Flipping the "Could Trump be Trump in Canada" discussion on its head.
In the who is copying whom vein:
Harper era, once upon a time: members of the Harper regime (gov't and its surrogates) including Harper repeatedly attack the competence and integrity of judges who render decisions that the regime dislikes. They do not limit themselves to arguing the decision is wrong in law. The attack on the integrity of the judiciary culminates in an attach by Harper on the integrity of the Chief Justice of Canada.
Trump era, now: members of the Trump regime (gov't and its surrogates) including Trump repeatedly attack the competence and integrity of judges who render decisions that the regime dislikes. They do not limit themselves to arguing the decision is wrong in law. The attack on the integrity of the judiciary has not yet culminated in an attach by Trump on the integrity of the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court but that's only a matter of time.
I suppose we could say that Trump is copying from Harper's playbook but judge bashing is a traditional authoritarian tactic so we can't blame that on the Harper-era Conservative regime.
Far more importantly, though, in fairness to and to former Prime Minister Harper's credit, on the whole I doubt he'd now let Donald Trump clean out the Centre Block toilets let alone into a Prime Ministerial circle of trusted advisers. I'll concede that notwithstanding Mike Duffy if only because Harper would then have had to choose between the overall integrity of Nigel Wright and Donald Trump. That should have been a "no-brainer" even the Conservative cabals of the Harper era.
Finally, in defence of the "true" Canadian brand of (small "c") conservatism - whatever that content might be - it probably means something that Conrad Black has stopped writing his hagiographical, obsequious, articles on Trump in the National Post.
Look at Black's last fawning "missed-terpiece" in the Post on http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/conrad-black-donald-trump-understands-america-in-ways-smug-canadians-cant. You don't have to be as cynical as, or as sardonic as, I profess to be to wonder if, and conclude that, Black was commencing a campaign that he expected would culminate in the coming revelation of an already promised, albeit not in writing, Presidential Pardon by the U.S. Commander-in-Chief from his criminal convictions. (I mean Black's criminal convictions. Can Trump pardon himself from his own convictions yet to come? I suspect not, given that Nixon needed Ford.)
Do you think even Conrad Black would stoop to writing that piece, now?
Consider the claims in these sentences, or excerpts from sentences, which end the Black article and what the facts now show. I'll simply set out the sentences, or excerpts, so that you may draw your own conclusions. Bear in mind that Conrad Black's view of facts seems sometimes in the alternative reality realm, too.
.........."Fortunately, Trump is not at all xenophobic, fascistic, racist or sexist."
..........[Trump] is also not an advocate of “corporate-military-statism” ...
.........Trump saw that the U.S. system had become an anthill of corruption and hypocrisy and called it that. He promised to drain the swamp, and will do it; it will be a changed America in six months ...."
.......... "In this analysis, it is not the president-elect who has been sleepwalking through Fantasyland; he saw the American crisis plainly and launched one of history’s great democratic political movements to deal with it."
.......... "The pure snowmen of the North plod cheerily on in Santa Lawrence Martin’s workshop, like happy elves incanting “High ho, high ho, there’s nothing about the U.S. we don’t know.” But there is."
I wonder what Conrad Black would now say it is that Canadians don't know about the U.S.? Does it smell like Steve Bannon?
What does it mean to Canadian (large or small "c") conservatism that even Conrad Black should now, and seemingly does now since he had gone silent in print, have difficulty coming to Donald Trump's defence.
