God Answers Kathy’s Prayer: “Mmmmmmmmaybe.”
My occasional blog sparring partner, Kathy “Relapsed Catholic” Shaidle, wrote:
American readers can do their part by saying a quick (or not so quick) one for us, as today we have the chance to maybe, just maybe, turn around the doomed HMS Trudeaupia.
Perhaps a lot of people borrowed a line from St. Augustine’s prayer book and and asked “Lord, give us the Conservatives…but not too much”: in the end, the Conservatives got a minority government (see this entry for details). Here’s how the seats broke down at the time of this writing:
- Conservative Party: 125
- Liberal Party: 104
- Bloc Quebecois: 50
- New Democratic Party: 28
I wrote after the previous election that I considered this the optimal outcome:
I strongly believe that reasoned compromise and moderation is one of the best ideals of the National Character: between English and French, between ties to the countries from which we came and the country we adopted, between free markets and socialism and yes, between being like and unlike our neighbour to the south. I think that a Conservative minority allying itself with the Bloc (who would agree on decentralization and granted more powers to the provinces, which works given Canada’s vast size) and an opposition alliance of the Liberals and NDP would’ve been a workable solution and would’ve given the Liberals the “time out” that they so richly deserve. At the very least, it would result in Paul Martin’s ouster.
Strangely enough, eye magazine, one of Accordion City’s alt-weekly newspapers and certainly not a bastion of Tory fandom, concurred in their January 19th editorial.