I'm on the record as supporting recreational drug use, and I further think that cocaine should be reclassified as a food group. And all things being equal, it could very well be that drugs make Rob Ford a better person. God knows that he could hardly be any dumber.
It isn't the drugs that bother me so much about the latest of la Ford follies. It's the hypocrisy and the arrogance. If there's one thing that's almost certain to set me off, it's the combination of arrogance and stupidity in a single person. I'd say that it's almost a chemical reaction, but that might be the blow talking.
More importantly, this entire clusterfuck reinforces an already well-established narrative of what a balls-out disaster this mayor has been. He can't do anything right, not even something as innocuous as handling the fallout of smoking crack with a gang of Somali narcotic peddlers.
Ford wasn't even bothering to deny this one for an entire week, which is unusual. Whenever he creates a giant mess of things, which happens about every other week, he gets out front and denies it, even though he's always lying. He did call the reporting of Gawker and the Toronto Star ridiculous, but that's not exactly a denial. There very probably are things in the story that are ridiculous, but Ford didn't actually address the core allegations in them.
When he finally did make a public statement last Friday, he went directly to the Clinton playbook, saying, "I do not use crack cocaine, nor am I am I an addict of crack cocaine." The use of the present tense is notable. And in fairness, a glass pipe was seen nowhere near the podium.
The only reason I think this story is important at all - outside of the obvious factor of Hizzoner's inability to deal with it prudently - is because this is the same stupid bastard who once demanded that convicted criminals be subjected to a Stalinist regime of internal exile for convicted criminals. And given that he can now be fairly classified as a one-man crime spree himself, Rob Ford has got to go.
Do I think that he will? Short answer? No, I don't.
Etobicoke Slim has too much pride and too few brains. He insists that he's willing to put himself up for election, but he isn't willing to do the one thing that could force one: resigning and declaring his candidacy in a by-election.
I howled like a retard at the prospect of a by-election last fall when it looked as if Ford's other contraventions of the law would force his removal, and I oppose one now. The idea of wasting seven to ten million dollars to feed Ford's demented hubris is anathema to me, and it should be to any fiscal conservative.
In the last seven days, no fewer than five of Etobicoke Slim's senior staff have quit or been fired. That the people closest to him have lost faith in the mayor should send a strong message to the public and, more importantly, Council.
Hizzoner hasn't accomplished much of anything after his first six months in office, two years ago. He's routinely humiliated by Council. The only person there who'll regularly side with the Brothers Ford is a brain-damaged Gino Boy like Georgio Mammolitti.
It doesn't matter if Rob Ford stays in office or not. In fact, it doesn't matter if he wins the next election, which is a distinct possibility. Oh, he'll destroy conservatism in this city for a fucking generation by way of his continuing and increasingly lunatic shenanigans.
The guy is a chronic fuck-up, a congenital liar and his only claim to conservatism is that he can pay for a massive subway expansion with nothing more than unicorn farts. The fact that he's doing crack might be the least objectionable thing about Rob Ford.
This is where modern conservatives always fall down. They love the rhetoric of their mongoloid figureheads more than they pay attention to their actions. You see that happening over and over again, and that's why winnable elections are being routinely lost.
By instinctively defending the shitheads on our side, we marginalize not only ourselves, but our ideas. By making heroes out people like Rob Ford and Sarah Palin, we pretty much make our agenda unelectable. In doing that, we guarantee that our base isn't broadened enough to win elections.
Sure, you can point to the 2010 U.S congressional elections and Ford's own victory, but that only proves that you aren't paying attention. Those victories came only because the governing Left overreached, not because of the merits of any argument put forward by the Right.
And no sooner than the Right was elected, they began overreaching. Look at the classically ignorant Tea Party. They presented themselves as libertarians, but as soon as they took office they started trying to legislate shit like birth control and effectively destroyed themselves. Most of the Tea Party governors elected in 2010 are on a trajectory to get annihilated next year.
Liberals aren't stupid. They learned important lessons from the way that conservatives marginalized them in the 1970s and '80s. And they've pretty much been on a winning streak ever since. When George W. Bush, Stephen Harper and even Rob Ford were elected, it was partly because they promised to preserve or even expand social spending. All three campaigned on that idea.
Mitt Romney and John McCain ran to the Republican base and suffered the worst defeats of any GOP presidential candidate where there wasn't a third-party candidate since 1964. The Wildrose Party in Alberta threw away a sure thing in Alberta by doing the same thing last year.
Now, if you listen to Mayor Ford and his impossibly dumb brother, you get the idea that they're just dying to fight an election over this scandal.
Well, here's the good news. They can. Any time they want. They'd just have to resign and declare their candidacies in a by-election. In Doug's case, the by-election would be automatic. In the case of the mayor, Council could appoint an interim mayor to fill out Ford's term, but if the demand was there, there'd almost certainly be an election.
But they're lying. That's why they haven't resigned yet.
Toronto is a very liberal city, I may not like it, but that's a fact. Ford won for two reasons; he was unopposed on the right (if you don't count the joke candidacy of Rocco Rossi) and roughly a dozen people ran to his left.
If a snap election were called tomorrow, the field would be narrowed down to about three candidates: Ford, John Tory and Oliva Chow. Chow would be alone on the Left in her ability to raise money and build an organization in a short period of time, say 60 days. And it's safe to say that "the Orientals" would "work like dogs" to elect her, in an effort to "take over."
As I write this, Etobicoke Slim's approval rating is at about 37%. The only way to win under those circumstances is to run against a divided left. And if Tory runs, that cuts down on Ford's support from conservatives who aren't abject idiots.
Rob Ford can't win a snap election, which is further proof of their bluster and abject fucking lying.
