Japnaam Singh writes encouragingly about the health of the Canadian body politic since the 2004 General Election. He makes the point that the Tory loss can in some respects be seen as a partial victory, and notes approvingly another commenter’s observation that the Tories’ strength (and relative Liberal weakness) has had a salutary effect on Commons committee work.

Unfortunately for my reputation as a prognosticator and general political wizard of the right-wing nutjob blogosphere, Japnaam quotes at length a post I wrote in 2003 condemning the (then) potential Alliance/PC merger. My commentary included this sparkling gem:

Given that they are not ideological allies, is there any practical (read: electoral) advantage for the Alliance in merging with the PC’s? In a word, no. The PC vote in the Atlantic and Quebec is going to go almost entirely to Martin in the next election, and likely the same thing in Ontario. Martin will win a bigger electoral margin than Mulroney in 1984: I’ll bet a U.S. dollar against anyone who says different.

Thankfully no-one took me up on this singularly misguided offer. Clearly Martin crashed and burned in June ’04, and now even his ideological brethren in the TorStar and Globe are starting to look sideways at him. In my own defense, I was certainly not alone in predicting a Massive Martin Victory… although, er, I pretty obviously did not admit at the time to any possibility of doubt.

I think the take-home message here is: authentic sounding declarations made with passionate intensity and a polysyllabic vocabulary are still pretty often just b.s.

I was Wrong With A Capital R about the Tory/Alliance merger. Wrong wrong wrong. And who knows: maybe my positions on gay marriage (pro), the Iraq War (pro), vaccination (pro), alternative medicine (con), and Paul Martin’s Pathetic Uselessness (er, pro?) are also wrong. Except for the last one, I think. As far as I can tell, Martin’s Pathetic Uselessness is approaching Axiomatic Certitude.