The reviews are in

Gerald Caplan picks up on what looks to be an important connection between Stephen Harper and the U.S. Republicans' resentment-based philosophy and detachment from reality - and as a matter of personal judgment rather than merely political calculation:

Richard Nixon was perhaps the politician whose personal devils ate away at him most conspicuously, but like Harris he finally figured out how to win with them. In his day the enemy was New York liberals, opponents of the American invasion of Vietnam, blacks, university students, the pinko mainstream media and other enemies of the Silent Majority, now Palin's Real Americans.

It seems evident that some comparable resentment drives Stephen Harper, but in a very mysterious way...

Harper's attack on Ignatieff was another indication of the extremism of his partisanship. As we soon learned, it was based on an accurate report that Gordon Smith, a former deputy minister in Foreign Affairs, had speculated that the G8 could be replaced by a new body that didn't include Canada. That's an interesting issue and a potential problem for Canada. But that's not what Harper accused Ignatieff of saying. He accused him of wishing Canada was excluded from such a new body, of even recommending that it should be so excluded, which is an entirely different and dirty kettle of fish.

Now it seems to me that only partisanship of the most visceral kind could have interpreted the Gordon Smith comment (as attributed to Ignatieff) that way. Surely all normal folks would read the statement and understand that Smith was simply noting the need for Canadians to be aware that new players were becoming significant on the international scene. And it would be perfectly legitimate for Ignatieff to make a similar point.

No one who wasn't blinded by his own furies could believe a Canadian politician would ever say what Harper accused Ignatieff of saying. It would be simply suicidal. Yet Harper then used this ludicrous misinterpretation to introduce his favourite bogeyman – whether Ignatieff was a real Canadian anyway (shades of Sarah Palin). If I were a Conservative, I would seriously worry about the judgment of someone who could twist things in that way.

Harper: Hooray for Roads to Nowhere!

The most obvious reason why Stephen Harper wouldn't want to offer an opinion on Sarah Palin is the massive ideological chasm between her and the voters Harper needs to pacify before election day. But Bill Curry unintentionally highlights another factor: that Harper apparently manages to take great personal amusement in Palin's style of zero-benefit spending:

(Harper said) his favourite northern spot is Alert.

“It's the most northerly human habitation in the world,” he said. “The scenery there is really spectacular. It's mountains. It's fjords. And a great little thing there: There's a 14-kilometre road to nowhere.”

Mr. Harper said the road was built in the 1970s in the hope of making it to the next outpost.

“They just eventually concluded it would never get done,” he said.

Now, for those of us who tend to think that the federal government should be using public money for actual useful purposes, "great" is hardly the first word that would come to mind in describing an utter waste of resources. And that outcome certainly wouldn't be a positive factor in how we'd see the region where the waste took place.

But then, the Cons have shown all too clearly while in power that they're downright eager to throw large amounts of money into pits ranging from utterly useless programs to blatant vote-buying efforts. Which explains why Harper is able to see past waste as a matter for personal enjoyment - and also why it's long past time to get our public funds out of Harper's hands.