12.06.2010 07:49 AM

The grassy knoll in Winnipeg North

“…The end result gave Ms. Javier a paltry 1,647 votes, which NDP MP Pat Martin (Winnipeg Centre, Man.) says came largely from a diehard knot of Filipino Conservative supporters who supported the tough-on-crime agenda Prime Minister Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) drew attention to on his only low-profile visit to the riding. Had Mr. Larkin been the Conservative candidate, after having won 5,033 votes and 22 per cent of the vote in the 2008 election, Liberal candidate Kevin Lamoureux, who resigned his provincial legislative assembly seat to contest the byelection, would have lost, the senior Conservative said.

It appears that despite allegations the Conservatives put up Ms. Javier to draw votes from the Liberals, the opposite was the case—Prime Minister Harper and the Conservatives wanted Mr. Lamoureux to win.

Party insiders say there is one main reason: They want Mr. Ignatieff to be leading the Liberal Party into the next general election. Mr. Ignatieff has the lowest personal voter support ratings on the federal scene, perhaps since Brian Mulroney, although not for the same reasons, and he has been unable to bring the party’s support above the 30-per-cent threshold in public opinion polls. Critics say he has no political instincts and makes mistakes. For example, last week he got the Dauphin-Swan River-Marquette riding wrong when he was addressing his caucus.

“If they lost all three, the knives would have been out,” the Conservative said. Another told The Hill Times in an earlier interview after the byelections: “We’re happy Iggy is staying.”

Get that?  Clear?  They wanted to lose, because by losing, they end up winning, despite the fact that they lost, badly.  Understood?

In other news, we have obtained an exclusive photograph of a Senior Conservative Party strategist, hard at work in the party’s war room bunker:

14 Comments

  1. Catherine says:

    The pic says it all! Too funny and a great way to start a Monday morning.

  2. Lance says:

    “Get that? Clear? They wanted to lose, because by losing, they end up winning, despite the fact that they lost, badly. Understood?”
    =======================
    Get that? Clear? Even when the Tories WON Vaughan, they really LOST, because even though they only won by 1000 votes, they should have won by much more. Understood?

    It works both way, Mr. K.

  3. Lance says:

    To wit –

    “Well, I may have been right about Winnipeg on CBC, but I sure got it wrong about Vaughan in the pages of the Sun ? I mean, blowing a massive lead of thousands of votes in two weeks, like the Vaughan Conservatives did, isn?t winning ?handily.? It?s a huge embarrassment.”
    – November 29th, 2010, 11:52 pm

    “The net winner this morning is Ignatieff. He was supposed to have been crushed in Vaughan, and wasn?t; he wasn?t supposed to win in North Winnipeg, and did; and no one expected him to win in Dauphin, and he didn?t.?
    November 30th, 2010, 10:19 am

    • Namesake says:

      But there’s a big diff. between the ‘put on a brave face’ v. of spin by pointing out it wasn’t as big a rout as was predicted, and…

      what might be the ‘tell an outright lie’ v., to totally rewrite the history on the fly.

      In WK’s case, he’d been informed of some internal polling by one or more of the parties showing the star candidate was predicted to have a massive lead… which nearly evaporated by the end of the (non)-campaign. Which IS a bit of encouragement for the next campaign, when peek-a-booing is no longer an option, cuz everyone will know his fed. views only too well by then.

      But in this Wpg. North case, the unnamed CPC staffer _might_ be _completely_ BS’ing, in alleging that they considered running their previous candidate (Ray Larkin) again, but deliberately decided not to & to run as weak a candidate as poss. He’d probably be unlikely to answer forthrightly, of course, since his daughter apparently has a sr. position w. the CPC party in MB he wouldn’t want to jeapordize, but it’d be interesting to ask Mr. Larkin whether that’s true, as far as he knows…. or if possibly, as in Mr. Fantino’s case with the LPC, he WAS approached to stand for them in this election but he: declined (which is quite poss., since clearly he didn’t have a realistic chance to win, and at his age (long since retired), who needs another exercise in humiliation for no apparent end).

      • Lance says:

        This shadowy, behind-the-scenes stuff annoys and wearies me to no end, so I will leave it at that. The point, however, is that the signifcance of the Liberals winning Winnipeg North was up-played while the significance of losing Vaughan was low-balled. I think I’ve demonstrated that aptly enough. People like Scot, with their terse statements of “what is your point” and “be quiet” just end up looking silly.

  4. Paul R Martin says:

    Thanks for today’s laugh. It was as funny as the explanations by Liberals regarding their moral victory in Vaughn. Cheers!

  5. Cow says:

    A perfect rendition of said staffer. Thank you; I’m glad to know that I wasn’t alone in my disgust at this article (when highlighted by Andrew Coyne this morning on Twitter).

  6. Dan O says:

    “Julie Javier, who barely ran a campaign, avoided candidate debates and media interviews, featured a mobile poster mounted atop an automobile that sporadically appeared in the riding..”

    Sounds pretty much like the campaign Fantino ran.

    What BS. They lost. Period.

  7. Pedro says:

    Seems to me this is just measuring the amount of the lint in one’s navel.
    Warren, you’ve said it many times – get a story and stick to it
    The Cons have one and they keep hammering it. Appears to me that some voters north of 29% think the Cons believe the story. Result? They vote for them.
    Message to Libs – get a story and stick to it. Hell any story now since you’ve tried so many. Hey, and act like you believe it. Maybe even try a story you really believe in.

  8. DL says:

    This Tory spin on the byelection in Wpg North is ABSURD. For one thing, even if the NDP had won the riding handily as expected – its not as if Ignatieff would have faced some Carole James-style insurrection – there would have been more sniping, more dissident Liberals bad-mouthing Iggy off the record…and Ignatieff would still be leading the Liberals into the next election. This notion that the Tories had to help the Liberals win WN to help Iggy keep his job is ridiculous. As if this was all some elaborate game of eight dimensional chess by Harper?

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