Political Blog | Political Insider

Ontario Election Debate:First Impressions Count! #onpoli #ontario #notwynning

People will remember: There is no difference between Wynne and McGuinty!

In my experience two things happen in debates.

Firstly they are stacked against the sitting Premier or Prime Minister by way of being out numbered by the opposition.

Secondly,first impressions matter and each leader gets one shot at either gaining or holding an audience.

Rarely is their ever a zinger the so-called knockout punch.

I can recall only three zingers in the number of years I have watched debates.

One is the often talked about Mulroney line that sunk John Turner back in 1988. ( you sir had an option)

The second would be Jack Layton’s dismantling of Mike Ignatieff in the 2011 election. ( worst voting record)

The third,surprisingly enough was John Cummins when he opened the 2013 BC Provincial election debate with the line:You all tuned in tonight to get a good look at the next premier of BC, Adrian Dix.

Well look they did,Dix was a deer in the headlights and Christie Clark shone and went on to win that election.

In the Ontario debate tonight, no matter how much BS the newspapers will have you believe ( maybe) there was no knock out punch.

There was however Kathleen Wynne making a lousy first impression and getting hammered on gas plants.

She looked awful and yes she apologized but guess what an apology is an admission of guilt.

One I think the voters of Ontario have been waiting to hear.

Prediction: This election, like all elections is about the economy and Wynne just reinforced in the voters minds ( she could have said no) that she is a weak leader who cant be trusted to manage their money.

On June the 12th the voters will vote no to Kathleen Wynne and the Liberals.

They will vote yes to Tim Hudak and the PC’s with an NDP led opposition.

( In BC people used to moan and groan about Gordon Campbell and then hold their noses and vote for him. They will do that for Hudak as well)

Just watch!

Bozo the Clown to Justin Trudeau: Please Stop ! #canpoli #bcpoli #onpoli

Bozo the Clown has had enough!

Justin Trudeau and his Mp’s are tarnishing his good name and it’s brought him to tears.

Once again Trudeau has made a statement and his Own MP has referred to it as a Bozo eruption.

Bozo wants this to stop. He says he has always been good at his job while Justin Trudeau is in way over his head.

He is afraid Trudeau and the Liberal Party will ruin his brand.

There is another year and a half to the next election.

Could Bozo be right?

Adrian Dix Blames Election Loss on those who moved on because they lost their jobs! #bcpoli #canpoli #bcndp

As crazy as it sounds,today,at the weekend conference of blame the BCNDP is holding to determine what went wrong during the May election,Adrian Dix blamed a large part of the loss on those folks who are blue collar workers and NDP supporters who lost their jobs and moved on .

This is a totally illogical statement coming from the man who, without warning, changed his position on the Kinder Morgan project which surely cost them the election. In fact it still has not occurred to Adrian that by opposing this project it would result in the loss of more of those blue collar jobs he has accused the BC Liberals of scaring off.

In fact if the BCNDP wants some hindsight into why they lost they should simply read Gary Mason’s excellent column in the Globe. It details for the most part why the Liberals won and how they came back from the dead.

From my work in the field during the election,Mason only left out one part of the NDP defeat and it was it important and it was this : After the Kinder Morgan fiasco which led to Dix’s lousy performance at the debate, my field operatives started reporting to me that Dix’s people has told them that Dix was such a wimpster they were staying home and were not prepared to vote for him.

The NDP,instead of putting the election on cruise control,should have been hammering the Liberals on their record and their litany of scandals.

As for the debate, BC Conservative leader John Cummin’s first line had a prophetic vision attached to it, just not in the way we thought. If you recall he said: You are tuned in tonight because you know Christy Clark and the BC Liberals are going to lose the election and you want to see what kind of premier Adrian Dix will make.

The people saw alright and what resulted was a BC Liberal majority!

Christy Clark Must Go!

Just when you thought the wacky world of Premier Christy Clark couldn’t get any stupider, she stands on her her soap box , attempts to exonerate incompetent Cabinet Minister Stephanie Cadieux and then blames the whole sordid CLBC screw up on the NDP.

Unless Adrian Dix is a ventriloquist and projected Stephanie to say and do the dumb things she has done since she got the file, how on earth do you hold the NDP accountable for yet another BC Liberal gaffe?

What does she not get?

The Liberals had one of their worst weeks ever and it was largely once again due to the fact that they never take ownership/ leadership of their mistakes.

Their worst weeks ever that is, until this week.

Today,damning evidence came to light showing clearly Premier Clark has lied about her involvement in the BC Rail fiasco.

Tsakumis nails her and confirms beyond the shadow of a doubt the PREMIER IS THE CHARLATAN WE ALL KNEW HER TO BE! ( Charlatan is probably to week a word, liar,cheat and sleaze would be more appropriate)

How on earth do we expect people to vote or get involved with politics with a Premier who tells one lie after another?

She even lied to get the bloody job! In the real world that in itself is cause for dismissal.

In the name of restoring honesty and integrity to the Premier’s office, Clark Must Go!

Wouldn’t you agree?

Adrian in the Bubble!

Today comes word that the Adrian Dix led BCNDP will bring in Brian Topp to manage their 2013 election campaign.

What will this mean to BC Voters and a greater extent to the Mainstream Media?

Back in the 1990’s Brian Topp worked Saskatchewan Premier Roy Romanow as his Deputy Chief of Staff.

What is remarkable about this and why it is a great move for the BCNDP is this : There are three amazing parallels to the Romanow win and our own upcoming BC Election.

1) Grant Devine and his Conservatives found themselves as far behind and as reviled as The Christy Clark BC Liberals are now.

2) There were 3 main parties who had candidates in that election, The NDP,Conservatives and the Liberals

3) The NDP ran a great campaign and won easily.

What the NDP did in Saskatchewan I suspect the BCNDP will do here. They ran a campaign dubbed in the media as the Roy in the Bubble Campaign.

This meant that Roy Romanow was so far ahead when the election started, he kept his mouth shut,held on to his big lead and won.

I suspect Brian Topp will bring some of that knowledge to this campaign and encourage Adrian Dix and the BCNDP team to do the same.

It worked then and it will probably work now.

What do you think?

Christy Clark: Leadership or Lack of it? You decide.

Whether you like it or not,the people are trying to tell you something!

I used to work for a small polling company back in 2000-2005.

When I was there this is how polling worked.

The company would get hired to poll customers or voters relevant to a specific question,product service or idea.

A script would be written,approved by stakeholders and loaded into a computer so that those trained in a call center environment would phone and ask a question.

They did not browbeat people into answering but rather were instructed to be overly nice as the competition for the consumers time was unbelievable.( It’s worse now even with do not call lists)

The caller would enter the data into the computer and from there a report was generated and sent out for statistical analysis.

The person doing the analysis was an experienced statistician who had analyzed data for a number of years for a number of different polls.

From there reports were present to clients and released to the news.

Lately we have seen polling done on the BC political climate with the pollsters telling us what people think today. The most obvious question they would have asked would have been” If an election were held today,who would you vote for?”

The most recent result on a poll done by Angus Reid showed us that 50% of the people would vote BCNDP if an election were held now.

The current BC Liberal government polled at 23%.

This means that as of today, Christy Clark and the BC Liberal Government are not connecting with 77% of the electorate.

It was reported that when asked about this, Premier Clark blasted the polling company.

I can tell you from experience that it is hardly the polling company’s fault that Ms Clark and her government is not connecting with the electorate.

Had she come out and accepted the blame ( or at least some of it) she would have taken leadership of the situation.

She didn’t and once again missed a glorious opportunity to connect with the people she needs.

I recall years ago another politician missed a chance to do the same thing.

His name was Stockwell Day. He made a grave error in a speech in Niagara Falls.

You may recall he said Canadian Jobs were flowing south like the Niagara River. When it was pointed out to him that the river actually flowed north,he lashed out and said he would get the person who wrote the speech with the wrong facts.

As you know by now he went on to lose the election because of this and other gaffes. Had he taken leadership of that,the result might have been different.

My point is that through lashing out, politicians like Day and most likely Clark lose because they don’t know how to lead.

In Clark’s case she has 12 month’s to learn.

Do you think she will? ( A clue might be that Stockwell Day is one of her mentors)

What are your thoughts?

Voting: For Politics or Economics?

So there we sit, our GDP low enough to keep us out of trouble but close enough ( 90% or higher) would get us going down a lane we don’t want to go.

This gives cause for thought in that we ( The country) are facing 3 major provincial elections in the next year and a bit.They would occur in British Columbia, Quebec and Ontario.

I have lumped Ontario in the group because although they have just come through a provincial election, it resulted in a minority of tenuous proportions.

With pollsters releasing numbers here at home in BC and 48% of people saying they would vote NDP, the chart above gives me cause to wonder why anybody would even answer that question at this point in time.

With all the problems in the world’s economic situation, why would anybody say they would vote one way or another without reviewing a parties economic platform and seeing how it would affect them?

Why would almost half of the polled people say they would vote BCNDP when history speaks of all the economic mismanagement and mayhem they caused as recently as the 1990’s?

( I know you are thinking the BC Liberals have made such a mess of things we need to give them the boot! We do, but there are other options than the BCNDP) )

In these coming elections, voters need to be better educated than ever. They should review the policies and platforms each of the 3 main parties lists on their web sites.

Go to BC Consertvatives, BC Liberals, BCNDP, or BC Green Party and see for yourself.

Can’t find any policy? Then you should wonder what those parties are trying to hide.

Before you cast your vote or answer pollsters, you as a voter need to decide whether you are voting for politics or economics.

In this day and age the answer should be economics.

What do you think?

Watch this space between now and May 2013 for policy and platform as each party releases it.

Bob Rae to run for permanent Leader of Liberal Party?

Bob Rae ‏ @bobraeMP

Watched Tiger win again and saw a couple of attack ads on yours truly. He came back. I guess I can too. LOL.

Does the above tweet represent Marijuana Bob Rae’s first public admission that he wants to run to be the official Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada? Was his tweet an ill advised slip of the tongue?

What do you think?

It’s Mulcair ; Now what ?

Thomas Mulcair has won the leadership of the Federal NDP and is the new leader of the opposition , Now what?

He will more than likely move the party to the center and most likely very quickly.

What will this mean to Canadian politics?

First and foremost it will almost certainly force the Liberal party of Canada to advance their own leadership convention.

Why?

Because Mulcair and the NDP will devour the Liberals if they get control of the center and Marijuana Bob wouldn’t like that.

Also the interim leader of the Liberal Party, under it’s constitution, cannot negotiate a merger with the NDP. They need a permanent leader, it’s as simple as that.

What else?

It will probably force a lot of the extreme leftists that are currently have a home in the NDP to go somewhere else. ( Hello Elizabeth May and the Green Party you belong together )

Anything else?

Yes the right side of the Liberal Party will likely bolt to the Conservatives rather than join the NDP.

That it?

No the Bloc had hopes and aspirations going into today. Thomas Mulcair probably killed them off.

Anything good come of all this?

Yes likely the Liberal Party as you know it is done, so is the Bloc?

Any last thoughts?

Yes given all the mayhem and delays in the voting today , Rebecca Blaikie handle herself well. She is a good President of the NDP and has a lot to be proud of.

Premier Christy Clark in the running for an award!!!!!

Christy Clark: I am in the running for an award!

It seems every time she speaks the Premier is not only wrong but mixes the facts up.

This is the person who is supposed to lead our province through tough economic times and she cannot keep her facts straight.

Gary Mason has a great piece today detailing her ineptitude and her breath taking gaffes .

You should read it and then ask yourself two questions, namely ” What the heck is this person doing as Premier ?” and “What on earth were the B.C. Liberals thinking when they anointed her as leader last year?”

Off course if you read this excellent piece by Alex G. Tsakumis , you know they weren’t thinking at all, they were conned!

Now what?

Time to award this week’s winner and it’s a tie !

The Bonehead of the week award goes to the whole B.C. Liberal team, lead of course by Premier unelect Christy Clark!