Wells, nail, head

Babble on.

Paul Wells has hit a particularly irksome nail squarely on the head, and I suspect Joe Clark is taking an Advil:

"There's not a lot of reconciliation in Mr. Harper's makeup," Clark says. "...By and large, instead of being a leader who has tried to find common ground among Canadians, he has too often followed policies that can be divisive."

Well. It's just a fact that Harper managed to reconcile the Progressive Conservative and Canadian Alliance memberships where Clark had been trying, with exceedingly modest results, for years. It's just a fact that Harper could have done so earlier and that the main obstacle to his success was Joe Clark. It's just a fact that when the two parties did replace themselves with a new unified party, the only ones who didn't join the spirit of reconciliation were the Clark faction of the Progressive Conservatives: Clark, Scott Brison, John Herron. And that only Clark was unwilling to reconcile with... the Liberals by joining them. The great conciliator of High River spent his last months in Parliament sitting alone as an independent. He did not wish it so and it's sad that it happened, but it did.

And he's just warming up with that passage. You should really read the whole thing. It's about time somebody said it, and I'm glad it was Wells, since he said it so very well.

Babble off.