04.11.2011 06:50 AM

KCCCC Day 17: One day to the debates!


40 Comments

  1. MontrealElite says:

    So will anyone watch the election results if the Habs are playing on May 2?

  2. Harith says:

    Wonder if Harper will have cue cards on him again.

  3. Cat says:

    If Ignatieff raises any one of the dozen issues no one cares about he’s done. If he’s more about bashing the other guy than singing from his own platform he’s also done. His record? What is it?

    • Ted H says:

      The question is what is Harper’s record. He has basically done nothing. A few baubles to targeted demographics, spent the money the Liberals put in the bank, claimed as his own Canada’s strong economy when he actually did nil on that file, introduced a new level of nastiness into Canadian political discourse. No, it’s not Ignatieff who has to support his record. Since WK mentioned Mulroney I love one of his quotes. ” The Conservatives are the Reform Party in pantihose”.

      • Patrick Hamilton says:

        The quote I think actually was the Canadian Alliance are the Reform Party in pantyhose……and lets be clear here, had it not been for the blessing of “lyin Brian”….no merger between the Progressive Conservative Party and the Canadian Alliance would have taken place. He recommended it to Peter MacKay, “to bring the family back together”, as I recall, and we, the ordinary members, bought into the ruse……the only ones not culpable for this disasterous “un-holy Alliance” are Joe Clark, Andre Bachand, Scott Brison, Joe Hueglin, and David Orchard and his Odites…..knowing what I know now, as far as Im concerned, we shouldve committed fratricide…..

      • Patrick Hamilton says:

        The quote I think actually was the Canadian Alliance are the Reform Party in pantyhose……and lets be clear here, had it not been for the blessing of “lyin Brian”….no merger between the Progressive Conservative Party and the Canadian Alliance would have taken place. He recommended it to Peter MacKay, “to bring the family back together”, as I recall, and we, the ordinary members, fell for it, Im ashamed to say……the only ones not culpable for this disasterous “un-holy Alliance” are Joe Clark, Andre Bachand, Scott Brison, Joe Hueglin, and David Orchard and his Odites…..knowing what I know now, as far as Im concerned, we shouldve committed fratricide…..

    • MontrealElite says:

      Kind of like you are done here whenever you post.

    • dave says:

      A Conserv whining about someone else “bashing the other guy!” The party of snide, snigger and sneer at its best!
      I love it.

    • Chris says:

      Ok, so how will Harper respond when he gets pounded on over the G8 slush fund vote buying spending spree?

  4. bell says:

    Right now, this year, this month, this week people care first and foremost about their jobs and the economy. Harper will just bring every discussion back to that. The rest will try to move him on to all the other stuff. He will just keep ignoring them and talk economy. People will be frustrated that Harper hid from all the other discusions and liberals will fill discussion forums like this calling Harper a chicken. People will then go back to watching hockey and ignoring the stupid campaigning. On voting day many won’t bother, those that do will be thinking about their job or their lack of one, will remember Harper was the only leader obsessed over the economy, hold their nose and vote Conservative.

    Liberals will be thinking, geeze Iggy was better than we thought. Just bad timing.

  5. MJH says:

    Watch for the Coalition gang up on Harper tomorrow night. If severe enough it will turn listeners off.

  6. Chris says:

    Phone rings this morning:

    “Hello this is Joe Smith from Voter Outreach calling on behalf of Stephen Harper”

    “Ok……”

    “As you know, the Micheal Ignatieff led coalition forced this unneccesary election”

    “Thats not true.”

    “Oh.”

    “I think we’re done here.” CLICK.

    • And now your name is (or will be soon) permanently inscribed in the Conservatives CIMS data warehouse system which contains vast amounts of intrusive data on Canadians. It is safe to say there ins’t a ‘happy face’ beside your name on the lookup screens.

      On my record I suspect I’ve got an icon depicting the Dark Lord himself sending lightening bolts through my body. I’ve not had a phone call from the CPC party, my former party, since I became one of the ringleaders of the group trying to oust David Emerson for negotiating to cross the floor and join forces with the Dark Lord less than 24 hours after being re-elected as a Liberal.

  7. Michael Behiels says:

    You forgot to mention Brian Lilly’s dirty diatribe against Michael Ignatieff because he voted in the UK and ostensibly in a US election. It appears that he did so quite legally in both cases but of course, for Lilly and the Reformatories this makes him a traitor.

    Like all Republican Reformatories, who are staunch pro right-wing American nationalists, Lilly is being highly hypocritical of Ignatieff for being supportive of the progressive wing of the American Democratic Party. For Lilly it is fine for Reformatories and their Leader to be very pro-American Republican Party but it is treasonous for liberal-minded Canadians to be supportive of US progressive democrats and independents

    The rampant Evangelical Christian nationalist xenophobia that fuels the Harper and his goons in the CP War Room, with the full backing of journalists like Lilly and many others, has changed the nature of Canadian politics over the passed two decades.

    There is now a very new/old and powerful paradigm at play in Canadian politics. It is one that Canadians have not experience for nearly a century.

    Harper’s British-Canadian — revised by American New Right Conservatism — Evangelical Christian Nationalism is trying desperately to trump the long established progressive, outwardly looking, inclusive Liberal secular nationalism that has dominated Canadian politics since WW II.

    If the Reformatories manage to destroy the progressive liberal secular nationalism that flourished throughout Canada and across all party, class, and gender lines, they will produce a generation of social and religious turmoil and friction.

    This is precisely what happened during the era when a powerful yet puerile British-Canadian Conservative nationalism, eventually embraced and promoted by Conservative Leader and then Prime Minister Robert Borden, dominated Canadian politics between 1890 and 1921. It was very, very a nasty era characterized by the politics of race and religion and rampant discrimination against non-British immigrants and French Canadian Catholics all across the country.

    And we all know where this extreme, exclusive form of British-Canadian Protestant nationalism lead – into the Great War and the Conscription Crisis of 1917, a crisis that almost destroyed Canadian unity. It took a generation of hard work at all levels of society to rebuild Canadian unity.

    Harper’s British Canadian version of a very divisive American born and bred Evangelical Christian Nationalism, one constructed on a fear of others and a demand that all immigrants conform to the New Right’s conservative social values and set aside their differences, is on the march throughout Canada.

    This development is being fueled by Harper’s well-tuned and loudly proclaimed politics of fear and intimidation, based especially on the fear of others — the foreigners (real or imagined) within our gates.

    Tribal forms of conservative nationalism, old and new, are very powerful forces that can be, and most often are, fueled, used and abused by politic leaders who fail to understand that these ideologies cannot be controlled once unleashed on an unsuspecting citizens faced with socio-economic and cultural changes they do not want or do not understand.

    Progressive-minded Canadians have to become aware of the new paradigm at work in Canadian society and politics. If they ignore what is happening they will be thrust willy-nilly into a brave new world of New Right Conservative Christian nationalism that will determine their future as well as that of their children.

    • Roger says:

      No room for Christians in the big red tent?…..

      Warren, you`ll nned to cancel your membership as I believe Catholicism would not be tolerated.

      • Warren says:

        I haven’t been tolerated by anyone for years.

      • Michael Behiels says:

        I am very confident that Warren is not an ‘Evangelical Catholic’ of any description.

        Canada has lots of liberal-minded Christians. Unfortunately they are getting a bum rap thanks to the more radical, narrow-minded Evangelical Christians who have come to the fore with a questionable agenda and their demand that the state carry out their agenda and impose it on everybody else.

        Separation of church and state is essential for all stable, pluralistic democracies. Otherwise it is constant political civil war.

        The problem is when you mix religion and nationalism, as the Harper gang has done by embracing a tribal form of ‘White Guy’ Evangelical Christian nationalism, because this explosive fusion is by its very nature very intolerant of ‘others’.

    • While Canadian citizens do not have the automatic right to reside in the UK, those who do have the right to vote and run for political office. Since running for the British House of Commons is an elected position, there is no need to give up Canadian citizenship.

  8. MontrealElite says:

    And the hits keep on coming!

    Tories misinformed Parliament on G8 fund, may have broken law: auditor general

    http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/breakingnews/tories-misinformed-parliament-on-g8-fund-may-have-broken-law-auditor-general-119595104.html

  9. catherine says:

    Warren, what’s up with the candidate in Quebec, Forbes, refusing to withdraw and apparently the LPC cannot force him? He is starting to look a lot like a cunning plant from another party. Do you know if this has ever happened previously – where the candidate refuses to withdraw or run as an independent, even after it is clear that the party will campaign against him?

  10. JS Rothwell says:

    True Harper isn’t like Nixon, maybe Turkmenbashi

  11. smelter rat says:

    Geez Gord, he sounds perfect for the CPC. Maybe if their tent was just a little bigger….

  12. James says:

    Okay, still no Liberal surge, Conservatives back up to 41.3% today. If Iggy doesn’t turn Liberal fortunes around after the debates this week, the Liberals have an uphill, daunting struggle all the way until May 2nd.

    I don’t believe the debates will matter much; people’s voting intentions have pretty much already crystallized. The one province where things are still in flux is Quebec: I predict the Bloc will tank as Quebecers decide that the time has come to be part of the country’s governance and not be sitting on the sidelines. The Bloc MPs are political lifers who just want to hang on forever; they’re completely devoid of any new ideas.

    Who on earth cares what Mulroney thinks, Warren. The country has long since moved on from him, especially since the tawdry Schreiber affair. He and Mila should just stick to the charity ball/cocktail party circuit.

    • The Doctor says:

      Agreed about Quebec — very strange what’s going on there, very unpredictable — especially with the NDP polling surprisingly well.

      • James says:

        All three federalist parties are doing well. Watch for a “Quebec surprise” in this election. I think the Bloc is toast and all the nationalist pundits and journalists in Quebec will be proven wrong.

  13. The Other Jim says:

    I made the mistake of clicking on the “Liz is Heard From” link. Elizabeth May seems like a nice person, but her political persona just drives me nuts. There are only a handful of politicians who I’d really like to see get their tails kicked electorally (Rob Anders & Cheryl Gallant, come on down!), but she seems to move higher up on that list every time I hear her complain about not being included in the debates.

    I just find it sad that the Green Party has turned into the “Let Elizabeth May Sit at the Grown Ups Table” party. While I wouldn’t have objected to the Greens being included in the debate (eligibility to receive the per voter subsidy is a reasonable way to determine eligibility), her exclusion is hardly the travesty that she’s made it out to be (having a member of the House at dissolution is an equally reasonable way to determine eligibility).

    I once had a soft spot for the Greens. Pre-May, they were in some respects a “progressive conservative” party, albeit one with a focus on environmental issues. They had many, earnest local candidates who genuinely wanted to make Canada a better, greener place (as opposed to the more personally ambitious political types typical of the other parties). After May became leader, the Greens adopted more of an anti-carbon single issue approach. This development was disappointing, but not out-of-step with the broader Environmental movement. In the 2008 election, May’s message seemed to be more about how bad Stephen Harper was, rather than any cohesive Green platform. She went so far as to comment that the world was on the edge of a “global apocalypse” and that Canadians needed to prevent it by getting rid of Harper no matter what. Points for hyperbole, I guess, but I think a “mainstream” party can and should do better than that.

    Since 2008, even with the benefit of the vote subsidy, they’ve failed to develop any sort of concrete vision to appeal to voters, save for a ridiculous campaign by the Young Greens talking about how their parents had f’d up the planet (how enlightened of them!) but they could save it. Despite having greater financial resources than at anytime in their history, the Greens have managed to become less, not more, relevant to the national debate. Whining about the reality of that situation doesn’t make them seem any more deserving of serious political consideration.

    It is understandable that the Greens would fight to get into the debate, however this new moaning that the consortium changing the date of one debate is somehow evidence of their great conspiracy against Ms May just seems juvenile. The networks sacrifice valuable prime time for the debates. They may not lose money on them (I honestly don’t know), but they will certainly make less money in those time slots than they would showing whatever garbage would normally be broadcast. It is their dime, their risk, and their choice as to who they want to include. They don’t want Ms May and have a reasonable argument as to why she shouldn’t be included. If “Hockey 1, Democracy 0” is the best the Greens can come up with, then I suspect that the consortium made the right choice. Now, please Ms May, just go away!

    • kyliep says:

      Well said, Jim. The entire point of the Green Party in this election seems to be to win one seat in BC for Elizabeth May. My guess is the effect of their campaign will be to re-elect the Conservative MP Gary Lunn in that riding, and also possibly split the non-Harper vote further and deliver seats to Conservatives in other parts of the country.

      • The Other Jim says:

        FWIW, threehundredeight.com projects her finishing second with 26% of the vote in that riding. Lunn is projected at 36.7%, which is would be at the bottom of the range for successful election. This certainly suggests that he might otherwise be vulnerable to a strong Liberal or NDP candidate, but I’m not familiar enough with that riding to know if May is, indeed, spoiling a potential pick-up for the opposition.

        As a complete aside, I really digging that website. I’m quite interested to see how close their final individual riding projections will be to the actual vote tallies.

        • The Doctor says:

          TOJ, great post re: the Greens. They have totally dropped the ball on the policy front, IMO, in not coming up with a platform that differentiates themselves sufficiently from the NDP and the Liberals.

          RE 308.com, I agree it’s a neat webiste. But some of their current local race assessments seem highly questionable to me. E.g., Vancouver South is supposed to be a very tight race. Dosanjh won it in a mega-squeaker last time, the CPC is heavily targeting that riding, yet 308.com had the LPC with a gigantic (e.g., 10-20) point lead last time I checked. Nice news for Team Liberal, but let’s get serious. That cannot be accurate, and Liberals should expect the tough fight that everyone else has been predicting there.

          Another example: the Liberals probably will win Vancouver Quadra, but 308.com has them with a 20 point lead, which seems too big to me. Deb Meredith almost took that seat away from Joyce Murray a by-election, Murray got back to a comfy win last time. My guess is the final margin will be more like 5-10 points.

          • Warren says:

            Damn, I miss BC.

          • The Other Jim says:

            lol – Yeah, I certainly wouldn’t base stop campaigning just because a predictive model says that I’m up by 20 points. It will be really neat, though, to see if the model winds up being valid and reliable at the riding level.

  14. Patrick Hamilton says:

    So Mr Mulroney doesnt like Stephen Harper much?…….Thanks Brian, after selling our party, along with the likes Peter MacKay, and Loyola Hearn, down the river to these Reform idjits…..I used to think Joe Clark was crazy for not going along with the merger……seems he was right all along, and we, the majority of ordinary members, got it all wrong….”Oh no, but these Reformers have changed” we were told…..we bought it hook, line, and sinker…..I held my nose for two years, and then left in disgust……Mr. Mulroneys criticism of Mr. Harper seems to be in the same vane as Tom Flanagan’s…….They helped create the monster, and now theyre critical of it?…..Rich indeed….
    Had I known what was in store for us, I would have voted for David Orchard.

  15. Das Globen? I thought it was “Der Globus.” Warren, you could be writing in some non-standard German dialect. Nein oder nee? As some of you have read previously, I like the Luxembourgish language. It’s Germanic. I do like saying “Du ass gros.” No, it does not mean “You are butt ugly.” It means “You are big.”

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