The Four Stages of Adscam (Canadian Liberals try to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat)

The National Post ^ | April 12, 2004 | David Frum

[quidnunc]

Don't expect the Liberals to go quietly. You don't become the longest-ruling political party in the world by letting a little public disgust discourage you. While Justice John Gomery searches out the sponsorship scandal, the Liberals' best brains are searching for ways to get away with it.

But how? Thus far they have tried four strategies, each of them seemingly borrowed from the handbook of a defense lawyer for the Soprano family.

1. They're out to get us. Almost as soon as Judge Gomery began exposing damaging facts, former prime minister Jean Chretien and his circle denounced the inquiry as biased, wasteful, vindictive and unfair. This "poor little us" approach was copied from the Clinton campaign against Ken Starr. But Clinton had an advantage that the Liberals lack: He persuaded the U.S. public that his misdeeds did not belong in court at all. Nobody is going to believe that the theft of public money is not a public concern.

2. It's the price of doing business. This is the line repeated by poor, trapped Scott Brison, the renegade Conservative whose sensitive conscience forced him out of his old party and into Alfonso Gagliano's old job. In the House of Commons last Tuesday, Brison suggested that a couple of hundred million dollars of corruption was a price well worth paying for the inestimable benefit of Liberal rule — and that anyone who thought otherwise was seeking to "destroy Canada."

-snip-

3. Which brings us to the next strategy: Make Canadians an offer they can't refuse. Liberals are now musing about hurrying forward on a great pile of wonderful new Liberal initiatives, from Kyoto to Paul Martin's oft-promised "cities agenda." Prodded by these exciting ideas, the public would wake up and realize the terrible injury it would suffer if the Liberals ever lost power.

-snip-

[Billthedrill]

Misappropriation of funds was not an abuse of the program. Misappropriation of funds was the point of the program.

Well, there you are - a successful program and everyone's complaining (I think the Clintons tried that one too, with the Chinese technology transfer for campaign cash scandal).

Or--and this is advice they will consider only when their case becomes utterly desperate--they might consider an entirely new approach: honesty. Tell the truth, accept the inevitable punishment at the next election, go into opposition, expel the crooks from their ranks, renew their leadership and return to fight another day.

There is another alternative that I think more likely (viewing this admittedly from a distance) - stonewall the truth, go into a sizeable minority, do NOT expel any crooks, and return to fight another day. The Democrats do that all the time. Ask Jim McDermott.

[goldstategop]

"It was all about saving Canada and its time to move on."

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)

[llama hunter]

aint't that the funniest position

because this is likely going to do the opposite - between giving the Bloc every single seat in Quebec and making Canadians like me sick and tired of supporting Quebec, legally and illegally

but here's an even bigger point most of the media is missing

during the actual last referendum campaign, Jean Chretien and his party sat on their hands and did nada only after the barely yes to Canada vote did this slush fund oops I mean Unity Fund suddenly come into existence - and say that must have coincided with a federal election?

another blogger noted that the missing money from Human Resources, about a billion dollars, also went missing right around the time of an election.......

and the Gun Registry fiasco, when did that get started and when did the cost balloon to a billion for a job still not completed, right before the last election peut etre?

hmmm, if that is true, interesting pattern, money goes missing at the time of each election.....