Didn’t see some of these over the weekend. Here they are, as a public service:

• Christina Blizzard, Sun Media: “The important point for PC Leader Tim Hudak to remember is he won’t become premier because it’s his turn.  Voters have a refreshing habit of cutting to the chase and rejecting anyone who appears complacent…If we’ve learned anything from the recent federal election and last fall’s municipal elections it is this: Don’t take the electorate for granted. Do not think for one minute that all you have to do is drop a platform and cruise to a coronation…Hudak said in his platform he’d keep all-day kindergarten. McGuinty came out swinging, suggesting the Tories will renege. It’s all a question of heart, McGuinty told reporters Wednesday. He has heart. The Tories don’t.”
• Martin Regg Cohn, Star: “Here’s a hot issue that Tim Hudak thinks will bring down the Ontario government: Higher hydro bills. And here’s the Tory leader’s bizarre pitch to bring those bills down: Stop collecting for our hydro debt, by brazenly declaring it paid in full — even though it’s still there. Ignoring our debts is a strange notion coming from Ontario’s once-proud Progressive Conservatives. But Hudak has calculated that by profiting from voter frustration, and banking on voter folly, he can cash in on voting day, Oct. 6. His plan is a scam — a classic tale of buying votes with taxpayers’ money. And a parable of how elections are won in an era of short attention spans. A warning to readers: The PCs are counting on you tuning out the details.”
• Angelo Persichilli, Toronto Star: “In Ontario, provincial Conservatives were in favour of the HST until the day that the McGuinty Liberals adopted it…Hudak is no Mike Harris. You could disagree with Harris, but he had a vision, he had the Common Sense Revolution. The Hudak Conservatives have nothing revolutionary — their Changebook sounds more like another tablet competing with the BlackBerry Playbook and the iPad 2. Another similarity between the Ontario Conservatives and the federal Liberals is the issue of party unity. Even if the wound is not as open and deep as the one still affecting the federal Liberals, Ontario Conservatives are still discreetly dealing with the way former leader John Tory was treated by his party. How much this lingering resentment will impact the October vote is hard to say, but it cannot be ignored.”
• Ken Gray, Ottawa Citizen: “Former U.S. President George W. Bush had a disconcerting view about debt. Don’t pay it. Let the next guy cover it. And with Tory Leader Tim Hudak’s Changebook platform, Ontarians could get a taste of that U.S. fiscal and economic solution….Hudak’s election platform is the kind of document that made Greece the model of fiscal prudence it is today.”
• Phil McNichol, Owen Sound Sun Times: “Tim Hudak is starting to use the same populist, tough-on- crime tactics that seem, sadly, to have worked for the Harper campaign. It has nothing to do with espousing an intelligent response to crime and the “correction” of people convicted of crimes. Rather, it’s all about the cynical view that a lot of voters are stupid, that they will have a thoughtless, knee-jerk reaction to dubious policies that exploit their fears, suspicions and prejudices.”

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In one cable, we now learn, Rossi was dishing to the Yanks about what was going on in Ignatieff’s office. He kvetched that Ignatieff wasn’t listening to super-smart guys like him. Instead, Rossi whined, the Grit boss was much more preoccupied with his wife Zsuzsanna Zhosar. “The only person whose opinion he really cares about is his wife, Zsuzsanna,” the WikiLeak cable reports in one Rossi-related dispatch. (If you ask me, things might have ended a lot better for Ignatieff if he’d listened more to his wife and a lot less to the likes of Donolo or Rossi.)

If we’d been in government, Rocco’s penchant for disclosing secrets to a foreign power might have landed him in court. When you are a government employee, there’s a name for that kind of duplicity. It’s called “treason.” But because we weren’t the government, Rocco’s secret briefings with the Americans can only be legally categorized as “dishonest” and “sleazy.”

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…in which the Toronto Star columnist absolutey destroys the PC frat boy:

“Watching the just-concluded federal campaign and the Ontario provincial contest that is just about to start is rather like being a spectator at a hockey game where the players exchange jerseys in the middle of the second period.

The thrust of the federal Liberal campaign against the federal Conservatives was about making accusations of contempt of Parliament and corruption, tarnishing Harper’s image, and attacking his government’s economic performance, competence and the huge deficit.

The provincial Conservatives are using the same approach against the provincial Liberals — accusing them of economic mismanagement and of incompetence and launching personal attacks against McGuinty.

Another characteristic of the federal Liberal campaign was trying to push hot buttons that divided Canadians, such as abortion. Hudak is doing the same. Last week the Toronto Sun wrote that Hudak decided not to get involved in education issues because “there is little to be gained by messing around with something that is not a hot-button issue.”

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Can you be thin-skinned and have a chip on your shoulder at the same time?

It’s funny. I was talking to a certain, er, very successful Liberal politician yesterday and we touched on this very subject. “They’re a bunch of babies,” said he. “They’ve never been able to take a punch without crying about it.”

Well, get ready, Dippers. You’re in the big leagues, now. Comes with the territory. At least the Reformatories can take a punch.

Thus, check this out in the LFP: I mean, I was just having fun!

Wait’ll this sucky sucky socialist baby sees me when I’m actually mad:

“Regarding Warren Kinsella’s column NDP not very new or democratic (May 31): Wow. I hope Kinsella feels better, having got that off his chest. Keeping such anger inside cannot be good for a Liberal, or anyone else with mountains of work to do. The substance of his rant is less impressive. I looked for the meat to back up the juicy headline and found he really didn’t have much to say.”

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Oh, and good riddance.

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Spotted by the always-vigilant Paul.  You need to read all of this.  And, yes, we noticed.  Hudak has not explicitly renounced the funding of private religious schools, even though Ontarians have.  I rather suspect this is going to come again today, because more and more people are noticing, too.  Over to Paul:

Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservative party suffered a crushing defeat in the Ontario provincial election of 2007 due primarily to a promise to extend taxpayer funding to privately owned and operated religious schools. Yet, for the October 6, 2011 election, the PCs have again put faith – a firm belief in something for which there is no evidence – at the foundation of their entire election platform, titled ChangeBook. Though down-played in the express wording of ChangeBook, faith-based budgeting, faith-based climate-fighting, and – though neither the Liberals nor the mainstream media have yet noticed it – eventaxpayer funding for faith-based schools form the substantive core of Tim Hudak’s platform, which – especially given ChangeBook’s obvious reference to FaceBook – would more appropriately be titled FaithBook.

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To wit:

“Are we headed for more civilized politics as an innocent new Parliament reconvenes -respectful debate on substantive issues, witty rejoinders instead of personal abuse, pointed questions rather than extreme claims? Have they heard our plaintive cries?

There is a case for despair, but also cause for hope and, during what promises to be a brief and busy spring session, those questions will be answered -starting Friday with the note struck by the Speech from the Throne.”

Personally, I like a bit of conflict in my House of Commons-watching. I like some creative tension. I like passion. Why does everyone always seem to think “decorum” will be better?

What thinkest thou, O readers? Is “decorum” achieveable? Do we want it?

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In case his parole officer was wondering where he was.

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The Liberal number depresses me, but it won’t stay that low for long.

What really blows me away is the Conservative number vis-a-vis the NDP number. If the campaign had gone for another couple weeks, would Jack Layton be Prime Minister?

OTTAWA – A new poll suggests New Democrats appear to have consolidated their support as official Opposition to the Harper Conservatives, particularly among women and urban voters.

As a new Parliament opens following the May 2 election, the Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey suggests the majority Conservative government has the support of 37 per cent of respondents — down from the Tories’ 39.6 per cent of the popular vote on election day.

NDP support stood at 34 per cent in the poll, up from 30.6 per cent of the popular vote, while the third-place Liberals slipped to 15 per cent in the survey, a loss of almost four percentage points from their election day total.

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The NDP’s Karl Belanger, of all people, just indirectly reminded me that, fourteen years ago today, I got beaten (soundly) in North Vancouver. The above pic is the cover of the Vancouver Sun on the day after the campaign kicked off.

Sometimes I think about that race, which was a privilege to be a part of. I lost, in part, because some said I was a parachute candidate (I wasn’t – I competed for the Liberal nomination), and because the local rag (which published Holocaust denier Doug Collins) detested me. Also a factor: the worry that I’d be a trained seal, and that I wouldn’t ever dissent with my party.

For those of you who know me, that last one is kind of amusing. Me being reluctant to oppose the party’s leadership? That’s funny.

Anyway. Hard to believe it’s been so many years. Congrats to all MPs, from all parties, who are celebrating the anniversary of their victory today. I would’ve like to be there celebrating with you, but that’s politics (and life).

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