Unlike the Liberals, who talk a good game about "ripping people's faces off" but in actual fact couldn't rip a piece of toilet paper because they're so frightened of getting bumped off in October, we know how to do attack ads right.
And what are they replying with? Half hearted jabs about a fictitious promise from Hudak to not go negative. You won't see the text of this promise, or anything that could be fitted between quotation marks that could be attributed to Hudak which resembles a promise.
Meanwhile, I've got a quote from Dalton's campaign chair, Greg Sorbara, and it goes a little something like this: "I’m not going to tolerate a campaign that is driven by negative advertising. It will not happen."
Greg Sorbara and "Flat Tim", hard at work *not* tolerating a campaign driven by negative advertising.
Importantly, our ads take the bold step of actually featuring our leader, instead of a disembodied Big Brother Is Watching You voice-over. We also take full ownership of our ads, while the other guys hide behind unions and then do a cute shrug of the shoulders when people start to ask questions.
We are not the timid party of four years ago. We came to play.
"Boy, those Conservatives with their infighting! Aren't they just hilarious? Aren't we Liberals going to just cruise to re-election in October?"
Well, look who's getting the last laugh now, Liberals. We had Sandra "Snooki" Pupatello, one of Dalton's toughest consiglieres, quit this week, and now we've got Donna Cansfield getting the vapours over a planned power plant.
Is she Donna Cansfield, or Donna Can'ts-field?
If you have a vague recollection of another of Dalton's cronies having a power plant-related credibility blackout, you're right. In Cansfield's case, though, it's a little more hilarious because she was originally a member of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, but "her involvement in the education community led her to oppose the policies of the Mike Harris and Ernie Eves governments." That's a nice way of saying, "the teacher's union made her an offer she couldn't refuse."
Now, if avowed Red Tories like Cansfield who took the step of leaving the PC Party are now opposing Dalton's policy, what does that say for that other Liberal talking point about how red Tories should support Dalton?
Look, we know that Dalton's cronies are out there trying to recruit people like John Tory, Jr. on the pretense that the Liberals are somehow the real home for centrists. But only a few posts ago, I pointed out that Dalton plans to copy Stephen Harper's election tactics. Why? Because he knows what people like Sarah Thomson and Donna Cansfield and Belinda Stronach and Garth Turner and Mike Colle do not, and that is that THE CENTRE IS DEAD and hoping it will come back isn't going to work.
That's Dalton's problem in the first place. Given the choice, he'd be as right-wing as Hudak, maybe right-er. There's a chance that he will do exactly that in the alternate universe where he wins the election in October. Or maybe he'd confess his undying love for unions and proclaim Dalton Days like the NDP did. But he can't do either of those things and instead tries in vain to capture "the centre" because it's what his puppetmasters tell him to do. His party is way more divided than ours ever could be, with people in his own party telling him, likely to his face, that he's the reason they're so far behind in the polls, and it's all happening in spite of-or because of- his efforts to make everyone like him.
A word to the Red Tories out there who may be considering following Thomson's lead and joining Dalton. You will not "remake the Progressive Conservatives." You are stepping into an abyss. Accept that there is no way back to the way things were.
Let's see what we've got....hmmm....Dalton McGuinty Remains Highly Unpopular......not really news, is it?.....oooh, this looks interesting: Dalton wants schools to stay open on Voting Day so that teachers can go vote Liberal on their lunch break, very nice....
Wait a minute....what's this? Michael Bryant's opinion on the prisoner proposal? Just so we're clear, we're talking aboutthis Michael Bryant.
A rising political star once touted as a future premier, former Ontario attorney-general Michael Bryant now faces a pair of serious criminal charges after a Monday night collision in which a bike courier was killed.
Cyclist Darcy Allan Sheppard, 33, a father of four and aspiring comedian, died in hospital after what started as a minor run-in between him and a Saab convertible along Bloor Street West in Yorkville.
Oh boy. You know, I'm as big of a fan as anyone else of expert opinion in journalism, but this istaking things just a little too far, don't you think?
God bless his pointed little head, Dalton is trying. Trying to make a Conservative leader look soft on crime, but trying nonetheless. It's an improvement over "jets and jails", to be sure, and I suppose if I reminded all the Liberals that Dalton is okey dokey with Harper's crime agenda, that wouldn't cause them to shed a tear for poor Michael Ignatieff, for whom they worked so hard just scant months ago. Nope, didn't think so.
Maybe I'd have a bit more luck if I reminded the Ontario Liberals that they are the ones who are responsible for this:
And just in case you think we've forgotten about Dalton's inaction on the burning issue of possibly illegal smoke shacks, well, just have a watch:
Then we've got Dalton's refusal to release the Ontario Victims' Justice Fund to victims of crime. Victims of crime....that would be pretty much every taxpayer in Ontario during the last eight years, wouldn't it? ;)
If you have read changebook, you will see that the PC Party will establish one law for all, crack down on illegal operations like meth labs and grow ops, ensure that victims of crime are fairly compensated, and basically not stand around with their thumbs up their butts (like Dalton has) while illegal activity flourishes in the province of Ontario.
That noted scribe from St. John's, Tim Powers, wrote this week that we taciturn Ontarians should be getting our tuckers up in a big way over Dalton's dismal performance. As is the case with many an Easterner, Westerner, or Northerner who seeks out our big mushy centre of Confederation, he seems surprised at the lack of public outrage we Upper Canadians display when things go wrong:
Anybody else starting to get angry? Why maintain that polite Upper Canada restraint? While great fodder for jokes in many other parts of Canada, Ontario's downward spiral ought to concern us all. With voters going to the polls here in October, Dalton McGuinty should not be getting a pass for his failing grades on the economy.
I shudder to think what Ontario will be like with another four years of Liberal rule. Maybe no feathers will get ruffled, but is that enough of an appealing hypnotic spell to overlook everything else?
Ontario, I believe, plays an important role as a buffer zone for the complaints of the other regions. Depending on where you're from, you rage against the arrogant Upper Canadian, the pompous Eastern bastard who needs to freeze in the dark, or the maudites anglais, and call it a day. And in turn, we Ontarians have become so used to everyone hating us that we have become experts at tuning it out. Can't we just move forward together instead of arguing about wheat or oil or fish or transfer payments or whatever it is today?
Of course, when you expect attacks to come from outside, it creates two things; detachment from the people making those attacks, and delusion to try and keep a positive self image in the face of those attacks. As a province in a very scary place economically (one which we're not used to) and as people who are used to trusting the government and letting them manage things, we have to believe, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that things are not as bad as they seem. We have no game plan for how to deal with our province falling as far as it has, so the only thing to do is to walk slowly forward. What did you expect?
For Dalton's part, I can't figure out if he is deliberately reinforcing this delusion or if he has wholeheartedly bought into it himself. It's hard to tell with a guy who tells an audience of Liberals in Woodbridge last week that the past eight years were "a good start" yet doesn't seem to be sure about whether he'll continue as leader after the next election. What is known is that he has a big problem with us not buying into the delusion. That's why he says that we "don't believe in Ontario."
If you take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland.
How many Liberals at that rally in Woodbridge could feel the limits of credibility being reached during that speech? Probably lots, given the party's standing in the polls and the fact that, try as they might during this past week, they couldn't land a decent hit on us.
It's why they're trying to recreate ads from the Bush/Dukakis race like anyone will even remember who Dukakis is, and why they're giving a platform to Paul McKeever, the leader of a party that gave its support to the Northen Alliance back when Bush was running. Hmmm. Well, it's not like anyone who gave McKeever the soapbox would know about the Northern Alliance......right?
Bottom line though- delusions always fall apart. Always. The Liberals know this in the back of their minds, and the bottom will drop out on Oct. 7th.
A modicum of trust in Canada's journalistic corps was restored today when this simple, blindlingly obvious bit of truth was recognized in the Globe and Mail:
And the Liberals’ broadsides, through press releases and talking points and Twitter posts, have been unfocused to the point of being contradictory – at various points labelling Mr. Hudak nostalgic for his time in Mike Harris’s government 15 years ago and a “reckless rookie, ”a man with no plan, except for the sinister secret plan he keeps to himself.
But still, their criticisms are all over the map. Mr. Hudak is not just “slick,” but also “dark” and “angry.” Despite being too “pessimistic,” he’s also promising Ontarians too much.
This revelation from Mr. Radwanski might come as a shock to some people. For the rest of us who are more familiar with Liberal doublethink, this is the point where their lame clown-and-straight-man act falls apart. You know the one: where Liberal "A" bashes someone for doing one thing, and Liberal "B" bashes him for doing the exact opposite, hoping to split the difference and that people won't "C" what's really going on here.
A summary of Dalton's communication strategy thus far.
Look at poor little William Norman sweat his heart out trying to do just this. If I read him correctly, he's saying, "Well, before Tim Hudak had problems with full day kindergarten, and that was bad, but now he decided that he doesn't want to make it an election issue, and that's somehow even worse!" Yeah, it's definitely "reckless" to say you're not going to fight the other guy. :P
The PC Party of Ontario's Changebook has been discussed intensely for the past four days by both the commentariat and the people whose opinions actually count. Pretty much everyone who is not employed by the Ontario Liberal Party has found something they like about it, and even Andrew Coyne had something halfway nice to say about it. For example, we got an endorsement from a real life student group. Pretty mindboggling to have students endorse the Conservative party, but there you have it.
Naturally the Liberals have crapped all over the whole thing and made what they consider to be Highly Intellectual Criticisms and Devastatingly Intelligent Witticisms and Really Lame Twitticisms which they think will make Ontarians say, "My God, you're right! We need four more years of the guy that made Tim Hudak so popular in the first place!"
What these idiots seem to have forgotten is that every time they talk smack about Changebook and Tim Hudak, they make him more popular and better known, and help get his ideas out there. Furthermore, as they talk the aforesaid smack, they draw a considerable amount of attention to the fact that they HAVE NO PLAN THEMSELVES. (Wow, that felt good.)
To win a campaign, you must stay on message. What, pray tell, is the Liberal message? "We're going to carry a cardboard cutout of a stick figure around the province and pretend it makes us look cool"?
Dalton was the king of "I needn't touch you to defeat you", and now he's losing a fistfight with his own shadow.
