{"id":638,"date":"2005-12-21T03:12:00","date_gmt":"2005-12-21T08:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=638"},"modified":"2005-12-21T03:12:00","modified_gmt":"2005-12-21T08:12:00","slug":"frappeur-suppliant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=638","title":{"rendered":"Frappeur Suppliant"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Continuing my Quebec theme this evening, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ctv.ca\/\/servlet\/ArticleNews\/story\/CTVNews\/20051216\/ELXN_martin_duceppe_051220\/20051220?s_name=election2006&#038;no_ads=\">this <\/a>is interesting. I can&#8217;t see a Duceppe-Harper debate on unity happening; I suspect there would be problems with the election laws. But it&#8217;s an interesting proposition.<\/p>\n<p>On the one hand, it&#8217;s somewhat irresponsible for Harper to be doing this. It plays into the entire &#8220;referendum election&#8221; mentality and Stephen Harper is not the best voice to speak for Canada &#8211; I think even his supporters would agree to that. Duceppe is a master debater (<em>he he<\/em>) and would wipe the floor of Harper in a French debate.<\/p>\n<p>That said, this is a friggin&#8217; brilliant ploy by Harper. Regardless of whether or not Duceppe accepts, it makes Harper look gutsy. It puts an end to the &#8220;in bed with the separatists&#8221;, &#8220;can&#8217;t stand up for Canada&#8221;, and &#8220;only Liberals can fight separatism&#8221; rhetoric, while making Martin look weak. Come the January 9th and 10th debates, Harper can now say &#8220;I was willing to speak for Canada when you were not Mr. Martin&#8221;. The downside is, of course, if he debates and looks bad, but it&#8217;s likely a <em>beau risque<\/em> worth taking at this point for Harper, especially since such a debate is unlikely to happen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Continuing my Quebec theme this evening, this is interesting. I can&#8217;t see a Duceppe-Harper debate on unity happening; I suspect there would be problems with the election laws. But it&#8217;s an interesting proposition. On the one hand, it&#8217;s somewhat irresponsible for Harper to be doing this. It plays into the entire &#8220;referendum election&#8221; mentality and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}