Musings —04.30.2012 02:47 PM
—The Honourable Moron-in-Chief
“Mayor Rob Ford says he will work to defeat the Liberal candidate in the crucial provincial byelection in Kitchener-Waterloo.
Ford, a proud supporter of the Progressive Conservatives, threatened last year to unleash “Ford Nation” on Premier Dalton McGuinty if McGuinty did not accept his request for more funding for the city. On his NewsTalk 1010 radio show on Sunday, Ford was far more partisan.
“There is going to be a byelection out in Kitchener-Waterloo, and I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure a certain party does not win so they don’t get a majority government,” he said. “We cannot let the Liberals run this province like they are. (They’re) giving us very little respect.”
I’m torn on this one. On the one hand, the mere existence of this porcine mouth-breather, and his desire for a far-Right hat trick, led to the Hudak PCs being entirely shut out of Toronto last Fall. Then, on the other hand, this guy is supposed to be the Mayor for all the people – not just, you know, racist and homophobic white trash.
What say you, O readers of mine? Helpful or not? I’m leaning towards the former. You?
Well.. I think this is actually a cynical ploy by Ford to make it seem / make him feel like he has substantial political power. The riding has been PC for a while, so it wouldn’t be a shocker if the PCs retained it in a by-election, in which case Fordo can declare victory, issue the usual pedantic bromides about the elusive ‘Ford Nation’, and otherwise try to make it look like he’s at all useful to anyone. True to form, this is a rather lazy move.
Um, WTF does a radio station have this partizan & his brother on the air? When will they give a time slot to other GTA mayors & their sibs? This is boring radio at it’s worst. I listened for all of 20 minutes when they first came on. My Pop, a CFRB alumni, will be spinning in his grave over these two amadons!
I was wondering if you’d comment on this.
Ford has single-handedly given the Liberals a strong reason to win the riding.
I’m sure Dalton’s rubbing his hands together, hoping and praying Ford continues braying on his radio show about making sure Witmer’s riding stays PCPO.
I’m all for it. Let’s provoke Ford some more to keep his big mouth yapping away.
I’m sure many Ontarians would go vegan if Ford endorsed eating meat. He’s become an albatross on right-wing politics, a walking laughing stock who still thinks he’s important.
(at the same time, I’m sure Torontonians will dopily give him a second term…)
Rob Ford is to Tim Hudak as Wildrose’s Allan Hunsperger is to Danielle Smith. I’m quite happy for our joke of a mayor to throw his weight behind Hudak.
I think a guy who makes $170,000 of taxpayer money, spends a lot of time talking about efficiences and ending the “gravy train” and spends a reported 20 hours plus a week coaching and skips as many Council sessions as he does should spend his time in the City of Toronto instead of trying to earn brownie points for his next job.
‘Ford Nation’, my fat fandangle. What does Mayor Lumpy plan to do, bus angry Toronto ratepayers out there to canvass ? What a joke. He doesn’t even know who voted for him or why. In any case, they won’t make the same mistake in the next election.
Yes, he is a doorknob, but NO he is NOT ignorant of who voted for him and why. He controls a very nice and very comprehensive database, with all the bells and whistles. That may not be much use to him anymore, but anybody else would give their eye teeth for it.
That said, don’t lose sight of what he’s trying to do here.
Often a desperate government needs a bigger enemy in the lead-up to an election. You see that with provincial governments going after federal governments (and today’s federal government going after Ontario). It creates a stark contrast and allows the blame to be put on the “other”.
That’s part of what Ford is doing here.
On subways and now on funding, he’s trying to get people to pick sides where sides do not need to be picked.
He is in full election mode – see the “3 year operating plan” that was just leaked today – and his strategy is likely a very smart one (not designed by him or his brother) and will be a difficult one to challenge.
Keep an eye on the long game here, folks, not the easy shots.
Clearly Rob Ford knows nothing about politics in Waterloo Region. People here don’t take kindly to the kinds of references he makes. I bet Elizabeth Witmer doesn’t either. Rob Ford syndrome is undoubtedly one of the reasons Witmer left the Party behind. If the #PCPO bring that kind of politics to Kitchener-Waterloo, they are going to get a rude awakening.
Contrary to what some riffraff on Twitter are suggesting, this by-election will be more than anything else, a referendum of Tim Hudak’s PCPO leadership. I predict a another conservative blunder.
Rob Ford campaigns. He doesn’t govern.
His re-election effort is underway.
Target #1 is the provincial Liberal government. He’ll portray them as screwing Toronto – especially on transit. Funny that Ford casts himself as the underdog fighting for the little guy from Scarborough. Yet he himself in an out of touch millionaire born with the silver spoon. A classic Conservative story.
Rob, Doug (who WILL run for PCs), Nick K. and Richard (now on the PC inside) are dark, angry people. Let the sun shine in on them. The more people see the more they don’t like.
Oh – and the Liberals will win KW back.
I’m sure Campaign Research’s robo-calls there will begin shortly.
Okay, let me get this straight: Ford intends to go into Kitchener-Waterloo to campaign against the Liberals because the Liberals don’t give enough to Toronto. He does realize that KW isn’t a part of Toronto, right? And you don’t have to go far to hear complaints by KW voters that the Liberals give too much to Toronto. I can see the PC campaign madly waving at him to stay away.
I say let him campaign. It can only help the Liberals.
Let me be the first to help him out. I’m providing him directions to his first campaign stop in K-W.
http://maps.google.ca/maps?saddr=Toronto+City+Hall,+Toronto,+ON&daddr=450+Erb+Street+West,+Waterloo,+ON+N2J+1H4+(Kentucky+Fried+Chicken)&hl=en&sll=43.53814,-79.974445&sspn=1.453445,2.219238&geocode=FaMSmgIdRrhE-yFLCtuEkvy2lg%3BFacHlwIdwNEy-yG1EEUKlb6urQ&oq=City+Hall+toronto+on&gl=ca&mra=ls&t=m&z=9
That’s funny. Maybe the Sun could send a photog.
“I’m torn on this one. On the one hand, the mere existence of this porcine mouth-breather, and his desire for a far-Right hat trick, led to the Hudak PCs being entirely shut out of Toronto last Fall. Then, on the other hand, this guy is supposed to be the Mayor for all the people – not just, you know, racist and homophobic white trash”.
Well said, Warren, but more specifically, it is racist, homophobic, sexist, misogynistic, xenophobic, ignorant, common,
low class, uneducated White Trash!. 🙂
Meet the new Mr. Tulk, same as the old Mr. Tulk.
Thank you for your post. This calls for Fred again.
So she has to get the beer
She puts it in the back seat
And she quietly says to me
When, exactly, did we become white trash
How come we have seven dogs living in the garage
How come the only eight track in our car is Johnny Cash
When, exactly, did we become white trash
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C2re3oG1y8
While I know a handful of visible minorities who voted for Rob Ford, the two Rob Ford for Mayor rallies
I had the misfortune of attending during the Summer of 2010, were highly assimilated, unilingual,
unhyphenated, Canadian born and bred mangiacakes of White Anglo Saxon Protestant ancestry;
who not only tend to vote for Tea Party Tim provincially and Stevie federally, but who in addition to
hating immigrants, progressive taxation, renters, downtown dwellers, cyclists, the poor, the homeless,
and gays/lesbians…also tend to be filled with hatred and contempt for bilingualism, multiculturalism,
Quebec, gun control, human rights commissions, affirmative action and hate crimes laws. In short,
the average Hudak and Ford supporter tends to be an angry WASP who still has not yet come to terms
with the racial, linguistic and demographic shifts in Canada since the late 1960’s. Most of them still rant
and rave about Pierre Trudeau as if he were the current PM.
Unhyphenated?? Oh no, the horrors!!
Canadian born?? Say it ain’t so, Nurie!
Trevor, is that you?
I’ve said it before on here and I will say it again…the major voting block which keeps municipal, federal and provincial Conservatives in power across English Canada are highly assimilated, uniingual, unhyphenated WASPs who remain bitter
at the Trudeau legacy. For all of your readers who accuse me of being “anti-White”, just talk to any non-WASP White Canadian such as an Italian-Canadian, Greek-Canadian, Portuguese-Canadian, Russian-Canadian, Ukrainian-Canadian, Quebecois ect; and I am qutie sure they can attest to how they and/or their ancestors suffered under the systemic racism and xenophobia of WASP Canada back in the day, as much as Arab-Canadians, Persian-Canadians, Tamil-Canadians,
Afro-Canadians and Muslim-Canadians do today.
If Whiteness needs to urgently be abolished as a social category owning to the unearned privileges it bestows upon its members, then WASP-dom is in dire need of such abolition as a social category!.
At the two Rob Ford events I attended, nearly everyone looked like Mayor Ford himself. Pretty much every surname
I encountered there was WASP-ish. I personally believe that Rob Ford’s election was a passive aggressive way for many angry WASPs to strike back at multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-faith, multi-cultural, diverse, cosmopolitan, globalizes Toronto. Rob Ford has made slurs against Chinese-Canadians and is known to oppose immigration. But what
many of his supporters and defenders on this web site may not know, is that he has made slurs against Italian-Canadians too. He once called his current ally, Giorgio Mammoliti a “Gino Boy”. So there you have it, the right-wing in Canada is not just about racism and board line White supremacy, but it is also deeply Anglo-Saxon chauvinist. The so-called “Christian Right” in Canada and the USA, are also filled to brim with WASPs, many of whom do not consider Roman Catholics, Anglicans or Orthodox Christians to be “Christians”. The so-called “Christian Right” in Canada and the USA are Evangelical Protestant born agains and Anglo-Saxons to the core.
The WASP-dom that continues to exert such dominance in both Canada and the USA, especially among social and fiscal Conservative movements, makes me fucking sick to my stomach.
Sorry Mr Ford, Mr Harper, Mr Day, Mr Manning, Danielle Smith et al but the WASP-ish “Leave it to Beaver/Father Knowns Best” circa 1950’s era of your childhoods is thankfully gone for good. Things such as immigration, bilingualism, multiculturalism and Quebec are here to stay.
This country does not exclusively belong to White people anymore and it most certainly does not exclusively belong to
WASP people, nor will the millions of us who are visible minorities (i.e., Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, Tamil, Arab, Persian, ect.) or even invisible minorities (i.e., non-WASP White Europeans such as Italians, Greeks, Portuguese, Quebecois ect.) allow the clock to be permitted to be turned back.
PS: The Reform Party of Canada, of which most sitting Conservative MPs once belonged too, was founded on specifically anti-immigrant, anti-bilingual, anti-multicultural and anti-Quebec principals. The Reform/Alliance was the very embodiment of reactionary, nasty, mean minded, spiteful, frugal, sour, dour WASP Canada.
Wow.
And some of you thought that Gord was a bit out there??
So Warren – Your willing to fight at the municipal level, your willing to fight at the provincial level and ‘ can I safely put you in ‘the willing to fight at the Federal level too? Remember if you don’t BIG tobacco wins 🙁
Does anyone outside of Toronto think Toronto does not get enough attention from Queens Park? Let Rob Ford unleash his forces on KW.
Better yet, if he thinks he’s All That, he should run. KW would love to have a) someone from TO run b) to get more for Toronto.
McGuinty should have a strategy here. “We have $1M to spend on municipal infrastructure for KW or Toronto, not both.”
Oh, BTW, one important thing that the current mayor of Toronto probably did not have a clue about:
http://rapidtransit.region.waterloo.on.ca/
– Guess what? K&W loves the idea of an LRT!
I can’t imagine the local PCs in the riding welcoming this “help.”
Even a popular, respected mayor of Toronto would be seen as sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong.
How much of his personal fortune is he willing to commit to the local PC riding association? That’s the important question. It’s all about the money. I’m sure Liz Witmer has her own donor list, and the party may not have access to that.
The hubris of this guy is breaktaking. Does he think the Ford Nayshun extends to K-W? I assume he is incapable of engaging his brain and mouth at the same time since the former lags so far behind the latter, but it is a bit of a no-lose situation for him: Should the Tories win (in a riding they traditionally hold and will probably hold on to again) he will be afforded a bit of bragging rights among his minions. Should they somehow lose, Ford’s doughy pre-election pronunciation will be forgotten pretty quickly when he gets embroiled in yet another mess of his own making … which, as we all know, is as sure as the sun rising in the east ….
It’s really just better to let him talk. The rest will take care of itself.