Someone’s been taking notes

It’s getting harder and harder not to draw the conclusion that certain people close to Glorious Leader have started to unconsciously, if not consciously, crib the Quebec nationalist rhetorical playbook.

First there was Danny Williams two Januaries ago, in his moment of triumph and triumphalism, basking in the glory of the only thing he’s really accomplished in the past four years:

I can tell you that I have never been more proud to call myself a Newfoundlander and Labradorian!

Actually, in his stilted delivery it came out more as:

I can tell you that I have never been more proud to call myself a Newfoundlander!

And Labradorian.

but it is to digress. The point was that he was almost perfectly channeling, and despite his linguistic handicap, perfectly translating, René Lévesque’s 1976 election-night PQ victory speech:

J’ai jamais, j’ai jamais pensé que je pourrais être aussi fier d’être Québécois que ce soir!

(Check out this awesome Radio-Canada video clip at about 5:24 into it.)

Then, last year, Danny melodramatically promised Lucien-Bouchardesque vague “dire consequences” if he didn’t get his way on the equalization file.

“Dire consequences like what?”, one is led to wonder? Give us more equalization, or we will separate from Canada, thereby making ourselves ineligible for any equalization payments at all?

Some people, of course, figured out that that is exactly what Danny meant by “dire consequences”.)

And now, in the second of at least two current articles in which The hysterically-named Independent massages the Great Man’s ego, “We” are quoted as saying:

He wants us all to be “masters of our own destiny,” and in control of our future.

Great Shades of Jean Lesage, and “maitres chez nous!”

Of course, nationalist or not, there were two things Jean Lesage wasn’t.

He wasn’t a crypto-separatist.

And he wasn’t stupid enough to think that increasing his province’s reliance on federal transfer payments and federal program spending was the path to becoming Masters in their own house.