10.06.2011 11:11 PM

Right now

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53 Comments

  1. TheSilentObserver says:

    Speech was impressive, campaign was impressive, win was impressive. I can already hear teabagger heads exploding, It’s music to my ears

  2. Trevor says:

    Congratulations Warren!. I personally credit you with the Ontario Liberal Party winning
    a third term yesterday. I truly believe that you are the greatest political strategist in the
    history of our country. The Ontario Liberal Party was running 10 points or more behind
    the Hudak Conservatives less than a month ago, and you brought them back from the brink.

    Do you think there is any chance that McGuinty could convince one or two NDP and/or
    Conservative MPPs to cross the floor so as the Ontario Liberal Party could secure a proper
    majority government?. With the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario becoming so
    right-wing under the leadership of American Republican-style Tea Party Timmy Hudak,
    I have often wondered if the tiny minority of Red Tories who still remain in the
    Conservative caucus (I believe Elizabeth Witmer and Ted Arnott are the only
    Red Tories who remain). What do you think?.

  3. Congratulations are due to you, too, Warren — you never ever gave up, even when the polls were terrible. Its a lesson for Liberals everywhere.

  4. Trevor says:

    Congratulations Warren!. I personally credit you with the Ontario Liberal Party winning
    a third term yesterday. I truly believe that you are the greatest political strategist in the
    history of our country. The Ontario Liberal Party was running 10 points or more behind
    the Hudak Conservatives less than a month ago, and you brought them back from the brink.

    Do you think there is any chance that McGuinty could convince one or two NDP and/or
    Conservative MPPs to cross the floor so as the Ontario Liberal Party could secure a proper
    majority government?. With the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario becoming so
    right-wing under the leadership of American Republican-style Tea Party Timmy Hudak,
    I have often wondered if the tiny minority of Red Tories who still remain in the
    Conservative caucus (I believe Elizabeth Witmer and Ted Arnott are the only
    Red Tories who remain), would ever consider walking the floor over to the Liberals
    much as former Progressive Conservative Party of Canada MPs such as Scott Brison,
    John Herron, Belinda Stronach and Garth Turner did when they went over to the
    Liberal Party of Canada.

    What do you think?.

    PS: Sorry for posting this message twice, but I was unable to complete it the first time
    as it got cut off for some odd reason.

  5. MCBellecourt says:

    Congrats! (and I see that Benedict Baldy was defeated!)

    Too bad it wasn’t a majority, but one seat shy makes a strong minority.

    Good work, Mr. K.! (and a high five to all who worked on the campaign!)

  6. The Realist says:

    The advantage for the Conservatives losing this time around is that they won’t inherit the second dip of the Great Recession. And they can run against 12 years of Liberal corruption the next time in 2015.

    Yeah, the Liberals have a “minority”. They just need to promise the moon to one of the opposition members to cross the floor, and bam! They’ll have a majority.

    If not, well the NDP and the Conservatives can just vote no confidence when they smell blood to force an election before ’15.

    • VC says:

      Sadly, the vote of non-confidence wouldn’t work. For the Liberals to survive such a vote, they need 54 in their favour. They may have 53 right now, but the Speaker, by tradition, must side with the government. That would give the Liberals 54 votes: all they need to survive. I’m sure McGuinty is smart enough to ensure that no one from his caucus gets elected as Speaker for the next session. The 54th vote, then, would come from an opposition member.

      • Trevor says:

        Is what VC says true, Warren?. Can the Liberals avoid a hypothetical
        vote of non-confidence from both the Tories and NDP as the Speaker
        would have to side with the 53 Liberal MPPs in such a case?.

      • The Realist says:

        “but the Speaker, by tradition, must side with the government”

        But is that requirement, a legal one?

        McGuinty has a very large minority, so the likelihood of no confidence is very small. So you’re correct, I was just positing a hypothetical.
        You’d need a disciplined Conservative + NDP opposition voting in lockstep, and if one of their parties has a speaker, would also have to break with the tradition that you cite.
        And that assumes that no opposing MPs can be lured away with offers of a cabinet position (ala Stronach).

  7. The Realist says:

    And I was absolutely correct that the polls had undercounted Conservative support in the final weeks of the election (Remember the 40-29 poll in favor of McGuinty? LOL). The province-wide popular vote was:

    Liberal 37
    Conservative 35
    NDP 23

    http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/1267169.html

    Hudak (or the Devil Incarnate as Kinsella would have us believe) will not resign as leader. Why should he give up his spot when there will be very favorable winning conditions for the Conservatives the next time around?

    It gets harder and harder for incumbents to win reelection. Let the Liberals inherit the shit sandwich that’s about to happen.

    This is what historians like to call a Pyrrhic victory.

    • Tenio says:

      Nice try Realist. So I guess Hudak is happy he lost? Given where the Libs were 2 months ago in the polls, this is a huge victory not Pyrrhic one. Politics is defined by who wins and who loses. McGuinty won and Hudak lost. Ask him if he would trade places with the Premier? You know the answer to that. Don’t snow the snowman.

    • Patrick says:

      Nice to see the spin out already this morning.

      The Conservaties were leading at the start of this campaign and would have won a majority at the start of the summer. Hudak should face some tough questions from within his own party. For him to lose that much ground means some of his messages and tactics turned off a lot of voters.

      In case you are going to accuse me of being a Liberal partisan, I did not vote Liberal last night.

      • Jason Hickman says:

        Hudak should face some tough questions from within his own party.

        People said much the same thing when Harper lost in ’04, despite leading in the polls for a good chunk of the campaign. I recall more than a few Tories were even willing to go public in the time between Election ’04 and Election ’06 to say that Harper should go. I wasn’t living in Ontario at the time, but I’ll bet some people in the LPO had similar thoughts after McGuinty failed to beat Harris on Dalton’s first try as leader back in ’99. And the Jack Layton, rest his soul, had to take several gradual steps (elections in ’04, ’06 and ’08) before he reached his high-water mark.

        The Libs, including our host of this here website, earned their victory and McGuinty has earned his place in the record books (albeit not for the three-majorities-in-a-row he was undoubtedly shooting for). But it wasn’t a blowout in terms of seats OR votes, the Tories gained seats, and at some point, maybe two years out from now, we’ll be back at it again.

        What *would* be a mistake is for the PCs to toss Hudak out now, after one loss. It has become a pattern of parties that have developped a pattern of losing: ditch the current person-in-charge, toss in a new one, rinse, repeat. Personally, I think Hudak & his team can & will improve on this result and it would be blind-stupid for the PCs to kick off another leadership war.

        I grant you, past events do not guarantee future ones, but I think it would be beyond dumb to write off Hudak now.

    • Derek Pearce says:

      You’re doing exactly what I do when my party loses an election,”Realist”– content my(your)self by instantly looking ahead 4 years! Well for now, those of us who are happy with a Liberal win are going to bask. Boo hoo for you.

  8. Al says:

    Great work! Congratulations on an impressive win! Big sigh of releaf (for now)

  9. Ted H says:

    Good Lord! It’s going to be that coalition of socialists and arch-centrists ( that one kills me) that Harper warned us about during the Federal election.

    • The Doctor says:

      I believe Harper said socialists and separatists. There were no separatists running in this election, in case you didn’t notice.

      • Ted H says:

        He actually said socialists, separatists and arch-centrists, I guess you didn’t catch that yourself, and of course I had to modify the statement because the BQ didn’t run in the Ontario election.

        I didn’t make it up, only Harper could come up with a term like “arch-centrist”.

        • The Doctor says:

          I missed the arch-centrists thing, so I appreciate your explaining that one to me. Certainly in the old days, the LPC did do a good job of hogging the political centre. These days, not so much.

  10. steve says:

    Congrats, my faith in Canada is restored.

  11. steve says:

    The voter turnout was so low those numbers dont mean much.

    • The Doctor says:

      I’m sure Harper is somehow responsible for suppressing the vote. I just haven’t figured out how yet.

      • Attack! says:

        Actually, the CPC tried, and maybe succeeded, with sitting MPs & Cab. Min’s
        actively campaigning & fear-mongering in quite a number of ridings.

        But I’m still trying to figure out why you seem incapable of suppressing the unhelpful snark.

  12. Michael S says:

    Crappy turnout made GOTV so important. Looks like all three teams had it.

  13. Jon Powers says:

    One cannot help but notice the huge rural/urban divide in this election. The Liberal party has essentially become the Toronto party, both Provincially and Federally. This growing divide should be a cause for concern for all Canadians.
    Congratulations to you, Warren, and all the Liberal supporters out there.

  14. W.B. says:

    McGuinty will hold things together for three years, stay the course on energy, education and health, then Liberals will send a new face against Hudak and Horwath next time.

  15. Paul says:

    Popular vote:

    Liberals: 37%
    Tories: 35%
    NDP: 23%
    Other: 5%

    So, will Cons and Dippers now act all butthurt like the NDP/Libs did after the federal election, whining about how “63% of us didn’t vote for McGuinty?”

    Somehow I doubt it. Hypocrisy and double standards only seem to apply when “evil” conservatives win fair and square.

    • Ted H says:

      It is actually exactly the same as the federal election. Less than 40% of voters chose a regressive right wing vision and 60% chose a progressive ideal for Canada/Ontario. It was just the vagaries if the first past the post system that put Conservatives in Ottawa and Liberals in Toronto. But let me repeat the constant. 60% of Ontarians and Canadians do not like Conservatives.

    • The Realist says:

      Hypocrisy is one of the ‘features’ of partisan politics. It’s analogous to pro sports, if your favorite team gets a bad call, it’s the greatest travesty. But if the other team suffers a bad call, it’s an awesome thing to happen.

    • Philip says:

      As a proud Liberal, I’m happy to see last night’s victory, however still not happy with our current FPTP system. There are better ways to tabulate votes, the current Aussie method strikes me as very good.

  16. A. Cynic says:

    A big Salute to you Mr. WK. To borrow a phrase from a famous move – “You, you – you are very very good. You have a gift…”

  17. frmr disgruntled Con now happy Lib says:

    Mr Kinsella: Again, congratulations!….Having followed this election from start to finish(a first for an Ontario campaign),your victory gave me the sense that the barbarians were well and truly stopped at the gates.

    Or as a friend commented: Mr. McGuinty(and yourself) stopping a Mike Harris redux prevented the “Great Leap Backwards”……

    This is great news for progressive thinking Canadians everywhere…..

  18. Ted H says:

    Hmm.. shift subject, ignore facts, namecall. Sounds just like a Hudak radio interview.

  19. frmr disgruntled Con now happy Lib says:

    Thats rich, Mr Tulk…..being that Stephen Harper and his teabagger and Xian fundy operatives used the very same tactics in the last Federal election, and before…..

    As far as Im concerned, you got a taste of your own medicine….

    Bon Apetit!

  20. JStanton says:

    … oh gord. I don’t have the energy today to educate you, so please just consider yourself discredited, ridiculed and demeaned.

    .

  21. Jon Adams says:

    Dissolves, merges with the Liberals, and spends 12 long years re-branding itself? Calls itself the BC Liberal Party? Gives the NDP four consecutive majorities?

    Right, I forgot. ALBERTA is the west.

  22. smelter rat says:

    As opposed to the Conservative racist/homophobic campaign?

  23. stanzela says:

    Wow, Dalt is glowing. Coincidence or not, it’s an apt choice of photos. Congrats, team McGuinty (and Ontario).

  24. Cynical says:

    It arranges to have lots of dead dinosaur remains that can be used to lubricate its way to power.

  25. Derek Pearce says:

    So in other words Gord, voters are idiots, right? Because the voters voted, and the LPO won.

  26. Derek Pearce says:

    Congrats WK. Well done. I’m breathing a big sigh of relief today as are most of my friends.

  27. Cameron Prymak says:

    Which Conservative Party do you mean?

    Progressive Convervatives or the Wildrose Alliance?

  28. Cameron Prymak says:

    Since you mentioned US politics, I think it fair to point out that we may be witnessing the beginning of the beginning – to borrow from WSC – and a potential turn in the course of US politics – thankfully.

    http://wolf.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=34&parentid=6&sectiontree=6,34&itemid=1805

  29. Philip says:

    I see spin class is in session now.

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