The politics of exclusion

Sure, there's plenty to criticize about the Cons' sick removal of students from their London rally. But perhaps nothing tells the story of how the Cons view Canadians better than this tidbit about one of the people expelled:

A former police officer in his native Lebanon, he said he was embarrassed to be treated that way. “They hit me in my dignity.”

Ironically, Hamadi had a sign on his lawn for Jim Chahbar, the federal Conservative candidate for London-Fanshawe.

Now he has removed that sign, leaving only a sign for NDP candidate Irene Mathyssen, and he vows the rest of his family will vote for her, too.

Which looks to nicely illustrate a couple of points worth keeping in mind about the Cons.

First, the Cons' campaign is apparently as incompetent as it is thuggish. After all, having set up an advance list for the purpose of screening Harper's audience it apparently couldn't be bothered to compare that to a current list of sign locations which would show who was already demonstrating support for the Cons' candidates (at least until Hamadi's abrupt expulsion).

Which leads nicely to the second point, being the Cons' apparent idea of acceptable political involvement. So long as Hamadi was merely serving as a conduit for the Cons' advertising, all was apparently hunky-dory - but his merely taking an interest in judging the Cons' campaign for himself, even after having shown his support to the party, apparently made for a threat to the Cons' perceived self-interest that led to their shutting him out.