I don't get it.

In Canada you have three types in government: (1) lawyers, (2) wimps, and (3) french. Conservatives are only wimps, so they don't get to play. Liberals are mostly lawyers+wimps, so they hold onto the power. Mulroney, the only Conservative to hold power in recent years was french+lawyer.

The only other factor in the equation is whether your last name is truly "french" (re: Chretien, or Trudeau). In that case...

french_name*(french+laywer)==EVIL.

Randall,

You forgot 'womyn.' Kim Campbell was a 'womyn lawyer' so she couldn't get bounced fast enough.

Harper appears to be another doofus, another punching bag for the Liberals. When are they going to give the party chair to Ralph Klein or someone like that and have a real challenge, or are they really that concerned about offending the Joe Clarks of the world?

I still don't get it. But my basic take on Canada is unchanged. Put them out of their misery.

Robert:

The point of the post was peas in a pod. But you have some work to do. I checked Bush's foreign policy agenda in his speech yeaterday and there was nothing about your favourite cause.

Bart:

Actually he is not a doofus. He is a very bright policy wonk surrounded by a lot of other very bright policy wonks. I'd prefer a doofus.

Randall:

Mulroney was French? That's news. But you forgot the fourth kind of Canadian politician--the off-his-nut used car salesman from the B.C. interior. :-)

Is thre any part of B.C. that doesn't qualify as "off-his-nut" in some fashion, especially in the politicians? Isn't it about time for the Premier to be arrested for drunk driving in Maui, or get indicted for being bribed with a new porch or some sort of scandal to erupt?

Mulroney was from Baie Comeau and went to Laval and spoke about as good a French as a Quebecois can. Claude Ryan, was a Quebecois, although not pur laine. I always thought Mulroney was the same. And wasn't there a Pequiste leader qui s'appelle Pierre-Marc Johnson?

All true, but Mulroney was Irish-Canadian.

Peter, if you speak French, you are French.

I think the weakness of the Conservatives has a lot to do with the requirement for their leader to debate in French. If I were leader, I'd get someone else to debate in my place, or bring in a translator.

Regarding B.C. politicians. One of my friends is our M.L.A. and he is a really nice guy (Barry Penner, not a wimp, though he is a lawyer); but he'll never be leader of the provincial Liberals (who are actually conservatives, Raoul) because, as you said, he is neither flamboyant nor corrupt.

one of the tabloids here in the u.s. claims to have found the secret burial site where the canadian tory party is interred...they followed the funeral procession for the u.k. tory party.

Randall:

Oh sure, it's all the fault of the French. Nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that we have no intellectual critical mass, no articulate and courageous leaders, no common agenda, no coherent conservative vision and we always manage to dissolve into fractious regional whines. Nosirree, it's the French, among whom there are no conservatives whatsoever.

I'm quite sympathetic to the notion we need more Western clout, but when you throw up Joe Clark, Roy Romanow, Svend Robinson and Hedy Fry, I haul out the old French grammar books. Salut