— Musings —09.14.2015 07:00 AM
KCCCC Day 43: the all-Hill Times edition
- I’ve written for the Hill Times for ages. They’re a must-read political paper, and you should subscribe to ’em. Below, stories from the Hill Times that give you a sampling of the kind of stuff you get.
- Heckling hangers-on help? Um, no. One interesting HT story is about the phenomenon of partisans heckling reporters trying to do their job. Here’s the Hill Times’ Laura: “Warren Kinsella, a former Liberal staffer and now a partner with the Daisy Consulting Group in Toronto, said in an email that on past Liberal campaigns he was involved with, with Jean Chrétien (in 1993 and 2000) and Dalton McGuinty in Ontario (in 2003, 2007 and 2011), supporters at events never attacked media and “generally” an effort was made “to avoid having questions asked in front of supporters” because someone will inevitably react badly to critical questions. “It makes the supporters look crazed and it makes the media mad and hurts the coverage you get. It’s just a bad idea,” he said.
- Has the SS Tory sprung a leak? That’s what I found most remarkable about this story by Mark and Abbas: not that folks in the ridings are complaining about central campaign – that happens in every election, with every party – but that Conservatives are carping to journalists. That’s something that Grits are supposed to do, not Tories! Check this out: “Conservatives The Hill Times reached last week expressed concern and some anger at the state of the campaign six weeks in. Part of that had to do with a lack of support for candidates in the field—as well as a lack of input from caucus veterans—and poor planning that led to the embarrassing dismissal of two candidates last week.” Wow – Conservatives losing discipline. That’s a big story.
- The politics of refugees: A week or so ago, at the height of the Syrian refugee story, I told a Liberal friend I didn’t think the issue would hurt Harper. My friend thought I was crazy. The Prime Minister’s unwillingness to throw open the doors may anger progressives, I said, but it’s red meat for his core vote. Turns out I was sort of wrong – as Ekos reported last week, and IRG this week – Harper’s stance hasn’t just not hurt him, it has actually helped him. Quote: “Despite the media focus on the Syrian refugee crisis and calls for the Conservatives to respond more compassionately, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s party isn’t badly positioned on the issue and it could even present an opportunity, a new survey shows. “It’s not doing the damage that some people might have thought,” pollster Greg Lyle of Innovative Research told The Hill Times.
- And so on and so on. See what you get with a Hill Times subscription? Lots of great stories no one else has! Subscribe now, subscribe often!
Wow – Conservatives losing discipline. That’s a big story.
When you consider that Harper got rid of those two idiots in shot-gun like fashion, that only demonstrates that there IS discipline, NOT a lack of it. The other two party leaders have had the same sort of issue with bad candidates, and how have THEY responded by way of contrast?
I guess that’s a Conservative partisan’s opinion. See how that works Lance.
Well, don’t answer the question if the answer is inconvenient, Scot(t); no one said that you HAD to. 😀
And yes……..we WILL “see how that works”.
The “outrage” on the refugee story is and has been media driven. They only report the very vocal minority upset with the Conservatives.
Case in point the latest Mainstreet Technologies poll of Toronto residents on the subject of refugees.
Even in Toronto, the Liberal/NDP/Progressive heartland, just 1 in 5 would consider donating money to help and 17% would consider possibly sponsoring a family.
With the way the media has been carrying on, I expected those numbers would have been in the 70% to 80% range.
And this won’t help NDP and Liberal talking points:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/surprise-surplus-good-news-for-tories-ahead-of-economic-debate/article26351079/
The Conservative government posted a surplus for the first time since diving into deficit in response to the 2008 economic crisis, ending a string of six consecutive deficits and providing the governing party with some good news ahead of Thursday’s debate on the economy.
Finance Canada released the final, official numbers for the 2014-15 fiscal year that ended March 31, which showed Ottawa posted a $1.9-billion surplus. That marks an improvement over the $5.2-billion deficit Ottawa had recorded during the previous fiscal year.
Easy to get a surplus if you’re sitting back on your political rump, not doing any stimulus spending, and amputating important programs like scientific R&D.
Or say, like, raiding the EI fund………right? 😉
The press has lost the respect of people in Canada…The CBC, The Star , etc spin the stories and show their bias in their reporting..They need to report facts as news and leave spin for columns clearly identified as commentary.. As much as Rob Ford was a wreck , Toronto is better off without him, however the some of the press made themselves and their personal stake part of the story with their lynch mob mentality ..Its a bad example perhaps but I am sick of being spoon fed opinion in the guise of news.
2014/2015 ends with $1.9 billion surplus…
http://www.ctvnews.ca/business/ottawa-posts-surprise-1-9b-surplus-1.2562055
I have heard other pundits claim the reaction of the Conservatives to the refugee crisis has not hurt them, pointing to the polls. It is typical really. They do not look past those polls in most cases so it is easy to make these kinds of assertions.
The question is not whether the Conservative reaction will hurt or help them today but will it hurt them on October 19? I believe the answer is yes.
Most election campaigns are pedestrian affairs where not much really happens. Political parties keep throwing things at the wall hoping something will stick in the minds of voters. However, every once in awhile something happens that kicks voters in the guts, that causes a visceral reaction within people.
That little boy on the beach was one of those events. I usually observe the world with a kind of cold detachment but when I saw that picture and realized what I was looking at I felt rather queasy for moment. I am certain others felt the same way and politicians and pundits ignore that at their peril.
The general consensus is the government is not reacting appropriately to the Syrian refugee crisis. Yes, many Conservative supporters are fine with it but those non-aligned voters, you know the ones that actually decide the outcomes of elections, do not seem to agree.
That picture and how the government reacted to it will not be forgotten in six weeks by those voters.
I have a couple of Facebook friends who are ardent supporters of the Conservative Party. For the past week or so they have been flooding my news-feed with memes, from Facebook pages sympathetic to the Conservative Party, trying to spin the refugee crisis to deflect and distract from the government’s handling of it. It’s the Gulf States fault, it’s the refugees’ fault, the refugees are actually terrorists in disguise or some other BS. Remarkably not a single meme has tried to sell the Conservatives’ approach on its merits. These memes invariably ignore the Conservative Party position and actions and focus on something or someone else. They are spinning as fast as they can to try to outrun the crisis.
Maybe the pundits believe the refugee crisis has not hurt the Conservatives but considering the how hard these pages are trying to spin the crisis and the Conservatives’ handling of it I would say that many Conservatives do not agree with them.
I don’t see anything sigh the refugee issue has helped the Conservatives. Now that the issues is less the the news they the Conservatives have merely gone back to where they were before. Like Duffy before it, these issues hasn’t hurt the Conservatives much, but has prevented them from rising in the polls which is what they need in this election.
What has change is the Liberals has risen at the expense of the NDP so all three are even closer in the polls then they where before.
Has anybody noticed in the TV images that there are no old people among all the Syrian muslim refugees? …. mostly young men, a few young women and some family groups ….. but mostly young men?
Did these young men abandon their aged parents to suffer through the civil war? They do say they intend to bring their extended families to Canada if allow into Canada. Do we really want this?
Single Syrian unemployed muslim men can be dangerous and some are perhaps terrorist trained and infiltrating into Canada. They can also be radicalized by extremist muslim imams as we know.
Keep out the young single men and women and only admit the family groups, I say.