• 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!

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• Le petit gars is back! Why? Well, you can’t call an election and expect him not to show up, can you?
• So he’s swinging at the Tories: Right here.
• And he’s swinging at the Dippers too: Right here.
• He’s actually not saying anything he hasn’t said before. On these two criticisms, believe me – he means it. 
• So how do the recipients of his criticisms react? Well, the Tories, I can tell you, secretly admire the old guy. They – from Harper down – have always admired his toughness and decisiveness. 
• The Dippers, meanwhile, are like they always are. That is, they are sucky, whiny babies. They are, as I’ve written many times before, pious and humourless  windbags who always prefer talking to doing. Just watch how they react to any critique, no matter how merited: they can’t take it. When that idiot NDP candidate out in Alberta started enthusiastically courting the crucial Bloods and Crips vote, here, they didn’t ask themselves: Hey, should we keep this candidate? No, they excoriated anyone who even dared to raise the subject. 
• Thus, JC today: The Cons are receiving his blasts with equanimity. The Dips? They’re pathetically digging up stuff from 15 years ago. Like I say: sucky, whiny babies. 

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The view for me and the wife, right now. Holy cow.

  

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What a nice person! The NDP candidate in Edmonton, in her own words:

  

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9/11 moment with Toronto fire fighters. Sad day, always. 

 

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• Look, I don’t know about you.  But, personally, I am fed up to the teeth with a pile of polls that are completely contradictory, and obviously flawed, and are being offered up to us like they were the gospel.  Fed up.
• So here’s my advice for the day.  Have a good one.

Free advice: ignore polls. Read their plans. Watch a debate. Support the candidate who impresses. #cdnpoli #elxn42 https://t.co/DZyorDf4k4

— Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) September 11, 2015

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Right here.

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Consider this your War Room Warning, as it were. In next week’s Hill Times column. 

  

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• Nuttier than a fruit cake. Nuttier than a Tim’s Maple Log. Nuttier than a port-a-potty at a peanut festival. Nuttier than a Trump-Palin ticket. NUTTY. 
• That’s how nutty this election is. Every party has had a crazy things being said by crazy candidates or crazy staffers. That’s happened in the past. But the number of bimbo eruptions in his one? I’ve never seen anything like it. 
• It isn’t the fault of social media. Social media simply provides a platform for crazy people to say crazy things – and for campaign war rooms, or the media, to thereafter publicize the craziness.
• It’s been nutty in past campaigns, as noted. But the sheer volume of insanity and inanity in this year’s model simply dwarfs everything that has gone before it, I think.
• Check this out. This summary doesn’t even capture them all! Just this morning, a Liberal candidate in Surrey (reminding us all the nuts roll to the corners) said:

  

• What is going on? All of the parties have so-called “green light” committees – believe me, I know (one was used to actually “green light” the likes of Eve Adams – and torpedo actual Liberal leadership candidates like David Bertschi and Deborah Coyne). So, how did all of those green lighting geniuses miss this stuff?
• Your guess is as good as mine. But I’ll tell you one thing – if the parties are wondering why none of them can break through, maybe the serial idiocy that is Election 2015 is a big part of it. Like I say, it’s nutty. 

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• The popular consensus seems to be the CPC is doing badly. Candidate controversies, refugee backlash, dropping to third place, and now unhelpful stories like this. It is not a particularly happy time for Conservatives.
• Could they actually be losing? It almost seems surreal, doesn’t it? For the past decade, Harper and his team have absolutely dominated the political landscape. They have always seemed to be the ones who were most strategic and savvy. They have always seemed to be one step ahead of everyone else. Some days, it felt like they were going to be in power forever, didn’t it?
• But a handful of polls don’t necessarily lie. Something is pulling down their campaign, gradually but undeniably.  You can feel it.
• It isn’t just the refugee crisis or the candidate stuff. In an era of perpetual war, we will always have refugee crises (the Syrian one, which many folks have just noticed, has been going on for half a decade). And in the era of social media, we will always have political aspirants saying and doing stupid things – in every political party.
• So what is it? Simple: when you’ve been there a decade, voters start looking around for an alternative. In any democracy, they feel that 10 years is enough time to be running things. Voters start talking about the need for change, because they feel change is good. 
• There are exceptions to that rule, of course. There is the most recent win by the Ontario Liberals. The one that Christy Clark won. There is the final win by Justin Trudeau’s father. Those majority victories, and others,  defied the 10 year “rule.”
• But. But, were those situations where Grits actually won? Or, as some say, were they more accurately occasions where the Tories, per the cliche, snatched defeat from the jaws of victory?
• Bottom line: Whatever you may think of him, you have to agree that Stephen Harper is no Joe Clark or Tim Hudak. And that, if campaign experience, campaign money, and campaign discipline count – and they do – only a fool would start crowing (as some of my commenters are now doing) that the Cons are dead.
• They ain’t dead yet. Because – as everyone agrees – the real campaign is just starting.

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