Anyone who is a political junkie now knows that during this past week the FBI conducted an extensive search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. The intention was to retrieve government documents that Trump had squirreled away from the White House and Oval Office, and which rightfully should have been turned over to the historical records section of the Library of Congress.
Republicans first reacted to the search as being nothing more than an out-of-control Biden administration deliberately using the American judicial system as a weapon targeting a former political adversary, Donald Trump, who two years later is still peddling the myth that he actually won the 2020 presidential race, and is even now seriously thinking of re-running for the Presidency in 2024. Six weeks ago when inflation was hitting the 8 per cent barrier, gas prices were at a premium, Roe v Wade had just been overturned and there were still widespread delays holding back inventory restocking and product shortages, Republicans held a strategic advantage in political sway over a Biden administration that couldn’t get any reasonable legislation through Congress, and seemed destined to retake the majority in the House of Representatives in the upcoming mid-term elections.
Six weeks ago when Trump was no longer the major headline in virtually every political story in the U.S., Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was gaining traction for a run as a presidential candidate, ironically utilizing the hate-mongering rhetoric of white persecution, critical race theory influence upon historical reality, transgender rights denial and “woke” school teachers failing to teach students about “the real America”. Now he sullenly awaits on the sidelines as the media treats him as an afterthought to Trump, and the various and sundry knuckle dragging members of America’s extremist groups “lock and load” in preparation for what they see as the civil war that must be fought in order for their “rights to be restored.”
Meanwhile, Biden’s ratings are now soaring, as inflation is now rapidly receding, gas prices are coming down as Russia’s campaign against Ukraine appears to be stalling, and now Congress has passed two bills, one dealing (only on a minor level, though) with strengthening gun control legislation, while the Senate has finally found a majority willing to pass an extensive budget (again, well pared down below progressive membership expectations) to address climate change, prescription drug prices and simple tax reform.
Here in Canada, our conservative factions were using the same weaponry, firearms, inflation and supply chain management issues to pillory the federal Liberals led by PM Justin Trudeau. Here, however, these problems were increasingly being dwarfed by a post-Covid pandemic cataclysm that has seen our health care systems laid to waste by nurse and doctor burn-out, massive resignations and the closures of various medical emergency services that serve as the heartbeat of our health care delivery. Compounding these troubling issues, we have seen the three premiers in Canada who had until recently prioritized the federally implemented “carbon tax” as their number one concern – Ontario’s Doug Ford, Alberta’s Jason Kenney and Saskatchewan’s Scott Moe – see their systems having crashed the most in attempting to serve public needs.
In an effort to maintain a foothold in its voter base, the Saskatchewan Party and Premier Moe have further enraged public sentiment by formulating policies that pander to the factions of hard right voters supporting among other things the Freedom Convoy assault upon Ottawa and the self-serving efforts of a still powerful petroleum lobby. Moe and Kenney in particular have been gainfully assisted in their choosing to maintain focus upon the infrastructure of Big Oil by the seemingly endless rising of crude oil prices that have allowed their provincial budgets to increase royalty payment for product extraction.
Saskatchewan in particular continues to face a future in which the relative value of the petroleum industry will wane as the after-effects of climate change expose our rural community’s inability to adapt agricultural practices necessary to help continue to feed our planet’s now-population of more than 8 billion people. Equally ironic, we continue to embrace an economic system whose level of success is only measured by its ability to expand production levels and resource exploitation, and discrepancy in the distribution of wealth between the richest and poorest among us has only ever attained such a gap during the era of the French Revolution in the late 1700’s.
Voters in Saskatchewan are slowly yet surely turning their attention towards what needs to be done to correct the economic direction of this province, not to mention restore the integrity of a health care system this province helped to shape for the nation. Premier Moe’s popularity is now at a level only moderately better than that of our Prime Minister, of whom Moe desperately continues to point fingers at as being the primary source of our various failings. More to his chagrin, this stubborn unwillingness to change our economic direction is resulting in MLA’s in many regions of this province now considering their futures as politicians as the 2024 election approaches, and none so than here in the Prince Albert region.
Were you to have come into Prince Albert along Highway 3 coming from Birch Hills, Melfort or Muskoday, you would have noticed a change in the billboards advertising for the Saskatchewan Party. A billboard once featuring Prince Albert MLA’s Joe Hargrave and Alana Ross locked in sweet embrace with the premier in a sign of machismo “strength” is gone, replaced by the now lonely features of former Minister of almost everything that could impede economic promise for the north, that being Mr. Hargrave.
With Hargrave’s “California Dreaming” adventures over last year’s trip during a major Covid crisis, it was already written somewhere that he wasn’t going to be able to sustain another attempt at remaining MLA for Prince Albert Carleton, and has probably already given his notice to the Party’s Executive. Ms. Ross, on the other hand, has never been given any opportunity to project a meaningful presence in the policies being offered by the provincial government.
When combined with Nadine Wilson’s embracing the vote of our “Karen” population, Delbert Kirsch’s continuing invisibility in Batoche issues, and the premier receiving increased censure within his own riding that recently saw Shellbrook hospital facilities momentarily come close to closure, the Saskatchewan Party’s focus upon the actual northern border of the province being some invisible line just north of Rosthern, Carla Beck may not have to wait too long after all before finally becoming the premier that is, like Roy Romanow, having to show the way to the rest of the province in how to govern effectively.
My advice to Premier Moe: Keep blaming Justin, young fellow; that tactic is really paying dividends for you, don’t you think?
Probably not…
