Good. But why not the pro-the pro-Nazi rag distributed by Canada Post, as well?
Sickening images from Your Ward News, and the Twitter feed of its convicted-of-sexual-assault editor, below.
Liberals still wince, a little bit, when reminded of Stephane Dion’s Green Shift. Some of them even attempt to rewrite history, and suggest they never supported it when it was party policy in 2008.
But everyone did, including Justin Trudeau, who – like a good soldier – came out to Vancouver in October 2008 to stump for votes for Dion. News reports of their rally at Science World make no mention of Trudeau attempting to shift away from the Green Shift. None. Given how successfully the CPC demonized the Green Shift in 2008 – and how they have campaigned against carbon taxes, for years – that is significant.
And, perhaps, that’s why Trudeau’s environmental policy announcement yesterday – in Vancouver, again – was also significant. The Green Shift is referenced in the headline over Akin’s column, but I can’t fund any other reference to it in the coverage of yesterday. Did the media ask Trudeau about Dion’s plan? Did it come up at all? We don’t know. But the NDP and Tory responses to what he said, I thought, were desultory – they seemed to be phoning it in.
It’s still early, of course, and attack ads may be in the works as I write this. But perhaps things have changed, in the intervening years, and carbon taxes/green shifts aren’t as radioactive as they once were. We shall see. In the meantime, here’s an amazing (and revealing) photo of Trudeau and Dion on that day back in October 2008.
Caption contest!
In this, the NDP leader frankly looks not unlike a megalomaniac without a shred of principle. But, then again, the main source is Dimitri Pseudas (a guy who allegedly has been investigated by the Mounties for stuff like this, according to the Globe), and the author is Martin Patriquin (a guy who trades in inaccuracy and prejudice, according to the Quebec Press Council).
So NDP stalwarts will likely shrug it off. Should they?
UPDATE: Mulcair is denying it all, pretty categorically. Will Pseudas and Patriquin’s anonymous sources now pony up real evidence? Doubt it. Looks like an LPC war room fail until they do.
There has been a ton of commentary about what the ad is. There hasn’t been a lot of commentary about what it isn’t.
It isn’t:
That all said, the spot reminds me of Willie Horton. That, too, enraged the chattering classes and progressives. But those weren’t the folks Willie Horton was aimed at – and, in the end, Willie Horton worked with the American voters the GOP were courting.
Bottom line: most of the job in politics, now, is simply getting people to pay attention. My hunch is that the hue and cry about that CPC/ISIS/JT ad has helped to achieve the mission’s key objective: i.e., to get the electorate to pay attention in the sleepy Summer months and agree, yet again, that Justin Trudeau “just isn’t ready” to deal with the horrors that seemingly occur daily in this world.
That may make you mad. But it’s unlikely you were ever part of the audience the CPC had in mind when they did the thing up on some staffer’s computer, for about ten bucks.
Smart. (Shows what I know.)
UPDATE: My former North Van pal Shahriar Shahabi has invented a name for it – it’s the Mulcair Hair!
So:
Would you make this issue a hill to die on? From The Hill Times:
“[It would] affect their ability to pay for all kinds of things at exactly the wrong time,” he said.
Can someone explain the strategy to me, here? As I’ve written before, this is the kind of issue that could seriously derail the NDP’s upward ascent. Why the Hell didn’t they just pay the money back when they had the chance?
Justice Kennedy’s closing paragraph this morning. Read.
