Conservatives Dig Themselves in Deeper

James Moore can put on shows for the media all he wants, but as others have noted Conservatives have still completely failed to explain the tape!

Just come clean Mr. Moore and Mr. Harper explain the following transcript:

From CityNews:
“Zytaruk: "I mean, there was an insurance policy for a million dollars. Do you know anything about that?"
Harper: "I don't know the details. I know that there were discussions, uh, this is not for publication?"
Zytaruk: "This (inaudible) for the book. Not for the newspaper. This is for the book."
Harper: "Um, I don't know the details. I can tell you that I had told the individuals, I mean, they wanted to do it. But I told them they were wasting their time. I said Chuck had made up his mind, he was going to vote with the Liberals and I knew why and I respected the decision. But they were just, they were convinced there was, there were financial issues. There may or may not have been, but I said that's not, you know, I mean, I, that's not going to change."
Zytaruk: "You said (inaudible) beforehand and stuff? It wasn't even a party guy, or maybe some friends, if it was people actually in the party?"
Harper: "No, no, they were legitimately representing the party. I said don't press him. I mean, you have this theory that it's, you know, financial insecurity and, you know, just, you know, if that's what you're saying, make that case but don't press it. I don't think, my view was, my view had been for two or three weeks preceding it, was that Chuck was not going to force an election. I just, we had all kinds of our guys were calling him, and trying to persuade him, I mean, but I just had concluded that's where he stood and respected that."
Zytaruk: "Thank you for that. And when (inaudible)."
Harper: "But the, uh, the offer to Chuck was that it was only to replace financial considerations he might lose due to an election."
Zytaruk: "Oh, OK."
Harper: "OK? That's my understanding of what they were talking about."
Zytaruk: "But, the thing is, though, you made it clear you weren't big on the idea in the first place?"
Harper: "Well, I just thought Chuck had made up his mind, in my own view ..."
Zytaruk: "Oh, okay. So, it's not like, he's like, (inaudible)."
Harper: "I talked to Chuck myself. I talked to (inaudible). You know, I talked to him, oh, two or three weeks before that, and then several weeks before that. I mean, you know, I kind of had a sense of where he was going."
Zytaruk: "Well, thank you very much." ”

It’s already been admitted this is Mr. Harper’s voice, so if Conservatives are going to allege someone doctored the tape then the onus is on CONSERVATIVES to explain WHERE it was changed and WHO did it? The only people who had the tape that was analyzed were the publishers, the Conservative Party and the two experts the party hired. You can’t say the tape is doctored without saying who did it and what was changed. Oh you can’t answer those questions? Then your accusations can’t be taken seriously.

And you say the Liberals can’t use the tape, but the NDP, the publishers and the media still can? Does that make any sense at all? And the author says the tape was the full interview unchanged and offers an explanation for why the tape starts and stops at one point and the Conservatives aren’t disputing what he says? Even one of their OWN paid experts isn't at all sure any doctoring took place.

Well congratulations Conservatives you’ve just wasted people’s time and resurrected a scandal for yourself.

So yesterday Mr. Moore accomplished nothing in explaining the tape and I would be appalled if any court would take the Conservatives claim seriously.

Meanwhile I am disappointed that the NDP hasn’t helped to move the investigation of this in committee and we had Joe Comartin yesterday dismissing the tape as meaningless. It’s a bizarre point of view since obviously the Conservatives themselves feel the tapes to be quite meaningful as they wouldn’t have paid experts good money to look at them otherwise.

At least I will give Comartin credit though for making the point that if you were really serious about having an injunction go through you don’t apply for it to take effect in September you do it now and that if Conservatives were sure any of the actual relevant parts of the conversation (see the transcript above) were changed then James Moore would have certainly come out and said so. He did not.

So this whole fiasco is just another joke hatched I’m sure by the same people who orchestrated the "secret release" of the RCMP search warrant (for “In and Out”) and escape down the fire escape adventure.

Not only have the Conservatives failed to explain the tape, but it’s curious that not a single Conservative Party member has come forward that I know of to refute this story on the NAFTA memo leak.

“this one(investigation of the NAFTA memo leak) took nearly three months and more than $143,000 in private detective fees only to miss what the Star found in a few phone calls over a single weekend – that the leak was from Harper's inner circle. It wouldn't take much effort now for a determined administration to trace the leak from an official in the Prime Minister's Office to Republicans and then to the Associated Press. The names are known within government, as are the motives."

Why no libel suit against James Travers? Just like James Moore’s refusal to answer the most important questions re: Cadman, I expect no less re: NAFTA.

You would think though that the Conservatives would realize that providing no answers now only allows for these questions to be raised again in the next federal campaign. But I guess it’s too much to expect these guys to figure that out.

UPDATE: Kady O’Malley has more news on the story and more questions that need to be answered.

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