Johannes Wheeldon Has Three Reasons For an Election. I have a Million

Adjunct Professor of law at Heritage University, Johannes Wheeldon, outlines three reasons to have a fall election. I can think of a million reasons to get rid of this destructive government while we still have a few fragments of Canada left.

The ideological idiocy of the Harper-led minority this summer on the census, crime, and climate has highlighted the atrocious state of Canadian governance. Even conservative, bow tie wearing columnists have gotten into the act. Recently, a former Harper pol may have tipped his hand by suggesting a fall election was unlikely. While the Conservatives appear scared to death of asking the public where they stand, here are three reasons why I think we are likely to see a fall election in Canada.

One of the reasons Wheeldon gives, is that we have a Democrat in the White House and Canadians have traditionally followed the U.S. with their votes. Reagan-Mulroney, Clinton-Chretien, Bush-Harper. And of course we all know about the feuds between Kennedy and Diefenbaker, until Pearson and Trudeau came on board. Trudeau broke the mould for a bit, when he lasted through Nixon and Carter. But it is a good point. And Obama clearly dislikes Harper.

I think that Harper's party has run out of ideas and they're just coasting, antagonizing everyone, while winning over no one. Andrew Coyne rightfully calls it: A know-nothing strain of conservatism

You can see it in the sneering references to Michael Ignatieff’s Harvard tenure, in the repeated denunciations of “elites” and “intellectuals.” In the partial dismantling of the census, we reach the final stage: not just hostile to experts, but to knowledge.

... The result is a uniquely nasty, know-nothing strain of conservatism. The Thatcher Tories, unlike their forebears, weren’t anti-intellectual: her cabinet contained some of Britain’s most fertile social and political minds. Ronald Reagan, though hardly an intellectual, did not demonize expert opinion, or pit the educated classes against the rest. Even today’s Republican party, as know-nothing as it sometimes appears, relies heavily on a network of think tanks to provide it with intellectual heft. Only in Canada have expertise and ideas been so brutally cast aside. On the level of principle, this is appalling. A society that holds education and expertise in contempt, no less than one that disdains commerce or entrepreneurship, is dying. To whip up popular hostility to intellectuals is to invite the public to jump on its own funeral pyre.

He's even attacking those advocating for veterans.

And he's instigating a culture war against Canadians:

Some might think it’s a battle about government censorship of the arts in Canada. Perhaps. But I think it’s about something even more fundamental: A culture war between Conservatives and the left that was a major theme in the last general election and will almost certainly be a dominant theme in the next one.

And considering that the right makes up about 1/3 of Canadians, it means he's waged war on the majority.

What a strange man.