Conservative Robo-Fraud Update

With the latest meme from the PMO in hand, Conservatives under hostile fire in Question Period, uniformly downplay the “robocall scandal” as nothing but an “unsubstantiated smear campaign”…

Well, at this point in time, the Conservatives are right – at least, technically speaking. Opposition critics don’t presently have the necessary facts to back up their suggestive allegations of organized electoral fraud by the CPC. As passionately eager as they are to jump all over this issue for political advantage, maybe it would be best if they just waited for the investigations of Elections Canada to play out…

Yeah, I know, that’s kind of a boring approach to the matter and definitely not the way the game is played, but without any factual basis, there’s not a whole lot of cause for all the steam in the heated allegations currently being made by the Liberals and NDP.

The Conservatives, however, are completely missing the boat by playing the “indignant victim” card here. What they should be doing instead is directing their outrage to the malfeasant operatives within their own party and proclaiming their commitment to ferret them out. Of course, that presupposes the notion that the CPC organization wasn’t actually involved in any fraudulent electoral shenanigans…

Is That All There Is?

Comedian Rush Limbaugh – who is, it seems these days, the virtual leader of the increasingly deranged Republican Party – did the Democrats a huge favour the other day with his offensive remarks directed at “college co-ed” (i.e., third-year law student) Susan Fluke.

Whether deliberate or not, Limbaugh’s deeply misogynistic tirade analogizing the issue as being akin to prostitution, calling Ms. Fluke a “slut” and then derisively suggesting that taxpayers be recompensed with pornographic videos of her sexual activities, effectively steered the surreal “debate” about state-mandated provision of contraceptive medications by private employers directly off a cliff.

It’s supposed the Republicans had initially wanted the discussion (if one can call it that) to be about “religious freedom” – an arguably legitimate issue of perpetual controversy near and dear to the heart of the party’s social conservative base – but then a number of truly bizarre proposals by various Republican-controlled state legislatures (demanding the insertion of invasive trans-vaginal ultrasound probes prior to abortion, for example), together with perplexing comments on the subject made by various sex-obsessed, theocratic right-wingnuts quickly revealed the true nature of their objection to the rulemaking healthcare proposals of the Obama administration…

Some liberal pundits and politicians have deemed the Republicans’ efforts in this regard as a “War on Women” – an expression that is certainly overstated, but perhaps not by much. If one looks at the legislative priorities of the Republicans since their resurgence in 2010, when not blindly demanding that taxes and regulations be cut as a magic elixir for economic growth, their primary focus appears to be almost madly fixated on controlling, limiting, and repealing the hard-fought reproductive rights of women. Why is that?

As an outside observer on the American political scene, it’s truly amazing that these kind of irrelevant (some might even say, completely bogus) distractions are the stuff and substance of current political debate given there are so many other imperative things that need to be addressed which are all vastly more meaningful and significant to the lives of ordinary people.