Thursday, April 9, 2015

Tempest In A Teapot

This is a throw down. A show down. Hell no, we can't slow down.

The departure of Monte McNaughton from the PCPO leadership race has set the stage for the final battle between Red and Blue Tories over the soul of the party.

And rest assured, my friends, it is going to be epic. Nobody needs to pretend to be nice to anyone else to try and pick up second ballot votes anymore. From today until the end, it is open war.

We haven't had a good old bloody civil war since Norm Sterling got booted from his riding back in 2011, and even that was just a microcosm of the festering, boiling hatred that exists between these two camps. Attempts by the party to prevent a province-wide outbreak are going to fail hilariously, because they are currently scrambling to figure out how to keep Patrick Brown and his increasingly radical band of malcontents from completing their hostile takeover. Getting the bad blood out is going to be a nice bit of stress relief, if not an exercise in image management.

Liberals, get your popcorn and your lawn chairs ready.

If you need a recap of what's at stake here, you clearly haven't been paying attention, but I'll do so anyway. In one corner stands the reserved and dignified Christine Elliott, in whose mouth butter would not melt. Not for her the aggressive, frat-boy posturing of those pretenders without the royal jelly who have been smashing the party to bits with their tomfoolery ever since that uncouth cad Mike Harris destroyed the PC standing in dear old Toronto. Yea and verily, she represents the majesty of a bygone age, the golden epoch of Bill Davis, where ne'er there was any of the "divisiveness" that plagues us in these dark times.

In the other stands the peacocking, marathon-running, short-dude-overcompensating Patrick Brown, who has assembled a collection of business leaders, former sports stars, social conservatives, and second and third generation Canadians all united by anger over the contemptuous way they've been treated by the old guard. Considerations such as whether Mr. Brown has a seat in Queen's Park or not or whether he has something resembling a plan for the province have taken a back seat to promising that he'll rip the guts out of the party, which might cause the progressive coalition that's stomped the PC's in the past few elections to shrink in terror, or it might just cause them to burst out laughing.

If we are to go by Christine's latest press release, however, Patrick's presumptuous politicking has not deterred her resolve, but rather put her in She Stoops To Conquer mode as she stoops to the kind of rhetoric that made Kathleen Wynne the Premier she is today, using words like "ideology", "rejection", "modern and inclusive", "outdated", and of course, "the politics of division." No more of the limp Big Blue Tent nonsense for Christine- if you support Patrick, you're responsible for the inevitable fifth election loss, plain and simple.

Now I'm going to make the same point I've been making since this thing began. While the difference between Red and Blue is crucially important for the 30 some odd percent of people who can be counted on to actually show up and vote for a conservative party, the rest of the world doesn't care. They see no daylight between Christine Elliott and Patrick Brown. The fact that the PC Party doesn't understand this will sink them a lot faster than Christine's brittleness or Patrick's obnoxiousness.

As far as the voting public are concerned, both want to destroy the public sector and cut 100,000 jobs and deport foreign workers and implement chain gangs and fund faith based schools and take Ontario backward, not forward. Both of them are Mike Harris. Both of them are going to be accused of having hidden agendas and be blamed for Walkerton and Ipperwash and the 407. Christine Elliott will try and fail to convince Ontarians that this isn't so. Patrick Brown will act as though it doesn't matter.

Neither of these responses are inspiring, but of the two, at least Brown doesn't try to pretend he's something that he isn't. We may very well lose the next election with him in charge, but at least he isn't peeing on the legs of the voters and telling them that it's raining. So there's your "endorsement", for what it's worth.

For my part, I'm not voting for either of these two, and I want their "social media" teams to take notice. I, and lots of other people who would be otherwise interested, am going to put my feet up and watch this sucker burn, and my conscience over the next few years is going to be as clean as a whistle.

3 comments:

  1. If the voting public sees no difference between Red and Blue Tories, between Brown and Elliott, then by that logic there is no person on this planet who could lead the PC Party to victory.
    If the people hate the PCs before they even start and would demonize any candidate, how can campaigning even happen? Should we just give up and go home, forever?

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    1. The way to win is actually very clear, but the fuddleheads who are running these gongshow campaigns would rather die than change.

      Step 1: Pick a way to deal with the unions funnelling cash into anti-conservative hackery and stick to it. Either get all party support for third party limits, or build a conservative alternative to the WFC.
      Step 2: Draw lines in the sand with respect to what the party stands for. If we are taking a stand against X, be sure that the MPP from Insert Riding Here who is on the Friends Of X Steering Committee steps down first.
      Step 3: Show the hell up at community events, and keep showing up.
      Step 4: Further to 3, ask people outside your immediate circle what they think of the party, and listen. If you find yourself saying, "These people don't speak for the majority of Ontarians" at any point in time, punch yourself in the gonads.
      Step 5: If the party's position on any issue needs to be clarified or explained, it's the wrong position.
      Finally and most important is Step 6. Nobody cares about scandals. Scandals have to be explained to people. Talking about Liberal scandals instead of a PC plan makes it look like we don't have a plan and worse yet provides free advertising for the Liberals

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    2. Mr. J, that is a great analysis. Naturally no one will listen. What a glorious opportunity the leadership campaign would have been to articulate a plan for the party. Instead all 5 candidates chose to pat us on the head and tell us how bad the Liberals were.
      The only one the laid out any plan was McNaughton, and it was crazy chicken.

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