02.10.2014 12:15 PM

Political convention hijinx: not news

Seriously? Big deal.

When Dalton McGuinty was around, we did this kind of stuff at every single PC convention. If they were organized enough, they’d do it at ours.

Here’s a couple videos we did at a 2007 John Tory PC convention, after smuggling ourselves in through a service entrance. John Tory went apeshit – a couple of our guys could hear him yelling at staff – but they had the good sense not to get us kicked out. (We would have made it national news if they’d tried.)

Sorry, folks, but it’s what war rooms do; no news here. How the Star sees this as any way newsworthy – after having gratefully received stuff from various war rooms in the past – is beyond me.

Vids here and below, which is my personal favourite. I thought adding the soundtrack would give it a certain je ne sais quoi. Gerald Butts, as I recall, was there and thought it was funny, too.

10 Comments

  1. Kevin T. says:

    I am not so much interested in what the shenanigans will be, but how they will be dealt with. That is what people will remember, especially if done right. This is just battle-testing, a warm-up to the real fight up ahead.
    I also have a feeling that, over the long run, the Cons will rope-a-dope themselves. They will throw everything they have to stop Trudeau before 2015, and in the final round, a smiling, smug-ish looking and victorious Trudeau will begin a new era in Canadian politics.

  2. Sean says:

    The second most important part of the story is that someone was dumb enough to put it in writing. The MOST important part of the story is that a Tory leaked it.

    • Warren says:

      Exactly. These guys don’t leak unless it’s on purpose. They fired it to the Star to (a) ensure it got big play and (b) mess with Team Trudeau’s heads.

      • !o! says:

        It’s a weird strategy if so.

        a) it gets big play, and it plays into the narrative that the CPC is obsessed with nasty partisan politics over governing– this conflicts directly with their ‘stable leadership’ narrative they’re trying to push.
        b) Team Trudeau has to be aware of this whether it’s published in papers or not. I’m not even in politics and I know this goes on.

      • ottlib says:

        Yes this happens all of the time but parties generally do not announce details of how they are going to do it beforehand.

        I am not so certain that these tactics would work for them at this stage of the game. There is an impression out there that the Conservatives are pricks prone to dirty tricks and cheating in order to win. It has been formed by years of watching how the Conservatives operate. This would just seem to reinforce that impression.

        A few years ago it would have probably not meant anything but now I am not so certain.

        There comes a time when people finally just grow tired of pricks and do what they can to get rid of them. If you are the one being the prick, and you are the perceptive sort, you may be able to see that continuing in that vein is no longer to your advantage and attempt to smooth out the edges a bit.

        Then again I am not a political genius like Stephen Harper so what do I know?

        Maybe he is going to don a pair of tight leather pants and show off his disco skills sometime in 2015 as part of some grand plan to win the next election.

  3. Brad Young says:

    There is a difference between the conservative party disrupting the liberal convention vs. the Canadian government disrupting the liberal convention, sorry I meant to say the Harper government.

  4. Kelly says:

    Well, the cons have already sort of failed. Now instead of Trudeau policy being the story, conservative dirty tricks are the story. Conservatives telling everyone that they have to go make stuff up about Trudeau makes then look almost desperate and will make people think that what the cons are saying about Trudeau isn’t true. If hey hadn’t leaked it would have been more believable. Now they look incompetent.

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