriage is by no means a certainty. Division in the party. Maybe. The other guy who dreamed up this supposedly unified party, Deputy Conservative Leader Peter MacKay wasn’t aware that the ads were going to run. Of course, how much is he aware of? And does it count for anything that Barbie is taking the opposite position? She isn’t the only MP who’s said so and most of the Québec members of the party are likely to tell Harper to shove it.

Does the targeting of minorities show any respect for them? Not really, just political opportunism blowing up in his face. And it’s obviously an obsession, following on the heels of his recent fantasy that this is just one step along the secret Liberal path to polygamy. I wonder about that one, though, is Stevie becoming a little more unhinged or is he casting an eye about for wife number two?

What a Tool.