Check this out.

It would be immodest to suggest that I have this effect on newspaper circulation, so I won’t do so.

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• About those Liberal ads: If you think you’ve been seeing a lot more of them, this campaign, it’s because you have.  Last time around, Stephane Dion, God bless his soul, didn’t want to plumb the advertising depths in the way that Stephen Harper had done.  For ten days into the writ, his senior guys had ads ready to go – but Dion refused to give the green light.  By the time the Red Leaf folks said they were going to run the ads whether the leader liked it or not, the damage was done.  One of my best pals, Bob Richardson, is running Red Leaf this time – and Bob (like me) believes in strike first, strike hard, strike often. You’ll see the impact in next week’s batch of polls.
• The shift begins: As I opined in the Sun yesterday, the Michael Ignatieff depicted in the Conservative attack spots isn’t the Michael Ignatieff Joe and Jane Frontporch are seeing on their TV sets.  That, plus the fact that the HARPER HEADING TO MAJORITY headlines are unsettling for lots of demographics (see below) is hurting the Cons.  Thus this Nanos.  The Tory lead has shrunk considerably.
• Harper’s a Meanie: Hearing this a lot, lately.  At the Ontario budget speech, yesterday, a teacher approached me and said that she’s starting to experience a visceral reaction to Stephen Harper’s M.O.  “He’s so damned mean-spirited, I find it hard to believe, sometimes,” she said.  “My friends feel the same way.”  That demo – female, university-educated and/or youngish – is what denied Harper a majority for the past three attempts. More here and here, from female writers. Will women deny him this time around, too?
• May’s Boring: Look, Liz, we all (me included) wanted you in the debate last time.  Price of admission?  Your suggestion that you would win seats. Well, you didn’t.  You had your shot, you blew it.  When you get invited to the big kids’ table, you have to show you belong.  You didn’t.  You don’t.
• What does a war room do? As I have told every youngster who falls into my clutches at the start of every campaign, OUR JOB IS NOT TO WIN THE WHOLE CAMPAIGN BY OURSELVES. Instead, I tell them, yelling entirely in caps, our job IS TO WRECK THE OTHER SIDE’S CAMPAIGN DAY, ONE DAY AT A TIME. And, if you do that for nine days out of a 36-day writ, you have eliminated the other side’s ability to tell their story for a quarter of the campaign.  And that’s a campaign that cannot win. Thus, poor Sebastien Togneri.  The hapless Tory aide, being probed by the RCMP, helped the Liberal war room to stomp all over Harper’s message of the day on Tuesday.  That’s a win, in my books.
• …speaking of war: We are, for the second time in a short time, a nation at war.  Just before the election started, the Harper Reformatories effectively declared war on Mu’ammar Qadhafi.  They then proceeded to avoid saying anything – anything at all – about the war they committed us to. Where are the media?  Where are the Opposition parties?  I believe it is right to finally dislodge Qadhafi from power – I wrote a book about it – but do you?  And do you agree we need to know more about Canada’s secret war?
• Tim Harper’s back! My chum Harper is back in the Star, and (per usual) doing good work.  Tim highlights the reality of this campaign so far – apart from weird hacks like thee and me, no real people are paying any attention to this race yet.  They won’t for a while yet, either. So, effectively, the race isn’t 36 days long – it’s about 16 days long for all in the race.  That changes perspectives.  Or should.  And it explains why Harper isn’t looking rattled yet.
• Pic of the day: Look, I’m an amateur musician too (and I’m really amateur).  But, having last night spied Harper’s wince-inducing spin on the ivories with that Winnipeg kid who is gaga for Lady Gaga, I think it’s time for the Tory backroom to hang up his piano.  I suck, too, fellas in the Tory war room, but I try not to inflict my lack of talent on national television. Enough, already.  It’s boring and, frankly, embarrassing. Pic, therefore, of the day:

“Please releassssse me, let me gooooo…I don’t want to be part of your photo op any-morrrrrre…”

[Suggest your own caption song lyrics here! – ed.]

Comments (61)

However, Fentie dismissed the attacks from the Liberal benches and suggested that was all the Opposition party had to offer.

During the spring sitting, Fentie chided the Liberals on this count for “running on empty”, and after the spring sitting concluded – the last sitting before Yukoners go to the polls – he said there was not much to dispraise.

“They don’t have a lot they can criticize the government for when it comes to the economy, and to the infrastructure investments,” said Fentie. “So they avert to doing something that is right out of the Warren Kinsella style of politics and that is character assassination.”

Have I mentioned that Dennis Fentie did time for trafficking in heroin? No?

Never mind.

 

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I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: it’s going to be controversial. It’s going to be populist. It’s going to be fun.

It is not going to be ideological. Or “Fox News North.”

Comments (23)

Seen here.

Says the irrepressible BCL:

Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Halifax. I don’t suppose that tells us much about who they might be (presumably not the CPoC itself, at least not directly).“

Comments (22)

“There is a great, big paradox at the centre of the Conservative Party’s multiple-million-dollar effort to defame Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff. That paradox is this: The reason why the Cons are ahead is because of their attack ad campaign targeting the Grit boss.

And the reason why they will slip behind around the time of the televised leaders’ debates is because of that selfsame ad campaign.”

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If so, it would certainly explain the abundance of pro-Harper comments now showing up on my site – simultaneously, and saying suspiciously-similar stuff.

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It’s in fact “the test” for future Parliaments, he says.  How very interesting.

Comments (27)

I don’t know about you, but I think he looks more natural and comfortable in French than in English.  Interesting.  Probably helpful, too.

The new Conservative soft focus spot, also released on the weekend, is weird: soft music track, soft narration, and an incongruous focus on non-soft stuff (ie. taxes, human smuggling, war ships). It’s like two different committees put this one together:

Comments (22)

• Coalition in Remission: Paul Wells, I think, is the guy who once said that it is always the most-obvious, and least-complex stuff that gets you.  As Election 2011 kicks off, and as you pore through the avalanche of analysis ce matin – here and here and here and here – we are all reminded how eminently wise that observation is.  As regular lurkers at this site will know – and as I plan to write, shortly, for a magazine piece – I think cooperation/coalition/merger is a pretty good idea.  A few somewhat successful politicians, like Messrs. Chretien, Broadbent, Romanow, etc., think it is a good idea, too. I mean, (a) Stephen Harper did it with the Reformers/Alliancers/Conservatives, and (b) he won the election that came right afterwards.  But Ignatieff and his circle of advisors are against it – they think they can win by stealing NDP votes, instead of eliminating the NDP as a choice.  They’re totally wrong, but whatever.  All that needed to be said was this:  “Harper isn’t telling the truth.  He tried a secret coalition in 2000 and 2004 with the NDP and the Bloc.  When that didn’t work, he merged in 2004 with the Conservatives.  Me, I want to win the election on my own, fair and square.  What’s going to happen after the election, you ask?  Beats me.  I don’t answer hypothetical questions.  Maybe you can go ask Stephen Harper why he’s a liar.  That isn’t hypothetical.”
• Coyne Coalition Edition: Andrew has a typically thoughtful and principled essay on the subject, here (and “thoughtful and principled” are the reasons why Andrew would be the least successful politician ever, if he ever took the plunge, that is, which he won’t).  Andrew seems to be satisfied with Ignatieff’s answer, but also with the notion that coalitions are perfectly legitimate – just don’t be sneaky about it.  What he doesn’t like is Harper’s aforementioned dishonesty:  “…if [Harper] now believes it is “illegitimate” for one government to replace another without going back to the people, is he then formally swearing that he would never again make the kind of agreement with the other parties, whatever it was, he was so evidently prepared to make in 2004?”
• Winner-ation of the day: Gilles Duceppe.  He called Harper a liar, for lying, and I can guarantee you the Conservative leader would be suing the Bloc leader for defamation were he not protected by the defence of justification.  Harper needs to understand that it isn’t the coalition notion that is a club with which to beat Ignatieff – it’s the suspicion that Ignatieff isn’t being truthful about it.  It’s not the break-in, it’s always the cover-up, etc.  As polls have repeatedly shown, Canadians are quite okay with this coalition stuff.  Go, Gilles, go.
• Loser-ation of the day: The politicians.  They may be talkin’, but ain’t nobody listenin’, yet.
• The Physician Omission: I am rather slow, so you will forgive me for being more bewildered than usual by the fact that the leaders are all yammering about something that doesn’t matter to Canadians so much (cf., coalitions), and not talking at all about something that does (cf., health care).  I’m not making it up:  it’s the Number One Issue Thing for Canadians. So why don’t Ignatieff and the other Opposition bosses beat the stuffing out of Harper with it?  Good question.  I can tell you, however, that health care is going figure rather prominently in the coming Ontario provincial election – and we are going to make Timmy Hudak wear the 20-odd hospitals he shut down, as well as the thousands of nurses he fired, and thousands of hospital beds he eliminated.  And we are going to win with that election, too.  But to each his/her own, I guess.
• Cauchon Emotion! I was happy to see Iggy charge right into Quebec, that horrid La Presse poll notwithstanding, and start hitting the hustings with my friend Martin Cauchon.  As Ivison wrote, he did quite well, and quite a few folks are cheering on Cauchon’s challenge of the rebarbative, back-stabbing Thomas Mulcair, thousands of Layton loyalists included.  To do well in this national election, the Grits need to retake their former stronghold of Outremont – and I confidently predict that the progressive, smart-as-a-whip Cauchon will do just that.  Here, meanwhile, is a photo a Jewish community friend took of a Cauchon sign in his ‘hood.  Nice pic, Cauchon!

Comments (73)