It's easy to appear as though you're keeping your head when you're fake. The information that comes from the entire party is tightly controlled and he mostly throws his cabinet ministers and MPs in the line of fire, while he hides.
Why should he hide, CC? He has a solid majority and years before the next election! There's a lot of criticism from some groups, but those are mostly people who would never vote for him anyway!
Who cares what they think? We've heard such noises after every election in Canada's history!
I think many of his critics are overplaying their hand. They are starting to sound shrill and irrational, even when Harper is deserving of criticism! When they start to make mountains out of molehills and make big cases out of things that Joe Average couldn't care less about they start to look and sound like the Loony Left of 1980's Britain.
That is a VERY dumb thing to do politically! Times have changed and we have an older voting demographic. Being old doesn't make you any more or less right in your political choices but it DOES make you less impressed with shouting and "rah rah"! An older voter likes to back what seems to make sense, even if he's wrong about it. Harper fits that model. The Occupy movement does not!
The Left runs a very real risk of making themselves look like a bunch of braying adolescents, noisily sounding fire and fury but signifying nothing, as the old poem goes. This is not to say that the Left is always wrong, just that their presentation and image can hurt their cause rather than help.
Sadly for the NDP, they show no signs of getting a leader as down to earth and practical as Jack. At least, not so far.
As for the Liberals, they desperately need another Chretien! Alas, it looks like they will end up with another Dion or worse yet, a Hedy Fry clone!
Harper has successfully turned the tables! It's not that he's a great choice but that he has no effective competition!
That's what kept Chretien in power all those years. Such situations are NOT good for Canada!