Undeserved benefits

In fairness to the Libs and Stephane Dion, they aren't the only ones who seem utterly willing to ignore all available evidence to give Stephen Harper the benefit of any doubt. After all, the Cons' own riding association in Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley seems to have kidded itself into thinking that Harper might care about internal democracy, despite all evidence being to the contrary:

A Conservative riding association in northern Nova Scotia is defying Stephen Harper and standing behind renegade MP Bill Casey, leaving the prime minister with the choice to either reverse course or brush aside the wishes of local Tories...

(T)he Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley riding association's board voted Sunday to reinforce Casey's nomination, putting the longtime MP's future as a Conservative candidate back in Harper's hands.

"There is a democratic process in place, they nominated me once, they reinforced that tonight," Casey said in an interview following riding association's two-hour meeting in Truro, N.S.

"If (Harper) believes in the democratic process, then that decision will hold."

Casey and riding association president Scott Armstrong acknowledged that Harper has the final say on candidate nominations, but they remained hopeful the prime minister would change his mind.

Now, the riding association deserves credit for standing up for its own principles. But it's hard to believe that it was completely unaware of either Harper's stated refusal to countenance independent thought like Casey's, or the Cons' track record of suppressing anything approaching internal democracy - making its appeal to some "belief in the democratic process" look utterly naive at best. And the more Harper's chosen opponents (whether within the Cons or the Libs) continue to pretend there's reason to assume the best of him, the less likely Canadian voters are to be skeptical enough of Harper to avoid writing him a blank cheque in the next federal election.