“Dislodged Conservative MPP Norm Sterling says he would support a Liberal candidate in the Ottawa area riding he’s represented for 34 years, as long as the candidate was the right Liberal.

Sterling said Wednesday he would likely back Ottawa Councillor Eli El-Chantiry, who is considering seeking the Liberal nomination in the riding, over Conservative Jack Mac Laren in the next Ontario election. Last week, MacLaren, a rural libertarian, triumphed over Sterling in a brazen and unusual challenge for the party’s nomination in the upcoming Oct. 6 vote.

The challenge has exposed a deep rift within the party and prompted questions over its treatment of Sterling, the longest-serving legislator in Ontario.”

As I told a group of Ontario Liberal staffers last night, it all strikingly resembles the Manning-Mulroney divide – which led, in the end, to the Conservative Party dividing in two, and more than a decade of Liberal rule.

The next few months are going to be interesting.

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• The pollsters, the pundits and the professors: All seem to agree that – mainly due to a better-than-expected Liberal campaign, and a piss-poor Reformatory campaign – some shifts are underway.  Iggy’s personal numbers are up, and his party’s, a bit; Harper’s own, and that of his party, have stalled.  As things stand now, the much-lusted-after majority is gone.
• So sayeth the Star’s Les: Writes he:  “Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff appears to be winning hearts and minds on the election trail even though his party still lags the Conservatives by a wide margin, a new national poll shows.  At the same time, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper’s performance has led to a slight erosion of his appeal since the election kicked off.” It surprises me, frankly: I didn’t think the stumbles by Harper and his army would start to be reflected in the polls until next week, when the debates are taking place.  It suggests that voters know this campaign has been Harper’s worst since 2004, and have been reacting accordingly.
• Bernard Who? Bernard Lord is (almost literally) the Conservative Party’s Frank McKenna.  He is (a) a male (b) a former Premier (c) from New Brunswick and (d) always talked about by journalists.  In the case of both men, too, the parties they belong to don’t really see them as leadership material, or even particularly remember them.  At all.  So why do terrific columnists still write about them? Beats me.
• The Gunter canary in the coal mine: My personal litmus test for “Harper has gone too far” stories is Lorne Gunter.  If the long-serving Alberta scribe, who is as conservative as conservative gets, says Harper and his team have stumbled, I immediately know that other conservatives feel likewise.  Thus, the Awish Aslam disaster: while Lorne goes to some lengths to describe (accurately) how political parties work to prevent their events from being derailed, he also (accurately) expresses distaste about what happened to this young woman. Worth a read, Mr. Harper.
• A referendum on Iggy: I think that overstates things, a bit, but Mr. Hepburn is certainly right in suggesting that the debates are pivotal. And, given that Harper has traditionally done badly – even against not-so-hot debaters like Messrs. Martin and Dion – I think that, ten days from now, the Reformatories will be looking at a “burn the bridges” plan.
• He wasn’t the first: I was doing dress rehearsals, last night, for Sun TV with David Akin and Mercedes Stephenson.  David suggested that the now-dumped “whites rights” Liberal candidate was a first for the Grits. I reminded him that he wasn’t – we actually had Ernst Zundel run for the leadership in 1968, before he became a notorious Holocaust denier!
• Pic of the day: To illustrate a piece on how politicians deal with confrontations, the Star ran this beaut.  Ah, the good old days!

[Insert your favourite caption here.]

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And I’ll bet Stephen’s creeping Bill’s Facebook page at this very moment!

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Me, my friend Rod Love and Bill Tieleman, on political ads.  Second segment is here.

“And see that green light behind me? It’s green! That means the Green Party is trying to influence your viewers subliminally!”

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…and how a jerk like this got through candidate review is an utter mystery. The Cons attract creeps like these like flies to a bright light (as Preston Manning once admitted). But the Liberals?

What a disappointment.

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I’m heading to BNN to do a federal-election related hit. But I wanted to post this best-available transcript of veteran PC MPP Bill Murdoch on a Sarnia radio station this morning. Check this out:

Host: Norm Sterling is accusing Randy Hillier of interfering in this process…

Murdoch: Well, he did…If Hillier did then he shouldn’t have.

Host: Is there a split in the caucus? That’s not what you want to see in an election year…

Murdoch: Well, yes and no. Now, I – see, I like that…I like the different voices and somebody keeping Tim onside. This will make Hudak work a little harder…if he’s going to be a Premier of Ontario then he has to sort this out. And that’s his job to do that. And if he doesn’t sort it out then maybe he shouldn’t be the Premier of the, of the province.

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• I was a bit under the weather this morning. So I didn’t get to do my favourite thing, which is drive the kids to school.  On these journeys, the kids will listen to the radio – always set to CBC, if my sons are being ferried – and ask me questions.  The questions are always thoughtful and interesting.  Here’s what they might have said this morning, with my response.
• Dad, why are they saying Stephen Harper is in a bubble? “That’s what reporters say during an election campaign, when they think a politician is trying to hide from tough questions and from real people.  Very fair reporters I know, like David Akin, say it is happening, so I know it is. Lots of Conservative friends I know are telling me they think Harper has made a big mistake with it. It may not hurt Harper, because a lot of people aren’t watching the campaign, yet, and because reporters tend to make the allegation a lot.  But, if it sticks, it’ll make Harper look like a chicken.”
• I heard he kicked out some kids.  Is that true?  Why did he do that? “Yes, it’s true.  A girl had her picture taken with Michael Ignatieff, and the Harper people spied on her Facebook page and saw the picture. It makes him like someone who bullies kids, and who lies about it when caught.  If I were working on the Liberal campaign, I would do an ad about that [UPDATE: And they have, below!] , and make sure everyone in Canada knows.  When things like that happen, and no one cares, we’re not in Canada anymore.”
• Daddy, the radio said he had a man who worked for Harper who was in jail.  How did that happen? “That’s a good question. Harper likes to say he’s tough on crime, but he’s not tough on crime when it comes to his friends. I used to work for Mr. Chretien, and I had a Top Secret security clearance, and that meant the RCMP investigated me before I could get hired.  I don’t understand why a convicted criminal was allowed to work there.  What files did he see?  Are there other convicted criminals who work for Harper?  I’ll bet there are.”
• If Harper is doing so many bad things, why did the radio guy say he is winning? “He’s winning, but he’s lost support in the past week, because he’s had a lousy campaign, and Ignatieff has had a good one.  He’s also always ahead at the start of campaigns, because his supporters tend to by angry old white guys who would come out for him in a hurricane. The supporters Ignatieff and Layton have are more laid-back, and they generally start to pay attention usually around the time of the debates.  That’s when the polls will get closer, because Harper isn’t a good debater on TV.”
• Are you working for the Liberals now? “No, I’m not.  I was working for Ignatieff for a while, there, but I didn’t like how he treated some people who are friends of mine, so I left.  I think he’d be a better Prime Minister than Harper, so that’s why I’ve got that great big Maria Minna sign out front.  She’s a friend of mine and is a great MP.”
• I’d vote for her if I was old enough, Daddy.“Good!”
• So you’re still working for Premier McGuinty, right? “Yes, I work for his caucus, we’re up early every day, working hard for him.  Yesterday, he pointed out that his main opponent is splitting in two – with progressive conservatives on one said, and some pretty bad people, like racists, on the other.  The last time that happened was in 1991, when I was working for Mr. Chretien and Mr. Mulroney’s party split in two.  They lost every election for ten years after that.”
• Here’s that video!

 

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God, I wish Duceppe was one of ours.

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Any media folks who report these Conservative Party rallies as straight-up are running the risk of being complicit in presenting fiction as reality.

Until the matter gets straightened out – and if I were an editor-in-chief of something – I’d tell the Cons that we don’t plan to cover any of their private events.  It’s kind of like covering a play at Stratford, and telling my readers it’s real life.  It isn’t.

There isn’t a single media organization that will adopt this approach, of course, and I guess that’s why I’m me, and not an editor-in-chief.

But the bottom line is that the media are putting their claim to be truth-tellers at risk.  Their credibility, too.

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• How are the Conservatives doing in this campaign? Not well, as I’ve written for the past week.  Every day, it seems, events conspire – through bad luck, through Liberal/NDP/Bloc war room hijinks, through sheer Conservative war room/campaign incompetence – to derail the Reformatory message of the day.  When you consider how disciplined and focused the Cons were in 2004, 2006 and 2008, it’s pretty surprising.  Here’s the anatomy of one day, yesterday, that again went awry.
• Ethics: In the wake of the sponsorship affair, the Conservatives solemnly promised to hold themselves a higher ethical standard.  In fairness, they haven’t had an sponsorship-sized scandals yet (although In and Out mess, I suspect, will come very close). In recent months, however, we’ve seen one demi-scandal after another.  The latest, of course, involves senior PMO advisor Bruce Carson and his associate, a former call girl.  Carson had a lengthy criminal record and had been disbarred; apparently, this didn’t impair his ability to work for Joe Clark, Brian Mulroney or Stephen Harper.  In the latter case, we were told yesterday, Carson disclosed his criminal record to Harper’s Chief of Staff.  Harper, for his part, asked us to believe that no one told him.  He concluded the day, plaintively, with this wonderfully circular claim:  “I don’t know why I did not know.” Net result: Harper’s message of the day was, yet again, hijacked by members of his own team.
• Messaging/Visuals: Speaking of messaging, anyone know what Harper’s message of the day was, Monday?  Anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller? I can tell you what Harper wanted it to be, but what you actually remember is his absurdly comic spin on an ATV, wearing a helmet that made him resemble that irritating, macrocephalic alien on The Flintstones. His message, meanwhile, was about scrapping the long gun registry, yet again – but what we got was the Great Gazoo on an ATV, plus some old guy who had a record, and an escort who knew more members of cabinet than Hill and Knowlton.  For a guy hunting, as it were, for a majority – and thereby in desperate need of female votes – why the Hell start fulminating, angrily, against gun control?  When gun control is, you know, very popular with women both urban and rural?  Net result: a mangled message, at best.  Lost votes, at worst.
• Opposition: The damned Liberals, meanwhile, had another good day.  They handed out 600,000 abbreviated copies of their platform to morning commuters from coast to coast, Ignatieff himself getting in on the fun with paper-deliveries to startled ferry-riders in Dartmouth. Later, they had a pithy line – “vets, not jets” – and managed to look patriotic and parsimonious at the same time. Net result: they kicked Harper’s keester.
• The backrooms: Coincidentally, here’s what I had to say on that very subject in this moning’s Sun:  “Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and his caucus, of course, have been doing very well on the campaign trail.  But among unelected Grits, it is Richardson and Ashworth who have made the most difference.  From the time of their arrival in Ottawa, Richardson and Ashworth have firmly taken control, and gently moved aside many of the ineffectual, self-absorbed senior staffers Ignatieff had around him (that is, the ones who took the party even lower than Stephane Dion did).  The pair have given the Liberal Party’s efforts a maturity and strategic sense that, until just a few weeks ago, it simply didn’t have.”
• The people: Think I’m wrong?  I often am, but check out the latest Nanos.  The Conservative campaign is losing ground outside the West, big time.
• Pic of the day: I’m sorry, this one of the Great Gazoo is a classic.  Caption contest!

Logan Day, come home. All is forgiven.

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