With all due respect…

Scrap that.

To get respect, you got to earn respect, and this minority Conservative Government has done little to earn the reverence of Canadian voters.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s ruthless clan, a motley crew of ideological radicals, are so venomous in their quest to avoid relinquishing power that it never ceases to amaze and infuriate any sane political observer.

It is understandable that one would feel some empathy for the Conservatives, who’ve been flirting with an elusive majority that lies just beyond their gasp.

But their actions reek of paranoia, although you would never know it from Harper’s stiff hockey dad façade.

Nevertheless, a Stanfield fumble could be just around the corner, so when a potential fire starts, the Cons are on it like a pack of wolves on a moose carcass.

Take the fate of former senior diplomat, Richard Colvin, for example.

The poor guy blows the whistle on Afghan detainees at a House of Commons committee meeting, only to get his credibility trashed by Harper’s posse, sent out like Nazgûl to destroy the petty civil servant who poses such a valiant threat to their minority existence.

However, it’s not just the Con’s disproportionate responses to blips that periodically come up on their radar screen that get the fires of Mordor blazing.

The scheming Cons and their fine tuned propaganda machine are busy at work, plotting the castration of their political opponents and wiping out their historical glory.

Last November, under the guise of stepping up to the times to deal with an economic crisis, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, who spends like Paris Hilton with daddy’s credit card, announced a plan to end political funding to all political parties in 2009.

While only an unashamed partisan nimrod would support such a measure, seeing that money doled out to the parties will likely amount to less than 0.02 per cent of total Government expenditures in 2009, the move nearly led to the Government’s demise, only to be saved after given CPR by Her Majesty’s representative in Ottawa.

Lucky Harper picks up the fumble.

But they’re not satisfied trying to hinder their political adversaries’ ability to fight the next election, so the Cons have started working on the next batch of new Canadians, a group that traditionally votes Liberal.

The recently released guide for new Canadian citizens is certainly an improvement over its predecessor, but Immigration Minister Jason Kenney may have had more in mind when he included a popular photo of the 1982 signing of the Canadian constitution showing Queen Elizabeth alone at the table.

Former Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, who was at her side at the time of the signing, was thrown down the memory hole by Kenney’s staff, neatly photoshopped out of the picture in a crude move devised to wipe away any hint of Liberal association with the document that gives many newcomers rights that they may have previously been denied.

The list of vile Conservative party sanctioned propaganda keeps on growing, which includes a website featuring a bird defecating on former Liberal leader Stephane Dion, and the recent mailings sent out to Jewish neighbourhoods at the taxpayer’s expense.

Still not convinced of rabid Tory bloodthirstiness? Google some photos of Transport Minister John Baird.