04.05.2011 05:28 AM

In today’s Sun: Gordon and Bob are going to kill me for this

“If the Liberal Party of Canada ends up doing better than expected in Campaign 2011 — and, so far, the Grits are doing much better than anyone thought they would — they should give Bob Richardson and Gordon Ashworth a great big thank you.

In fact, if the Liberals somehow win back power, Richardson and Ashworth should be appointed to the Senate (one of them, I’m pretty sure, would accept).

They’re not household names, but they’d probably prefer it that way. The Toronto-based businessmen are partners in a modestly-sized consulting firm called the Devon Group.”

 

11 Comments

  1. Northern PoV says:

    We need a 30 second TV ad that shows the true F35 cost estimates from various credible sources and ties it directly to the contempt ruling.
    ie We need to explain why this ruling was important and not just a political manoeuvre. Something like this perhaps:
    Original F35 cost as per Harper
    Initial questions re costs
    Harper lame response
    PBO estimates
    Harpers response
    Growing Parliamentary frustration over lack of info on F35s
    Harper response
    US expert says we will pay double
    Harper response
    Historical contempt finding over F35 cost stonewalling
    A graphic showing the Harper estmate vs the various real costs estimates, then
    “When Harper gets caught hiding the real costs from Canadians what does he say?” “We don’t pay attention to political manoeuvres “
    On May 2 make Harper pay attention to you

  2. PoliticalPundit says:

    The campaign is just underway. The Liberals can’t afford to get ahead of themselves or to get complacent for a nano second.

    Please do not underestimate the nastiness to come out of the Reformatory War Room in Ottawa.

    That brutish character assassination gang will bomb the bridges in much the same way as the Mulroney War Room gang did to John Turner when he won the leadership debate in 1988. The Tory War Room gang’s character assassination of Turner was so thorough that the Liberal campaign went into a tailspin and Mulroney won that watershed election. We know what transpired after that, Meech,Charlottetown, scandals etc etc.

    There is much work to be done to close the wide gap between the CP and Liberals poll numbers and much can go wrong between now and May 2nd.

  3. PoliticalPundit says:

    Enclosed is my take on Paul Well’s assessment of why Harper will win on May 2nd. Check Well’s article out at:

    http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/04/04/harpers-game

    Remarkably prescient piece on Harper’s doom and gloom strategy. Scare the living daylights out of enough naive Canadians and you get your precious majority. La politique du pire!!

    As Flanagan says: Politics is War! And Harper is on the war path. According to Flanagan the Harper Conservatives should have won the 3rd Punic War in 2008 but came up short for a variety of reasons. Most importantly Canadians did not trust Harper. Harper’s response: Let’s get voters to distrust the opposition coalition even more than they distrust me! In short, Harper is the lesser of two evils.

    Harper’s low-bridging and bubble approach seems to be working in spades. Why? Because he has convinced a great many Canadians, who are being made to fear for their jobs or who are currently underemployed, that it is ‘Strongman Harper or Coalition Chaos’.

    This is why Harper framed the election around the coalition issue and which the Ignatieff team did not see coming. The idea of a dreaded coalition of immoral liberals and the beyond-the-pale socialists and secessionists, Harper is convinced, will scare the living daylights out of hard-pressed middle-class Canadians.

    Their internal polls confirmed this for the Tories so they based their entire election campaign launch on this scare tactic approach – drive the coalition idea until the big lie is firmly embedded in the minds of fearful Canadians. And it has worked in spades. Better the devil they know, Harper and his contempt of Parliament, than the devil, Ignatieff, they have been convinced is not a Canadian, does not have their interest at heart, and will leave Canada once defeated.

    This was Mackenzie King’s very successful mantra in 1935 (Its King or Chaos) against a beleaguered R. B. Bennett’s New Deal. King simply ridiculed Bennett, and offered little in terms of a platform except the prospect of freer trade with the United States.

    Politics is 99% perception and therefore has little to do with reason.

    Ignatieff now understands this reality but it just might be too late to attract disgruntled and fearful Canadian liberal-minded voters with a very different emotional message.

    Ignatieff can only turn around Harper’s polling momentum if he can convince, using a very emotional approach, NDP and Green voters, and perhaps a few federalist oriented Bloc voters, that a Harper majority government intends most certainly to kill the social service state and to relegate all the left-of-centre parties to the opposition benches for a generation.

    In short, Ignatieff has to turn the table and proclaim loud and clear: “It’s Harper AND Chaos!”

  4. The AG of Canada, Sheila Fraser, was to have released her department’s report on last year’s G20/G8 meetings.

    Many Canadians felt the government overstepped not just in spending but in restricting our fundamental liberties.

    It would not take much reminding to refresh the memories of Canadians of painful images captured then. Personally I think those stories are far more powerful than the discussion of wasteful fake lakes. Many Canadians felt we were a lesser country as a result of the police actions during those meetings.

    Layton / Duceppe and Ignatieff have all called on the government to release the report now. The report is germane to this election and the kind of Canada we want. Why won’t Harper release the report?

    Is he… chicken?

    • P.S. I realize that the A.G. properly reports to Parliament and since Parliament isn’t sitting, she won’t – indeed, can’t – release the report on her own.

      However the PMO does have an advance copy and surely he could find a way to release it if it were in his interest. I’ll bet anyone a nickel the report is not favourable to the gov-mint. But we can ask! Release the report! Release the report!

      Still… those images of liberties being taken away, on government orders, remain etched in my brain and I live on the other side of the country. What say you Toronto? Surely you’ve not forgotten.

    • Namesake says:

      They’ve also gone to court to try to block and/or redact a new report by another independent government watchdog, on the Afghan detainees issue:

      Harper government accused of trying to muzzle commission report into Afghan torture
      MURRAY BREWSTER
      OTTAWA— The Canadian Press
      Published Sunday, Apr. 03, 2011 10:07PM EDT

      http://urlm.in/hluz

      Wouldn’t do to let the voters make informed choices, now, would it.

  5. TDotRome says:

    The handout with the Metro paper is a stroke of genius. If I had been handed one personally, I would have been very impressed by the act. (I’m not out & about, so there was no possibility.)

    Even if someone just leaves it on the seat of a bus, someone else might pick it up. It’s a great idea.

  6. Robert V says:

    How could the Liberals NOT do better than expected?

  7. AmandaM says:

    That’s the point, Robert. You cut a guy down so low, that he has no other place to go than up. Classic – keep expectations low, and over-deliver on them. That’s called winning.

  8. I don’t see the brilliance Warren.

    Every photo is of Iggy eating something, woo hoo he likes food, I get already.

    However, the media have been beating up the Harper camp and not the Liberal War Room.

    Show me the Liberal War Room stuff.

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