04.24.2012 11:04 AM

These are a few of my favourite Tweets

For the past while, I’ve been pretty open about my enthusiasm for Alison Redford.  I’ve also been pretty critical of her main opponent, Wildrose’s Danielle Smith.  I haven’t hidden it.

As such, I’ve gotten a few tweets sent my way, some of which I would like to share for your amusement.  I wanted to put them on this web site before they end up down the memory hole, like quite a few pundits’ prognostications.

Here’s a sampling from your garden variety Wildrose supporters.

 

Those were fun.  Now, I also heard from some well-known people.  Here’s what three conservative pundits (whom I like a great deal) told me when I suggested that Danielle Smith would pay a price for not condemning extremists in her midst:

 

Those were fun, too.  I also heard from pollsters, however.  Here’s what some of them had to say about my suggestion (in a column) that Smith would pay a price and (in a posting) that Redford would win:

 

“Pay attention”! Ha! I like that. Best of all, however, was National Post reporter Jen Gerson.  She was assigned to cover the Alberta election. I had thought Jen was pretty smart, but I’m not so sure about that anymore.  For instance, I suggested on Facebook, Twitter and on this web site, that Wildrose extremism – like the lunatic who called for David Suzuki to be assassinated – was newsworthy, and would hurt Wildrose.  Jen disagreed.  Jen, who knows better, had this to say:

 

Get that? “Actual stories.”  Like, saying gays will burn in Hell, or saying that whites are better, or calling for political adversaries to be murdered aren’t, you know, such a big deal.  But I’m a bit slow, so I pressed Jen on the issue.  I disagreed with her; I expressed puzzlement with her disinterest.  This is what she came back with:

 

Isn’t that nice? What a nice person.

Anyway, you get the point, I suspect.  Last night wasn’t just a big political deal. It was a big deal for four “Ps” – partisans, pundits, pollsters and press people.

Most of them were wrong, wrong, wrong. In politics, as in life, you should always ask this question: “What if I’m wrong?” I certainly am, often. In the past few days, however, so were quite a few other people.  And, thanks to the wonder that is Twitter, the proof is there for us all to behold.

Have a good one, tweeters!

70 Comments

  1. Michael S says:

    So, is Daisy hiring?

  2. frmr disgruntled Con now Happy Lib says:

    Tell em all to kiss yer ass, Mr. Kinsella…..lol

  3. DanO says:

    As an outside observer (zero ties to Alberta) it was a really interesting night to watch.

    Not to disregard how the loons hurt Smith’s chances, I also wonder how effective the GOTV was for the PCs and detrimental to the WR.

    It will certainly make for interesting reading in the next Campaign & Elections and whoever is first to put out the tell-all book.

    • In my ‘hood the WR GOTV consisted of about 5 robo-calls, usually female voices. Why door-knock when you can phone-spam everyone for just pennies? There was no WR scrutineer at the polling station (I was the Lib scruter.)

  4. JM says:

    No one should be surprised. I expected a WRP minority, honestly, but I wasn’t stunned by this PC upset. Stelmach was supposed to get a drubbing by the (awesome) Kevin Taft in ’08. He got a huge majority and broke the ALP’s back, directly leading to the disastrous numbskull Raj Sherman’s leadership. There is a precedent for this.

    Let’s be frank here: Polling in Alberta sucks. It suuuuuucks. Anyone who lived there for any amount of years (and frequently got their hopes up in seeing the Klein- and Stelmach-era PCs drubbed from office) knows this.

    Max Foran, a Calgary historian at the University of Calgary, once remarked in a class I took with him that the way to power in Alberta is through its cities. Lougheed won in ’71 on the backs of cities. Redford herself won thanks to Edmonton (which didn’t elect a WRPer) and Calgary (where there were less WRPers elected than Liberals, shockingly). Why? The cities in Alberta are highly progressive cities who want to evolve and show their cosmopolitan natures. They just need a party to actually appeal to their interests and give them a reason to vote FOR them.

    This should be a lesson to both the federal and provincial Liberals/NDP — focus on the cities in the next Alberta election. There’s a deep amount of resentment towards the CPC ready to be exploited. But you’ve got to run smart, city-focused campaigns that directly speak to the urban issues of Calgarians and Edmontonians.

  5. Bill Johnson says:

    Warren you missed the best tweet of all last night

    https://twitter.com/#!/siczar/status/194650549638017024

  6. bigcitylib says:

    I emailed Gerson with a link to one of my posts about WR’s Human Rights policy and she replied that I had written the most “fear mongery” piece of crap she had read all election. This made me sad at the time. Now, though, I am feeling rather good about it.

    • Warren says:

      She’s young. She will learn, in time, that you don’t have to kiss your bosses’ ideological ass every day to gain respect. In fact, she’ll learn that’s how you lose it.

      • Tired of it All says:

        We’ll see about that. You gave her a Master class, and all she could think about were the colour of the drapes.

  7. Dan says:

    It’s obvious the pollsters really blew it.

    A less likely explanation was that there was a last second wave against Wildrose that wasn’t detected by the polls.

    But it was just so flagrantly and blatantly wrong… you have to think that the Wildrose wave was media hype, based off of a few extremely biased/misleading polls.

  8. David_M says:

    Golly, thats alot of PC members that are going to have to cross the floor to WR to get them over the minority hump….

  9. Cynical says:

    Don’t forget that there is also a surprising level of “green” sentiment in Alberta, mostly among farm people who get really pissed off when the deck is stacked against them at every turn when a gas company wants a piece of their land for a well head or a scrubbing setup. And a lot of rural Alberta may be rich, but it is nowhere near as rich as the cities, and it has absorbed the externalities of oil, gas, gravel mines and feed lots.
    Alberta is not as pretty as it used to be, and country people notice.
    Still beautiful, though!

    • Castiel says:

      This is a major point. The rural farm belt didn’t go Wildrose because of so-called social conservative values -most of them could care less about things like gay marriage compared to the Big Issue which was the Land Bills. If the PCs had been smart they would have pulled the Land Bills (50, etc.) and dropped the transmission lines which the rural landowners have been continously fighting for almost 9 years now. If that had happened the PCs would have won the rural ridings too.

    • tf says:

      In BC the First Nations voice can be powerful. How about in Alberta? Are the First Nations of the north opposing the tar sands the way they are opposing the pipelines through the north? Might the First Nations oppose a party that doesn’t look out for them?

    • kenn2 says:

      Good points.

      If Alberta landowners were treated as shabbily by the oil industry as Trans-Canada treated US landowners when trying to ram through the Keystone pipeline route, then it’s not surprising that the Rose-Oil party didn’t quite have the rural appeal they’d otherwise get.

  10. Justin says:

    I was noticing one of those tweets that Ontario would have lost their ‘welfare’ if Wilrose were to win :P. I guess the fact Ontario still pays more into equalization than it gets is lost among western conbots.

    • Brine says:

      No it doesn’t. Ontario is a have-not province.

      • Tyrone says:

        Which means that Ontario is eligible to get back a small portion of the equalization dollars that its citizens pay in taxes. Ontario is still a net contributor to equalization – or, to be more precise, Ontarians are now finally getting back in equalization a small portion of what they as taxpayers contribute to equalization.

      • Justin says:

        We still pay the federal government more in taxes than Albertans, and we get little of that back in equalization. I suggest you pull your head out of your ass.

        • Justin says:

          I’m reffering to brine.

        • Pat says:

          Currently. I’m sure Ontario paid more per capita earlier on in the equalization scheme, and as soon as Alberta’s natural resources run out (and the Alberta economy tanks) they’ll probably pay less per capita.

        • kenn2 says:

          on a per capita basis, nobody pays more [in taxes] than Albertans

          The average Albertan currently makes more than the average Ontarian. If person A makes more than person O, person A will pay more in tax than person O. Is this not fair? Cos that’s all that’s happening vis taxes and equalization.

      • Ted H says:

        So Alberta has oil. Just because you were born on third base as they say, does not mean you hit a triple. The Ontario economy has way more depth and has been paying more than its share for a century, kept Alberta going when it was just a little farm boy with manure between its toes. Alberta is doing well, but don’t think you are ready to replace the big dog just yet.

    • Tybalt says:

      Ontario does receive federal equalization transfers. As Les points out, these are unrelated to anything within the power of a provincial premier or government.

      When “pulling out of equalization” is mentioned, I always assumed it was a dogwhistle to Alberta Separatists.

      • smelter rat says:

        Separatism? really? A landlocked province? I suppose you COULD be Bolivia north. Wonder how that would work out?

  11. William says:

    Well I will admit it, I was wrong.

    I fully expected the WRP to clean up big time.

    Should have used the old trading maxim, “When everybody is leaning one way, go the other!”

    Good for you WK, you saw through the smoke and mirrors.

  12. deb says:

    that was awesome, I love the twitter age, its soo much easier to kick the idiots in the teeth with facts they cant retract:)

  13. tfalcone86 says:

    An excellent post Warren! Very satisfying.

  14. Mike B says:

    Great post! In the age of Facebook and Twitter you’ve certainly learned how to get people to eat their words. You may be wrong sometimes but it seems to be a lot of fun to be right

  15. Mulletaur says:

    I’m a bit surprised that you’re not touting how a ‘progressive’ alternative beat down the right wingnuts in this Alberta contest. And it didn’t take a merger for it to happen. Not only that, but if Redford doesn’t deliver, Liberal and NDP voters can go back to voting Liberal and NDP respectively in the next election – they will still have choices.

    • Mulletaur – the Albertans DID go back to electing the Lib quota of four or five Liberals and four or five NDPers. None of that changed. The 18% that were “undecided” went to PC`s.

      Also biggest turnout since 1993 – 57%. Again, Yay Alberta!

      • Mulletaur says:

        In the 2008 Alberta general election, the Liberals won 26.4% of the popular vote and the NDP won 8.5% of the popular vote. In the 2012 election, Liberals won 9.9% of the popular vote, a drop of 16.5 percentage points, and the NDP won 9.8% of the popular vote, an increase of 1.3 percentage points. You may argue that the NDP vote remained relatively unchanged – the 2008 NDP vote was 1.7 points lower than the previous election – but you cannot argue the same for the Liberals. Alberta Liberal vote stampeded to the Alberta PCs to prevent a Wildrose win. This ‘strategic voting’ had a significant influence on the outcome of the election. I have not done the analysis yet, but no doubt this will be borne out by vote shifts in individual riding races.

        If the Liberal Party, no matter where it stands for election, is not seen as a government alternative on its own, it will collapse as a political force. We saw that in the last federal election, and we have seen it again in this Alberta election.

    • Warren says:

      OMG. Did you check out his latest post? What a lunatic!

      Tonight, Albertans squandered a wonderful opportunity. Imagine a land of hope. Of dreams. Of freedom.

      Now take that image and set it on fire – because that’s what Albertans did tonight. By re-electing a Progressive Conservative government, Albertans set this province back 20 years. Albertan voters elected a party that has been bullying and intimidating doctors, nurses and school boards. A party that struck a committee that didn’t meet for more than three years, and then set up the compensation structure to include “bonus” pay for sitting on the committee. A party that gave their cabinet ministers a 30% raise on a whim.

      Well, Albertans have spoken. I disagree – entirely – with their choice; but this is a democracy. So, Albertans will have to be punished for their stupid decision.

      Oh no, not by me. I won’t be lifting a finger (except for exploring real estate in Saskatoon) to do anything to Albertans for their decision. I will leave Alberta to suffer the consequences of their actions.

    • Conveniently, this was left out in the original quote:

      > My prediction is based 99% on math – applying the regional shifts in support to the vote garnered by each party in each riding
      > last time. Then, I looked at the margin of victory on the old map, overlaid the new map, and guessed, based on the results who > would take what riding, and by how much. On that front, I could be way off, but I feel pretty comfortable with my prediction.

      All my predictions for seat counts are based 99% on math. I deliberately avoid putting my personal partisan biases into working them through. For the record, I accurately predicted the 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2011 federal elections. I called the 2011 a Conservative Majority before virtually anyone else. If you read the blog entry on that particular prediction, you see that I made the mistake of not believing my own numbers! (I also called the 2000 federal election, but that one was pretty obvious from the get-go)

      Hubris? No. Math doesn’t have emotions attached to it. 2+2 always equals 4, unless you’re a Liberal (at which point it equals 5).

      So what happened in the Alberta prediction? With 20/20 hindsight, it’s obvious – the polls were wrong. Many polls which I relied on where based on IVR technology. So voters would get a recording on the other end of the phone. It’s likely that WRP voters were far more motivated to respond to polls than PCAA voters, who would probably just hang up. The result being a skewed poll. Since I don’t involve myself in polling methodology, I had to base my predictions based upon the assumption that the polls were accurate.

      So the GIGO principle applies: Garbage in = Garbage out.

      Now, as for my “latest” posting: Yes, it was angry. It was posted just after the result was obvious; and my personal biases are well known. I was angry and disappointed. Just as many federal Liberal supporters were in 2011.

      The difference is I am not trying to overturn the result by filing frivolous lawsuits. I’m not questioning the integrity of the voting process. I’m not accusing the PCAA of “robocalls”, nor am I attempting to manufacture pseudoscandals.

      You see, I’m a Wild Rose supporter. But I’m also a democrat, and I accept the result that we have. I hate it, but I accept it.

      And now, whenever an Albertan starts complaining about something Premier Mom does, I can ask, “did you vote Wildrose?” If they say, “no, I didn’t,” I can smile and look them in the eye, and reply, “well, you really have nobody to blame but yourself then, do you?”

      Albertans got the government they deserve. And now they’re suffering the consequences.

  16. Anne Peterson says:

    I love it when people say rural Albertans don’t like elitists. What does that mean anyway? Does it mean my family didn’t read books. Even really good books. I read War and Peace when I was 18 in my little bedroom on the farm in rural Alberta. Is that too elitist for a rural Albertan? My father -in-law read the Iliad in grade nine at school in Chinook Alberta. Is that too elitist? My father, the little immigrant boy from the Cypress Hills read deeply and well. He listened to classical music too and even played it on his violin. That must be too elitist. He has grandchildren who are doctors. We had good discussion about many,many things around the supper table. I really resent it when it is suggested that all rural Albertans are undereducated, dumb, red necked folks who don’t do anything but stand around tugging their forelocks and saying .”Aw shucks.”

    • Careful! There may be some rural Albertans reading this. You have exposed yourself as potentially at risk of elitism. Literature is a slippery slope don’t you know. A Gateway drug to elitism. Next thing you know, you might be paying attention to peer reviewed climatologists, or wondering if perhaps military procurement should actually be cost justified, lol

    • Pat says:

      Not sure anyone would say that ALL rural folk are hicks, but I’m pretty sure the stats would show that urban areas have higher per capita educations and are more likely to choose progressive, fact-based options. This is coming from a guy from the country…

  17. Skinny Dipper says:

    Wildrose may launch a complaint about robo-calls. There is an allegation that on election day, Wildrose supporters received automated robo-calls from “Elections Alberta” telling them to leave their women-folk at home. Wildrose supporter, Gethro Higgins, stated that he received a call through his crank phone. His neighbour, Steven Jacobson, was told via telegram not to bring his housewife (or his sin-mistress).

    • kenn2 says:

      Priceless! (telegram?? with a kid on a bicycle and all that? 😀 ) Any links?

      Nice to see the right facing the muzzle-end of unregulated robo-calling, for a change, even if it was an obvious spoof.

  18. Jon Adams says:

    Forget petroleum: you could turn wine into Alberta’s number one resource just by using the sour grapes coming from WR supporters.

  19. bigcitylib says:

    Just something that should be noted. WK is pretty much the only person in Canada that called this one correct, and even his friends thought he was fucked up in the head. I certainly did. Presumably his consulting fee goes up after tomorrow.

  20. Geoffrey Laxton says:

    Mr. Large said Wildrose ran an effective campaign until late controversies — comments on gays and race relations by two candidates, Allan Hunsperger and Ron Leech, and Ms. Smith’s unwillingness to condemn them — reinforced voters’ fears about the party’s social agenda.

    “None of the polls were conducted late enough to capture the impact of those comments,” Mr. Large said.

    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/entire-environment-shifted-pollsters-seek-answers-after-alberta-vote/article2412816/

  21. Chris P says:

    Forum Research – What a joke! Who in their right mind would hire these guys to do polling? There is NO validity to any of the polls they so amateurishly produce and sell to the pathetic media outlets that consume it like chocolate..Bet the defense of their polls are “the electorate went into the polling booth and change their minds – got scared and voted differently than they indicated to pollsters’

  22. Geoffrey Laxton says:

    I’d say that Warren Kinsella called it, and Tom Flanagn was prescient…

    ‘Bozo eruptions’ during Alberta election campaign did in Wildrose, experts say

    http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/04/24/alberta-election-2012-wildrose-loss/

  23. Chris P says:

    Drum roll please….here come the excuses oops I mean ‘reasoning’:

    http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1167469–superficial-polls-missed-the-mark-in-alberta-election?bn=1

    I love this quote: “The polls weren’t wrong,” said Conrad Winn, president of COMPAS Research. “They were superficial. And that’s a very important difference.” Funny I don’t recall any pollster referring to any of their polling as ‘superficial’ before the election.

  24. Nurie Jahangeer says:

    A big congratulations to Allison Redford and the Alberta Progressive Conservatives on their landslide election!.
    I am a lifelong Liberal, but I would have voted for the Alberta PC Party had I lived there, as they were the only provincial political party who were capable of stopping the racist, homophobic, redneck Wildrose bigots who would have torn up the
    Alberta Human Rights Act (which would have technically allowed privately owned businesses to place signs saying
    “NO BLACKS OR JEWS” just like back in the 1950’s), withdrawn Alberta from CPP (which would have damaged CPP for the rest of us Canadians), kicked the RCMP out of Alberta in favour of their own provincial police force (which undoubtedly would not have affirmative action hiring or mandatory anti-racism training for its cops, resulting in a new provincial police force most likely made up of testosterone pumped, racist, sexist, homophobic, Alpha White Male brutes), abolished the Alberta Human Rights Commission (which would allow majority conservative, heterosexual, protestant christian, white Alberta to make life tougher for women, visible minorities, aboriginals, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and gays/lesbians).

  25. Nurie Jahangeer says:

    Who cares if a bunch of ignorant, common, low class, blue collar, pickup truck driving, tax hating, Bible thumping,
    gun loving, racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-bilingual, anti-multicultural and anti-Quebec
    Redneck WASPs in rural Alberta think that Allison Redford and her Alberta Tories are “elite, arrogant and snobbish”?.
    In most countries around the world, people who are well educated, dignified, couth, refined, classy, tactful, posh,
    and yes, even elite are regarded with respect and deference. It is this way in almost every country, with the notable
    exception of Canada and the USA; where far too many people think there is something genuine, decent, good or even
    desirable about being an ignorant, low class, outspoken commoner. The NDP used to be a hotbed of ignorant, common
    and low class people who were deeply anti-intellectual and who despised elitism and inherited wealth. The NDP has
    become more gentrified in recent years under the late Jack Layton and it now attracts many University professors, lawyers and other well educated professionals. The ignorant, common, low class, blue collar, redneck populist types seem to have taken over the Canadian Conservative moment. The old PC Party of Canada, prior to the hostile takeover by the
    redneck Reform/Alliance cowboy yahoos, used to be bastion of well educated, intellectual, refined, couth, tactful,
    posh, upper crust gentleman statesmen such as John Diefenbakker, Robert Stanfield, Joe Clark and Brian Mulroney.
    At the provincial level Red Tory gentlemen statesmen such as John Robarts, Bill Davis, Larry Grossman, John Tory,
    Peter Lougheed and Don Getty were once the form. However, in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, the so-called
    Archie Bunker Blue Collar Conservative took over. Most Canadian Conservatives these days champion the likes of
    Joe the Plumber, NASCAR, right-wing talk radio, Beck, Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Palin, ect. This shift has not been for the
    better in my opinion and I would personally much prefer the centrist, humane, egalitarian, refined, cultured, couth
    Red Toryism of these aforementioned Canadian Conservatives as opposed to the mean minded, spiteful, divisive,
    frugal, sour, dour bullshit of Danielle Smith, Tim Hudak, Mike Harris, Ralph Klein, Stephen Harper, Preston Manning
    and Stockwell Day. The right-wing in Canada and the USA these days tends to promote rabid individuality, reckless populism, mindless consumerism, unfettered capitalism, greed, ignorance, selfishness, anti-intellectualism, racism,
    sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia…and worst of all…it promotes and reveres ignorance, lack of education, tactlessness, uncouthness, commonness, and blue collar culture as positive things. To enjoy museums, art galleries, fine food, foreign films, overseas travel and imported cars is to be “elite, arrogant, snobbish, liberal/left, cosmopolitan, urbane and ivory tower” where many Canadian Conservatives are concerned these days. Joe Clark, Brian Mulroney, John Tory, Robert Stanfield, Larry Grossman, ect; would all be considered “liberal socialists” by the Wildrose redneck trailer trash culture.
    Heck, unless you have a ten gallon cowboy hat, a huge fat gut and a one digit IQ who drive around in your pickup truck screaming “YEE-HAW!”, “DEPORT ‘EM ALL!” and “JUST NUKE ‘EM!” you ain’ t a real Conservative according to most Canadian Conservatives these days!. It very tragic and deeply sad that the White Trash-IZATION of Canadian politics is
    now well underway.

  26. michael dawe says:

    I ran as the Liberal candidate in Red Deer North – what is supposed to be darkest right wing Alberta. You are right Warren. Most people don’t pay attention to what actually happens in Alberta. There were close contests in this riding between the Liberals and the P.C.’s when Stockwell Day was the M.L.A. I did not do as well as I hoped – based on my canvassing results, there was a last weekend shift to the P.C’s to stop the Wildrose by a lot of centre/left voters. That being said, right now, the support for the P.C.’s is a mile wide and an inch deep. Alison Redford risks some of the pratfalls that Paul Martin faced. She is taking her party in a direction where a lot of the long time members really don’t want to go. There is a very deep and bitter split between her group in the P.C.’s and the Klein faction (hello Rod Love). Will be interesting to see what happens in the coming year.

    • kenn2 says:

      …there was a last weekend shift to the P.C’s to stop the Wildrose by a lot of centre/left voters. That being said, right now, the support for the P.C.’s is a mile wide and an inch deep.

      Thanks for the insight. This seems to explain the outcome.

      I was shocked to see how much Redford was campaigning in the center; I thought this was the kiss of death and would give the right-wing PC vote to Wildrose. In hindsight, was this actually smart of her, or a misstep that she overcame (or did WR simply squander their advantage by not ejecting the nutbars)?

      Anyway, Redford’s got a solid majority. If she can win back some of the center-right PCs who defected, and govern with moderate, pragmatic policies that benefit all Albertans (and maybe even Canada too), then come next election Wildrose will be as toothless as Hudak’s PCs are in Ontario.

    • kenn2 says:

      (and my thanks to you, and to anyone who cares enough to run for election)

  27. michael dawe says:

    I should add, that you are also right Warren. Most of the talking heads in Alberta really know very little about the province they comment on. They think that the Province matches their own experiences in the small part of Alberta where they live. They don’t seem to realize how large and diverse Alberta actually is. They are therefore easily mislead by some really incredibly mediocre polling – the kind of stuff that would have been laughed off the front pages if it was produced nationally.

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