Just as the technique of politicians is often to fake sincerity, so the skill of the pundit is to fake intelligence. Whether through a newspaper column or TV panel, the bloviating pundit offers up insights that ordinary folks lack. It's a great gig if you can get away with it.

But what happens when pundits can't even pretend to have a clue about what's going on? It's been a hallmark of Stephen Harper's reign that we keep meeting this kind of embarrassing problem, threatening the very existence of the commentariat as a class. Think of the fiasco over the long-form census, which the Prime Minister invented though it never had a soupcon of sense about it. Neither ideology nor politics seemed at play. The punditocracy, like real people, were bamboozled.

Cross-posted from Catch 22 Harper Conservatives.

Op-ed by John Deverell*

As Chantal Hebert points out so very clearly in today's Toronto Star, the moment of democratic choice for Michael Ignatieff and the Liberal Party of Canada finally has come. 

It's precipitated in the Ontario federal riding of Vaughan where ubercop Julian Fantino has volunteered to carry the Harper Conservative banner in an upcoming by-election.

The federal by-elections this week affirmed what we knew already, except for Quebec. The stunner was the loss of Rivière du Loup through a 12 point shift from the Bloc to the Conservatives. Apparently at odds with recent polls showing the BQ in very good shape, this outcome is a cold shower over the warm blanket that Quebec has provided us in the "ROC", that somehow French Canada would protect us from a Conservative majority.

This part of Quebec is Mario Dumont territory that has always had a conservative streak to it. All the more alarming if that base is returning to the Conservative Party, which I am told out-organized the Bloc.