Way back in the olden thymes, everyone and I mean everyone believed that the weird fuzzy-wuzzy fascism of the Democratic Party was settled policy. Only lunatics and fans of Hitler thought otherwise. After all, the 1964 election had proved it! We did not yet have science! but the defeat of Goldwater was the next best thing. There could be only two types politics, hard-boiled liberalism and soft-boiled liberalism.

People could be forgiven for assuming that was true. Goldwater was recklessly described as a lunatic, who wanted to blow up the world. He was not, but the press and all the beautiful people hooted and roared when LBJ sent out psychologist claiming that Goldwater was deranged. As an aside, expect this to happen with Trump and Carson, except it will be economists.

That meant the choices before the voters would be between the metastasizing welfare state of the Republicans or the metastasizing welfare state of Democrats. In other words, you could have any color car you wanted as long as it was black. There was no turning back the clock and going back to the dark days when things were better. No sirree, it was all settled. All the smart people said so and if you said otherwise, you were not smart, maybe even crazy.

The weird thing about the Reagan years is they may as well have never happened. All the good that was done in those years has been rolled back and some of it so quickly it is hard remember that was ever done. What’s crazier, is immediately after Reagan, his party went right back to believing what they believed before he won two landslide elections. That is, they had to be Democrat-lite in order to win elections.

One of the reasons the GOP is in trouble today is their insistence on being a slightly less crazy version of the Democrats. That has its appeals as there are always voters out there afraid to rock the boat. That and it promises to keep the fanatics in the liberal press corp at bay. The trouble is the bulk of the people who would like an alternative to the Liberal Democrats can’t stomach the trimmers and compromisers the GOP is offering up.

Truman said it, I think, when the people get the choice between a Democrat and a Democrat, they pick the Democrat. That’s the dilemma facing the GOP these days and it appears to be what has unmanned the Conservatives in Canada yesterday. Given the choice between something and nothing, the people chose something even though that something is as dumb as a goldfish.

The last time I had any reason to care about a Trudeau, the new Prime Minister’s mother was running around showing her beaver to the public. Margaret Trudeau was good looking piece of tail back in the day, dumb as a plank, but that’s probably why the geezerly Pierre married her. Too bad her son and Canada’s next leader got her brains and his old man’s megalomania.

“We beat fear with hope,” Trudeau said. “We beat cynicism with hard work. We beat negative, divisive politics with a positive vision that brings Canadians together.”

How is it possible for a fully formed adult to say such idiotic things in public? Political speech in the mass media age is aimed at the functionally retarded, but even by that low standard this drivel is embarrassing. Worse, it’s unmanly and mean. You won. Be honorable in victory you sniveling punk. But then again, why should he? The voters just voted in an insipid punk. He’s just giving them what they want.

Nature abhors a vacuum so when the responsible people refuse to be responsible, the irresponsible get to run wild. In this case, the people claiming to represent the sane and sensible Canadian could not be bothered to take the fight to the howling crazies so the howling crazies won. Again, given the choice between something and nothing people always pick something.

This reminds me of something. A few years back I was at an event for a friend and present at the event was the wife of a Canadian official. We talked a bit about politics and she made the comment that in Canada, the conservatives were not extreme like they are in the US. I nearly bust out laughing, thinking of Mitt Romney as extreme, other than extremely dull. But, she made clear that it was very important to Canadian conservative to not be viewed as too far apart form the the rest.

The lesson that will be drawn by the Canadian Conservative party officials is that Harper was too hard edged and he was insufficiently deferential to the Left. The next time, they must beg harder. It’s the same lesson the American Right “learns” after every election, win or lose. No matter the result, they must grovel harder next time.

Today, the little mushroom people of Nova Scotia weep for their country.