But what’s this?
A spokesman for Harper says he was referring to the Conservatives' national campaign, as opposed to individual local campaigns.
In a party where no high level spokesperson issues statements without having them vetted by steve, why offer this clarification up?
With more and more allegations coming from individual ridings and Elections Canada indicating it has enough credible evidence to warrant an investigation, it may be that harper wants to protect himself from illegal election activity that he knows went on. By clarifying that the federal campaign is clean, but not defending the ridings, he sets himself above the scandal…or so he thinks. I don’t think that’ll fly, though. While from a legal perspective he may protect himself with this tactic, as leader of his party, he won’t be able to shake responsibility in the House and with voters. Either he knew about the activities and allowed them or even encouraged them, or he has practically no control over how his MPs and campaign people act. Either way, he is not fit to lead a party, let alone a country.
More interesting news today – RMG is looking like it may have been used in a shady fashion as well, and there are not allegations of more in-and-out activities, this time in QC. Even CPC candidates are talking:
Les dépenses électorales de certains candidats conservateurs du Québec à la dernière élection générale soulèvent des questions. Au moins une direction de campagne locale admet s'être fait demander par le bureau national du Parti conservateur de payer une firme d'appels sans en retirer quoi que ce soit en retour. Une autre s'interroge sur la valeur réelle de la dépense.
Briefly – several CPC candidates were billed for using RMG call services, but their riding campaign never used the services. The money simply went through them to provide RGM services to the federal campaing. That’ll make it a fair bit harder for harper to isolate himself from riding activities.
