03.06.2012 07:07 PM

One of these does not belong

Manning calls vote suppression “bad.”

Manning teaches conservatives how to do vote suppression.

23 Comments

  1. Seafarer says:

    Very interesting.

    It could be very educational to have a list of the people who attended.

  2. !o! says:

    this post is a semantic morass. Vote Suppression is vote suppression. You can dress it up however you like. Obviously false information, or misinformation is “bad”, but I think you’ll have a hard time defining ‘false’ when there’re so many shades of grey– is giving the impression that something is the case when it is not, without stipulating ‘false’ or not? etc.

    None of that is relevant in the context of the 2011 election though, so one wonders what you’re getting at with your post, sounds like a garden path you’re inviting people down. Is that misinformation? I’ll let you think on it.

    • David_M says:

      SHADES OF GREY? There’s shades of grey?
      So I can disagree with you without being at league with… well whatever the latest evil is?
      Just awesome. Do you have the means to explain this ‘shades of grey’ concept to the current government for us?
      Many Thanks.

    • Philip says:

      Obviously for the Con Party it did.

  3. Matt says:

    Glad to see this here. It says a lot about the mentality of these guys.

  4. Gtoronto says:

    And the hits just keep on coming…
    ROBOCARDS!
    I don’t whether to laugh or cry
    Must listen. http://tinyurl.com/6uzbdf5

  5. JohnB says:

    This is looking more and more like a national voter suppression effort that goes all the way to Conservative headquarters. What happens if that is the case? I have no idea where this will lead. If the Prime Minister knew about this, can he remain in office? Since he control the GG office, how can he be removed if he has a majority government?

  6. Frmr Disgruntled Con now Happy Lib says:

    Scratch a Refooormer, and you’ll find a hypocrite each and every time…..from gold plated pensions,”open and accountable” govt(there’s a beaut) anti-gay policies being promulgated by front bench closeted wannabe leadership hopefuls, to Con MP Rob Anders insulting Afghan war veterans,….now this from Presto himself…..sad…

    • Michael says:

      You seem surprised that this is coming from Presto. I am not sure why you would be surprised.

      He was one of the loudest braying about gold plated pensions. But once he got to Ottawa and became eligible for his MP’s pension, well then all of the sudden there were all kinds of good reasons for the pension plan.

      Before becoming leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition he didn’t see the need for an official residence. He was going to turn Stornaway into a bingo hall. Didn’t quite turn out that way.

      • frmr disgruntled Con now Happy Lib says:

        Not surprised in the least…..I just continue to be amazed how my PC party(including myself) was hornswaggled to join up with these troglodytes……a decision I will regret for the rest of my days……Say what you will about Joe Clark….but none of these kinds of shenanigans would have taken place on his watch…..

        • pomojen says:

          Surprised is maybe the wrong word…..I think we can be forgiven if we are simply unable to stop reacting to these things. It’s a bad, bad day when you stop reacting with contempt/ disgust/ shock (born of continued hope) to evidence of hypocrisy and disposable ethics.

          I have noticed that you react on these boards quite a bit to this stuff with a mix of head-shaking, kicking of ones-own-ass for buying the promises, outrage mixed with alarm…..But you know, who can blame any of us for wanting to believe that a party or a politician stand for honesty, integrity and change for the better. Your past allegiance to these guys clearly came from an appreciation of those qualities. I think your reaction to this stuff in the present is a marker of stable individual ethics and hope for the future. To that end, keep on being surprised Happy Lib.

          • frmr disgruntled Con now Happy Lib says:

            Thank-you for the very articulate and kind note, pomojen……all I ever wanted to see, simply, were govt’s(whatever their stripe) that acted with honesty and integrity…..

  7. bluegreenblogger says:

    Hmm. Vote suppression is not always a bad thing. An example, if an MP did something dishonest, or hypocritical, the act of delivering a message to that MP’s supporters informing them of the transgression would in fact be an exercise in vote suppression. The people doing the supprssing would likely call it holding the MP accountable for his acts, which in my view is legitimate vote suppression. Provided the message was truthful, delivering the information that persuaded those supporters to stay at home rather than vote would actually be doing them a service. While negative advertising, and mud-slinging is often distasteful, it is legitimate part of electoral politics.
    This is in no way shape or form an apology for the criminal acts perpetrated in the last Election. Just sounding a note of caution. If your intent is ultimately to bring down the Conservative Party, then you are not gonna get there if you give them an easy out like that. Stick to your knitting is my advice. Criminal third world tactics were employed, so keep on that theme ad infinitum. I read Warren K’s book, and I seem to recall that he made a number of strong defenses of mud-slinging as a legitimate holding to account, people in glass houses….

  8. bluegreenblogger says:

    I was about to trot off to find a quote, but I loaned the book to a colleague.( I guess you would prefer he bought a copy, lol). It was about 3 years ago I read it, and I took notes on your discussion of opposition research, and the uses therof. I do not disagree that highlighting your opponents faux pas, and hypocrisy (especially) is totally legitimate. That is all off the point though. If the criminal deed was authored by anybody in the CPC, then I think that anything that deflects discussion away from the criminality of the act helps to deflate the issue. EVERYBODY suppresses the vote in one form or another, or at least they attempt to. NOT everybody uses criminal means to do so. Just saying…

    Again off topic, I was amused to see that the author of the letter you posted, John Fryer was a colleague from my Green Party days. He was (briefly) Campaign Manager for Elizabeth May’s SGI campiagn, until he was thrown under the bus for some obscure reason or other. He may have returned to his labour roots. Idealogically, he is my polar opposite, but he has integrity. Nice to see he still gives a damn. Green Party internal politics has a real knack for turning people completely off politics in general.

  9. Sam Gunsch says:

    to: Gordo’s everywhere
    fr: a citizen concerned with protecting citizen-based democracy

    re: you’ve been profiled. A lot.

    Presto driving down citizen participation in their democracy… OMG… who knew?…jesus.

    “The constant attack ads that the Reformers launch today, are driving Canadians away from the polls. Last election we saw the lowest turnout in this country’s history, yet they continue to poison the well.”

    http://pushedleft.blogspot.com/2009/09/stephen-harper-creates-b-movie-for.html

    =============== or this…

    Preston Manning, Newt Gingrich and a Republican in the House
    http://harpercrusade.blogspot.com/2010/05/preston-manning-newt-gingrich-and.html

    A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

    “Indeed, Canadians became exporters of neo-con innovation in the 1990s. ‘I would say Margaret Thatcher and Mr. [Preston] Manning are the two non-Americans we learned most from”, said U.S. Republican House Speaker, Newt Gingrich in 1995.

    ‘I know him [Preston Manning] because I watched all of his commercials. We developed our platform from watching his campaign.’ Like cowboy culture, Canadian neo-conservatism is a growth industry, spawning a whole generation of Will James outlaws in hot pursuit of political power.” (1)

    The political cartoon above first appeared in the Alberta Report Magazine on March 27, 1995, under the caption ‘Preston Manning and Newt Gingrich dancing in newt suits’. The two men formed a lasting friendship as they worked out ways to promote combative style politics…

    File under: false populism, corporatism, neo-conservative propaganda

    Only citizens can protect democracy.

  10. Dancing – head – pin

    Ernest Manning – grave – spin

  11. Geoffrey Laxton says:

    Hey Warren! Anonymous did it!

  12. Attack! says:

    “In a question and answer session, attendees discussed voter suppression tactics. They talked about posing as a member of another party, and about making rude calls at inconvenient times as a strategy to get the supporter of another party to not go out and vote for their candidate. The instructors detailed different kinds of suppression calls, and how these tactics are borrowed the U.S. Republican Party.

    ..Attendees left the session with Ciano’s business card in hand. Without a list of attendees, it is difficult to know who hired his company’s services, but it is clear that Campaign Research did well fo[r] themselves in the last election. In 39 ridings, Campaign Research did $389,890 worth of business. Of the 39 ridings, there are reports of at least 10 where fraud occurred.”

    (from a follow-up article about that Manning Centre session today, by Emma Pullman, in the Vancouver Observer:

    http://www.vancouverobserver.com/politics/2012/03/07/robo-call-scandal-origins-inside-conservatives%E2%80%99-voter-suppression-school?page=0,2

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