02.22.2011 11:51 AM

Question I’ve been asked by many Libs to ask, many times

Get rid of the old crew, and get a new crew to move up in the polls.

How’s that new crew working out for you, anyway?

33 Comments

  1. Tim says:

    There’s only one poll that means anything or something like that to paraphrase some guy who knows about stuff like this. What the heck let’s have an election.

  2. Lance says:

    What a second, weren’t YOU part of the “old crew”?

  3. MontrealElite says:

    They lack a certain taste for red meat.

    And I’d hire a couple people who could hide bodies.

    But, I’m Irish.

  4. W.B. says:

    You need somebody who can write and produce a series of attack ads that tear Harper apart strip by strip until every past anti Canada comment and every lie during the last 10 years is exposed over and over. The Cons are Ultimate Fighting the Libs ping pong.

    • Brian says:

      I don’t actually think that’s the problem. Harper attacks himself every month, or pays cabinet ministers to attack himself on months when he’s not doing the same.

      However, Ignatieff isn’t exactly providing much red meat – or blue meat, for that matter – to give voters on either flank a reason to shift.

    • nic coivert says:

      Problem is this- Harper knows the Cons have a ton more money, if the Libs want to go to Ad War this will serve to deplete the limited coffers of the Libs which plays into Harper’s long term strategy of destroying, and that means financially, the LPC. That is Harper’s goal. His long term vision of Canada is the recreation of its political playing field without Liberals. And I don’t think anybody needs to be reminded what sort of political mind set that is.

      Unfortunately the LPC will have to grind it out until the writ is dropped. But a some rebuttals at limited expense would be nice. Start setting up what you plan to do to Harper’s character in an election. And I think he is very vulnerable on character, as well as policy and his record. Harper’s literary parallels are “The King with no Clothes,” and “The Wizard of Oz” (with Harper as Oz and forget about the rest of the story).

      And pollsters are increasingly wary of polls anyhow.

  5. H Holmes says:

    They need money.
    They have no idea how to raise it.
    I am finding it extremely frustrating.

    They will continue to take a pounding until they can fight back on tv and on the radio.
    Social media is so much overblown, noone really cares about your facebook update, and most voters don’t trust or read tweets.
    See the numbers by the conservatives. That is all due to old fashioned electioneering. Buying ads and targeting your adversary.

    The Liberal team also doesn’t use issues to raise money or talk about fighting the conservatives.
    They spend money needlessly and advertise the fact that they don’t plan on voting Harper out. Or at least that is my take on petition.

    The old boys could raise money and could talk to the newspapers.
    The new kids seem to forget about this.

  6. V. Malaise says:

    I have to say that Anne McGrath was the brightest person in the room there (no offense WK) and had the most insightful things to say. How come she isn’t the Leader of the Liberal Party. She’s obviously wasted on the New Dippers.

  7. Barbara says:

    The Liberals have become too Progressive instead of trying to stay in the center. Anybody who would want Ann McGrath is not a Liberal. Ann McGrath ran for the Communist Party and you would want her to lead the Liberals? Can you imagine the ads if she were the leader? If you can’t find somebody better than a past Communist, then the Liberals deserve to be in the basement for the foreseeable future.

  8. Riley Hennessey says:

    Just my opinion, but maybe instead of dreaming up the perfect attack ads, or blaming the Liberal staff office, the Liberal Party of Canada should put some serious thought in to why Canadians voted for Harper in 2006 and 2008. This would involve understanding that Harper won legitimately, and figuring out why roughly 10% of the Liberal vote share left the party and moved their ballot checkmarks to the CPC.

    If you don’t admit your mistakes and learn from them, you’ll always repeat them. Least that’s what I was taught in school. Sometimes I think the Liberal Leadership must have gone to a different school than me.

  9. Michael Bussiere says:

    Blame the Liberals themselves for changing the funding rules without preparing for the new reality they themselves created, and for not seeing that the Reformers were ready to cash in on the fundraising mechanisms they already had in place. Blame the old team for that.

    Now (forgive my frustrated rant), the polls are going to artificially responsive to tons of money being spent on shoving messages down everybody’s face. Geez, if advertising can sell a Big Mac, it can sell Harper. If we ran ads telling people what McDonald’s food was carved out of, we could put them out of business (or at least keep them from a majority of the market).

  10. Peterb says:

    It wouldn’t be a political backroom if there wasn’t some infighting particularly when in opposition. However judge a book by its’ covers and that means polls – what else is there to measure by and it gives you a pretty good reading. One thing Liberals should learn is that their attacks are hollow and going nowhere – that should be obvious. The team does have to give their head a shake. Bringing in old NDP’s and putting them on front bench is not the answer.

    • Namesake says:

      @ Peterb & Barbara: re: V. Malaise’s comment about Ann McGrath being someone the Liberals should recruit.

      newsflash: not everybody who posts here even _votes_ for the LPC (like, um, you two, probably), much less speaks for, or has any influence with them, so don’t take random musings here as evidence of anything amiss about the state of the LPC itself.

      from his various comments, I suspect V. Malaise actually doesn’t have much use for any of the federal parties, these days…

      which is fair enough; in fact, at this rate, pretty soon, the “None of the Above” party would win, if it was on the ballot, and could be instituted with a random jury duty type pool to draw the reluctant MPs from in each reading, after the fact.

  11. hugger says:

    I don’t usually pick at polls but I have thought Nanos polls suspect for a while now. My suspicions were mostly based on the wide difference in support for the Greens which Nanos consistently reported. Roughly half or less of what the other polling groups report.

    Today I came across this on Nanos home page;

    “Nanos Research is pleased to have been awarded a Standing Offer with the Government of Canada.”

    http://www.nanosresearch.com/company/PDF/2010%20English%20Brochure%20for%20Government%20Standing%20Offer%20FINAL.pdf

    Looking at the low number of people surveyed and the province by province plus minus accuracy numbers, I wonder how he arrived at the average of 3.4% claimed and what value this poll has?

    The poll also shows the Reformatories down in Atlantic, Ontario, BC and up a whole big bunch on the Prairies and a touch higher in Quebec.

    http://www.nanosresearch.com/library/polls/POLNAT-W11-T454E.pdf

    Overall it looks amateurish or worse.

  12. jStanton says:

    … the obvious sub-text here is that the one constant between the so called “old crew” and “new crew” that can explain their similarly dismal results is the party leader.

    No news there. But we don’t get a chance to change that until the next election, which is Mr. Harper’s for the asking.

  13. MississaugaLibPeter says:

    The new team is as stupid as any previous old team since it has not yet made Ignatieff provide a mea culpa for some of his previous writings/statements.

    IT IS THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM, AND UNTIL IT DEALT WITH, THE CONSERVATIVES WILL ALWAYS SEE THEIR FORTUNES RISE WHEN THEY USE THEM.

    You would think that after witnessing Rob Ford’s simple mea culpa the Ignatieff folks would have dealt with an issue that has been a millstone around his neck since 2006. And as the attack ads have revealed, unless it is addressed, the Conservatives will continue increasing support.

    • Warren says:

      He’s also a deep blue Liberal. That’s a problem.

      • jStanton says:

        …which means that he’s not a Liberal at all…which means, what… that he’s simply an opportunist?… a megalomaniac? Or, insert less pejorative term for one overcome by hubris…

        • Namesake says:

          Hmm. Well, if,

          “opportunistic” = Taking immediate advantage, often unethically, of any circumstance of possible benefit; and
          “opportunist” = a person who takes advantage of opportunities as and when they arise, regardless of planning or principle.

          megalomaniac = 1. A psychopathological condition characterized by delusional fantasies of wealth, power, or omnipotence. 2. An obsession with grandiose or extravagant things or actions.

          hubris = extreme haughtiness or arrogance; or being out of touch with reality and overestimating one’s own competence

          Then this isn’t fair or right, and ignores the history of his leadership.

          It’s not as though he coveted and sought the job and installed himself into a lead role which he was clearly unsuited for:

          like the phlegmatic, slightly portly, middle-aged, monotoned Kevin Spacey, casting himself as the charismatic dynamic young singer Bobby Darin.

          No, he was recruited for it. And when people are recruited by high-level positions by entrusted head-hunters or by the companies’ own high-level rep’s, it’s understood that they’ve done their due diligence — it’s incumbent on them to do so — and wouldn’t be offering it to someone they believed would be inappropriate for the job.

          So when Ian Davey & Rascal Rossi et al. came down to woo him, it was likely THEY who convinced HIM that his views were compatible with the tenor of the Party and the times. Because it’s not as though there aren’t plenty of ‘deep blue Liberals’ who’ve had a large influence on the Party since the mid-90s, like John Manley and Paul Martin, and let’s not forget, it was the Rainmaker Keith Davey himself who talent scouted him.

          http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=M1ARTM0012965

          So if it was the recruiters who assured him that his principles were within the confines of the Big Red Tent, then he shouldn’t be accused of being willing to ignore or jettison those principles; and since it’s taking 6 years and counting, and he’s still hanging in there — working harder than ever, in fact — he shouldn’t be accused of taking immediate advantage.

          And the other epithets don’t fit, either, since it’s not delusional to think a Liberal will become PM leader again, even a right of centre one: it wasn’t, in late 2004 when he was recruited to replace a deep-blue Lib. PM, and polls notwithstanding, it’s still not, now (I think the other Martin’s right: a bunch more scandals are about to spill out among the remaining 221 complaint files that the AWOL Sargent Schultz Integrity Commissioner declined to investigate
          http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/putting-integrity-to-the-test/article1913843/

          And, again, it’s not hubris, since the people who recruited him and supported him in two leadership campaigns gave him ample grounds for believing that he was the right man for the job.

      • MississaugaLibPeter says:

        You are 100% right. But the Conservatives can’t attack him for that (although the NDP rightly should).

        My biggest fear is what really happens if the meglomaniac actually gets his majority. Unlike the U.S., where elections every two years keep many politicians in check, Harper with a majority in both the House of Commons and in the Senate for four years is outright frightening. Yes, other prime ministers have had majorities, but I honestly can’t recall any of them being so arrogant or so backward thinking (i.e. wanting to increase incarceration of it’s population, increased wasteful spending, total disregard for the environment) or outright, calculatingly deceitful (i.e. hiding Oda behind Ambrose in the H. of C., government cheques with Conservative logos).

        Yes, Ignatieff is too far blue for my liking, but I will do whatever I can to make sure that Harper does not get a majority. And I hope you and others do as well.

  14. jStanton says:

    … sometimes Gord is not completely wrong.

    • H Holmes says:

      The argument isn’t about how the liberals can’t raise money.

      It is that they don’t even really try to raise money.

      Most of the platform is out.

      Yet we keep pushing people to websites which don’t encourage donations.

      If anyone would have reviewed how Hillary or barrack raised money.

      It is that every issue pushed you to a place to donate.

      We don’t and we hide the fact that we want your money.

      Some feel that constantly asking members for money will turn them of politics.
      However not asking at all leads to being way out spent.
      Which turns people off politics or even worse causes them to switch votes.

  15. Wayne says:

    Post of the day (maybe month).

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