Friday Afternoon Links

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- Steve Rennie surveys a few more responses to the NDP's surge. But for those tempted to pay too much attention to the Cons' bravado, keep in mind that this is the same Harper spin machine that's tried to paint every single scandal, mistake and abuse coming out of the Cons' government as a political plus.

So let's set the record straight: particularly if the NDP can emerge as the focus of a movement for change across Canada, its rise figures to be the absolute worst possible result for both the Cons' current electoral hopes, and their long-term project of shifting Canada to the right.

- In case we hadn't yet seen a definitive enough statement of Stephen Harper's complete lack of plausibility in trying to demonize any coalition or other structure besides "most seats wins", we now have text and video confirmation that he himself once saw cooperative efforts to take down a party which won the most seats as both possible and desirable - at least until they didn't fit his purposes.

- Which nicely complements James Laxer's latest:

As the Prime Minister of a long-established, if complacent, democracy, Stephen Harper is supposed to say that for him the will of the people is paramount. He is supposed to declare that whatever House of Commons Canadians establish through their votes, he will accept it and work with it. He is supposed to say that he is the servant of the people.

Remarkably, Harper says none of these things. He insists that the only House of Commons he can work with after the election is one in which his party has a majority of seats. Should his party end up with the largest number of seats in a minority Parliament, he has declared that he cannot work with the other parties.

He will not alter a single jot or tittle in the budget he presented in March in a bid to win the support of one or more of the opposition parties. Quite simply, he does not recognize the legitimacy of the members of the other parties in the House of Commons, even though their presence in the House is the result of the expression of the will of the people. He is not required, he is saying, to heed the voices, the wisdom or the ideas of other Parliamentarians.
...
Not only does Stephen Harper refuse to acknowledge the will of the people and the legitimacy of parties that are not his own, he calls into question the essential principle of the Westminster system of parliamentary government. The principle is that a ministry must enjoy the confidence of the majority of the members of the House of Commons. Furthermore, if one ministry does not enjoy the confidence of the House, it is appropriate for the Governor General to seek to form an alternative ministry that does enjoy the confidence of the House.
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In the democratic world, Stephen Harper alone wraps himself in the cloak of: “Sans moi, le deluge.”

- Meanwhile, the Cons apparently haven't given up hope of fending off their likely loss of seats in Quebec. But they've decided to offer up nothing more than a dose of xenophobia in the effort.

- And finally, Democracy Now tells the story of the type of non-democracy the Cons would love to establish - as thanks to a Republican Supreme Court, the Koch brothers at the centre of the well-known right-wing noise machine have started intimidating employees into voting according to their instructions.

[Edit: fixed attribution as per comments.]