Creative Politics 101

harper is fast-tracking Senate reform.  None of that Parliament debate and lengthy passing of a Bill for him!  No!  He's workin' hard!  Gettin' the job done!

And he's going to make at least one of his appointed Senators work hard, having expanded the role of the Senate to include springboarding and funding for federal candidates.

Over a month ago, harper tried to recruit Larry Smith as a candidate for the next federal election in the Lac-Saint-Louis riding.  A month after turning that down, Smith accepts the appointment as Senator, and the very next day announces he will run as a federal candidate after all.

It's pretty obvious what went on in his talks with harper.  Around the time harper approached Smith, he suddenly resigns as president of the Alouettes.  People were puzzled since there had been no hint from Smith that he had been planning to quit, and no hint that he had been pursuing another career.

Can anyone really believe he'd drop a successful career with nothing on the horizon?  Of course not.  But running against Liberal MP Francis Scarpaleggia will be expensive and Smith needs to develop a political profile there.

harper tried this once already with Mike Fortier, who as we recall, actually opened an office in the riding he planned to run in, using it to promote himself, MP style.

Now Smith gets to do the same:  promote himself politically - on our dollar -  in the riding he will run in.  As his focus is on running in the next election, he will be doing little more as an actual Senator than collecting a nice big paycheck - also our dollar - as he uses his appointment to prep and self-promote so that harper can perhaps win a Quebec seat. 

The seat means a lot to harper, so he wants to use every advantage he can to win it.  He's counting largely on Smith's high profile among sports fans, and riding president Marc Damant announced the CONs intend to spend  the full amount under federal election laws. 

And harper has managed to boost that spending amount considerably by allowing Smith to use his ridiculously short Senate appointment to promote himself as part of his pre-election campaing. 

Using the Senate for such purposes degrades it even further, as difficult as it might be to conceive how harper could have made it a bigger travesty than he already has.

And it is yet another way the CONs can cheat election rules.