CalgaryGrit: Awful Mental Images

Friday, September 12, 2008

Awful Mental Images

Stephen Harper: "Do you like handcuffs?"

23 Comments:

Does not say much for her career or the shows future does it. Their 22 minutes of fame were up long ago.

By Tim, at 9:49 p.m.
Just priceless in so many ways!

By Anonymous, at 10:10 p.m.
Oh. Man.

By Anonymous, at 10:16 p.m.
Security did exactly the same thing when I tried to kiss him. Weird.

By Paul Wells, at 10:18 p.m.
Funny quip, you've got to give Harper that one. But the police, sheesh. What's up, Marg got away with a lot worse than that. Was it because it was Harper?

By Anonymous, at 10:18 p.m.
Oh, on the news they had more. Harper said, "Was she with 22 [Minutes]?" "I don't watch it [chuckle]."

By Saskboy, at 10:23 p.m.
Some reporter should be asking Harper if HE likes handcuffs... considering the strange goings on in the Cadman affair, and what may transpire in court. We'll see how it unfolds, hmmm...?

By Anonymous, at 10:47 p.m.
Here's a better clip from CBC.

By Red Tory, at 11:35 p.m.
Best part by far was the entire CBC newsroom losing its collective shit after the Harper interview. That was AWESOME.

By Anonymous, at 11:38 p.m.
'do you like handcuffs' is part of the 22 minute skit to be aired this fall.

By wilson, at 10:39 a.m.
Wilson, geez, you think we didn't know that? Sigh....so informed.

Paul Wells tried to kiss him? Ewwww....LOL (the ewww if for Harper)

Now, how will Charles McVety feel about all these goings on....tsk, tsk...waiting for his news conference about kinky sex.

By RuralSandi, at 10:47 a.m.
LOL on the Wells comment above.

I don't even know who the cast of 22 minutes is anymore...like Harper, I haven't watched that show since the good old days of Mercer, Walsh, etc.

By calgarygrit, at 11:33 a.m.
Wow. He's often quippy but that was a surprise.

They're no Daily Show, that's for sure...

By Anonymous, at 4:17 p.m.
Love it! ROTFLMAO

Considering the "escorts" seemed to be on her before she really stepped out of line (and a lack of reaction from anyone else), one has to consider the "arrest" might have been arranged in advance.

But - Paul Wells, did you get the exclusive interview after? (Well, the print media says that Laureen was in the room at the time with This Hour.)

By Paul, at 8:59 p.m.
Harper - soft, gentle, family man, metrosexual and kinky to boot. Who da thunk it?

By Anonymous, at 10:37 p.m.
Canadians unimpressed with leaders after week one: poll

Meagan Fitzpatrick
Canwest News Service

Saturday, September 13, 2008
OTTAWA - As the federal political leaders wrap up their first full week of campaigning this weekend, a new poll indicates their performances during the early days may have caused them more harm than good.
The Ipsos Reid poll, conducted for Canwest News Service and Global News between Sept. 9 and 11, shows Canadians' impressions of the leaders slipped instead of strengthened, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper had the worst week of them all.
Thirty-six per cent said their impression of Harper had "worsened" since the start of the campaign on Sept. 7, compared with 32 per cent for his main opponent, Liberal Leader Stephane Dion. Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe also failed to impress - 23 per cent said they had a worse opinion of him-and 15 per cent said New Democratic Party Leader Jack Layton fell in their eyes.
"For a campaign that's supposed to be about leadership, this one's heading in the wrong direction," said Darrell Bricker, president and CEO of Ipsos Reid.

While Harper and the other leaders failed to gain support among some voters, not all was lost in the first week of the campaign, the poll indicated. Fifteen per cent said their impressions of Harper and Layton improved, 13 per cent for Dion and 10 per cent for Duceppe.

Others were not swayed one way or the other: 49 per cent said their opinion of Harper didn't change, 55 per cent think the same of Dion, 71 per cent didn't change their mind about Layton,

By JimTan, at 1:12 a.m.
jimtan, Harper's net (improved minus worsened) is the same as Dion's in that poll so it doesn't matter. Moreover, Harper only needs to win the support of 40% of Canadians on the right. Layton's relative rise further splits the left, to Harper's benefit.

By french wedding cat, at 12:56 p.m.
“Moreover, Harper only needs to win the support of 40% of Canadians on the right. Layton's relative rise further splits the left, to Harper's benefit.”

That's what the harperites like to think.

What they can't get through their heads is that they are extremists, and hated by the the other extreme. There will be strategic voting if the CPC looks like they may get a majority.

It's easy getting 35%. The CPC is the only representative of the right. However, gaining additional points will be progressively difficult.

The point of this post is that the leadership thrust of the CPC's campaign is blunt. Harper is a blunt instrument. The polls show that no one has the leadership qualities that the voters are looking for.

As I said many times before, the CPC would already have a majority, if their leader was upright and honourable like Joe Clark.

By JimTan, at 1:17 p.m.
"As I said many times before, the CPC would already have a majority, if their leader was upright and honourable like Joe Clark."

Which is why Joe Clark got 12% of the vote in 2000?

Now, lets go through your logic: "There will be strategic voting if the CPC looks like they may get a majority."

Well first-off your argument presumes already that Harper is in majority territory if he is pushing folks to vote strategically - something that describes a minority of actual voters.

Second, you presume that the choice for strategic voters will be clear. It may not be - if the NDP is at 20% and the Liberals are at 24%, Layton could well make the case that people should vote for him strategically, since he doesn't have Dion's leadership problems.

Third, you assume that strategic voting is an effective strategy for beating the conservatives. It only is if it is organized centrally - which it rarely is. Voters strategically voting for Liberals in BC, Hamilton and the prairies will probably elect MORE conservatives, than if they voted NDP. In Canada's urban centres it will have no effect. In most of Quebec it will have no effect either, because the Liberals and NDP are nonentities.

The ONLY place strategic voting matters is in clear CPC-Liberal contests in the 905 and the maritimes. Apart from the few remnants of the Alexa bubble, there are hardly any green/NDP votes there in the first place.

By french wedding cat, at 5:02 p.m.
“Which is why Joe Clark got 12% of the vote in 2000?”

What has that got to do with it in 2006 and 2008? I said someone upright and honourable LIKE ...

“if the NDP is at 20% and the Liberals are at 24%, “

I forget that you have a PhD. In Policy. You can make up any scenario you like.

“The ONLY place strategic voting matters is in clear CPC-Liberal contests in the 905 and the maritimes. Apart from the few remnants of the Alexa bubble, there are hardly any green/NDP votes there in the first place.”

I don't know where you are coming from. In any constituency, the Green/NDP vote is at least 10%. That's enough to squeeze the CPC if there is strategic voting.

By JimTan, at 5:33 p.m.
Help Bloc block a Tory majority, Duceppe urges
Canwest News Service
Published: Sunday, September 14, 2008
MONTREAL -- The Bloc Quebecois can do all of Canada a favour by stopping Prime Minister Stephen Harper from forming a majority government, says Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe.

However, he fell short of calling on people in the rest of Canada to come to the aide of the Bloc with donations or support, saying what he needs is for Quebecers of all political stripes to vote for the Bloc.

Duceppe called on those thinking of voting for the Green Party, New Democrats or the Liberals to vote for his party, arguing his party is the only one in Quebec that can stop Harper from getting the seats he needs to form a majority.

By JimTan, at 6:11 p.m.
jimtan,

Firstoff, I don't have a Phd, I am a grad student.

Now, to the grist of your argument:

Remember in 2006 when Buzz Hargrove urged people to vote for the Bloc? Remember how that was received by almost everybody (ie. negatively). The Bloc has little appeal to federalist voters.

Moreover, the essential strategy you are proposing for the Liberals already failed in 2006. The conditions for it to fail are even worse now, since Harper has been in power, and is not a radical.

The "Harper is the most right wing Prime Minister ever OH MY GOD!" case is now based on...

Lets compare the Harper of 2006-2008 to the Harper of the Liberal attack ads.

Attack ad claim: Harper will take away a woman's right to choose!

There are two things you could point to that Harper has done that might support this idea. He canceled funding for certain women's groups. This sounds bad until you realize this was essentially funding constitutional challenges for highly ideological groups. I don't think anybody really cares about this one.

The other issue is the bill that would penalize killers that kill pregnant women for the death of the fetus AND the mother. The problem with raising the salience of this issue is that 71% of Canadians (even 66% of NDP'ers) share that position (more than the 2/3rds of Canadians that support some restrictions on abortion).

N.B: The poll was sponsored by lifesite, but conducted by Environics which is a respectable polling institution.
www.lifecanada.org/html/resources/polling/2007PollReport.pdf

Attack ad claim: Stephen Harper will be just like his pal, George W. Bush.

I suppose on this one you would point to softwood lumber, Harper's response to the Lebanon issue and Harper's unfailing support of the war in Afghanistan. Moreover, Harper practices the same kind of divisive politics as George W. Bush and Karl Rove. There are some problems with this stance, however...

First-off, the Liberals had planned to accept the exact same softwood lumber deal as the Tories accepted - Emerson and many staffers working on the deal can attest to that.

Secondly, the Lebanon issue doesn't resonate with that many Canadians - with the exception of Muslim Canadians and Israeli Canadians. Raising the profile of the Lebanon decision risks pushing Jewish voters towards the Tories, while it is hard for the Liberals to do better among Muslim-Canadians.

Thirdly, Afghanistan should have been the killer issue for at least the Bloc, but Harper took it off the table with his 2011 timetable. For the Liberals it is precisely the kind of issue that reinforces to the left why they need and NDP and Green Party - Dion has largely supported the Conservative stance on Afghanistan.

As for the secrecy/media relations stuff, this is all inside baseball. As for "wedge politics" I'm not quite sure what the difference between that and "winning votes from people that used to not vote for you" is, precisely. Indeed, the Green shift looks like rather cynical wedge politics itself, that redistributes money to upper middle class urbanites.

Attack ad claim: Stephen Harper will govern just like Mike Harris. He will slash public spending. Like Mulroney, and Harris, his reckless tax-cutting will leave a massive deficit behind.

This is probably the weakest line of attack. Clearly Harper hasn't cut spending on much of anything - indeed that might have opened him up to criticism from the right. About the only thing one can point to on this one is that the government ran a deficit for a few months. This is in the face of a recession, and from my understanding will not result in a deficit for the fiscal year (any deficit would probably be ridiculously small anyhow). At any rate, the Conservatives are promising less spending than the Liberals this election, so it is additionally hard for Dion to claim the Tories will create a deficit, while he won't.

Conclusion:
1. Harper may have a secret hidden agenda, etc. but the case that he does is weaker than 2006.

2. Left-leaning voters have a much more viable option in the NDP this time than they did with the NDP in 2006. Paul Martin, even at his worst, was an incumbent, and did well in "best prime minister" polls. Dion does extremely poorly on these measures, and his current polling numbers would produce the worst result in the history of the Liberal party. So Layton and May have a BETTER claim at the mantle of rallying point for the left than they did before. This further confuses any sort of strategic voting plan.

Oh and one final thing:

"I don't know where you are coming from. In any constituency, the Green/NDP vote is at least 10%. That's enough to squeeze the CPC if there is strategic voting."

That is enough only in rare circumstances. Strategic Counsel's battleground polls asked how likely people were to switch who they were voting for:

B.C. battleground ridings
Likely Not likely Other/Don't know
Liberal vote 38% 57% 5%
Conservative vote 30% 68% 2%
NDP vote 34% 65% 1%
Green vote 40% 58% 2%

Ontario battleground ridings
Likely Not likely Other/Don't know
Liberal vote 51% 47% 2%
Conservative vote 30% 68% 2%
NDP vote 46% 52% 2%
Green vote 39% 61%

Quebec battleground ridings
Likely Not likely Other/Don't know
Liberal vote 38% 56% 6%
Conservative vote 31% 65% 4%
NDP vote 34% 66%
Green vote 18% 80% 2%

In each case, Liberal support, not NDP support was the softest. As well, no more than 40% would consider switching. Then you have to consider where they are switching to.

This poll found that among NDP supporters, 42% favour the Liberals, while 18% favour the Conservatives. So you are talking about a strategy that could push, at best (NDP support)*(NDP with second choice)*(NDP with Cons as second choice minus NDP with Libs as second choice) ~ 1.7% of the electorate. Could this swing a close election - sure, but it is not worth the OPPORTUNITY COST (money, and messaging are limited) of making a play for votes in the centre.

http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:m2KGk4yDoEIJ:www.decima.com/en/pdf/news_releases/070522E.pdf+second+choice+of+NDP+voters&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=11&gl=us

Lets, just for fun, assume that in 2006 NDP voters voted for their second choices (ignoring the fact that since the Liberals adopted the strategy jimtan is proposing, the effect of the strategy was already reflected in Martin's election results).

What would the result be? The Conservatives would have won... 124 seats! Even if you assumed that 80% of NDP voters moved to their second choices, the Conservatives would only lose 5 seats (the Bloc would lose 3).

Lets throw in the Greens, what if they migrated to the Liberals in similar proportions as the NDP? In that scenario the Conservatives would win 125 seats.

Banking on strategic voting is a TERRIBLE strategy that wastes time, messaging, campaign organization and money that could be better spent elsewhere. It is far less likely to work in 2008 than it was in 2006 and 2004 because Harper is more of a known commodity, and because Dion's weak leadership makes it less clear than it was for Martin that he is the natural champion of the left.

Dion would do well to ignore jimtan, who seems more eager to run a campaign that vindicates his visceral feelings about Harper, than one likely to win.

The Liberals need to win over the centre, rather than competing for the left. A swing of 1% of Conservative voters from the Conservatives to the Liberals in 2008 would have gained the Liberals 5 seats. And I think there are is room for such a broadside (and it is NOT the green shift).

What Dion's core message should be:
1. No appeasement of Quebec/Hardline on separatism

-this would reduce the "French accent" negatives for Dion in English Canada, shore up Montreal, and give Dion the ability to critique Harper, while stressing Dion's own record. The more Harper stresses his Meech-era years as Reforms Constitution point-man, the worse he does in Quebec.

2. Ethics/competence

-In the short run play up that Harper essentially broke his own law to call an election. Use the in-and-out scandal, the Bernier's briefs affair and the in-and-out scandal (but not Cadmangate or the bribery of Emerson). Cast the income trusts issue as a blunder (it wasn't, but it was a flip flop for Harper, and it pissed off rich old people that vote). Use footage of dumb things Conservative members have said to much better effect.

3. The economy - "we'll cut taxes MORE"

The Green shift has hopelessly muddied the economic debate in Canada. I actually thought the Liberals were in a good position when they stressed support for income tax cuts over GST cuts. Their plan to tax income trusts at much lower, non-prohibitive levels would be popular among seniors. Dion's proposal to double the child tax credit is a good step - the problem is that it hasn't been coupled with an overall theme, rather it sounds like a response to a Harper attack ad.

The environment is a losing issue for Dion. He can't compete with May, and any gains among NDP voters are likely to be countered by losses to the Conservatives - Harper wanted an election on the green shift for a reason.

The gun ban, gay marriage, etc. are similarly bad issues unless Dion thinks he has already lost the election. Why would these criticisms work this time around?

By french wedding cat, at 12:31 a.m.
“Moreover, the essential strategy you are proposing for the Liberals already failed in 2006. The conditions for it to fail are even worse now, since Harper has been in power, and is not a radical.”

I'm not proposing strategic voting as a deliberate policy for the LPC. I don't think that strategic voting was a policy in 2006.

I am saying that individual voters who oppose the harperites will make their decision in the final week of the campaign. They may decide to vote strategically if harper looks very strong at the time.

Therefore, the polls to watch will be the ones at the end. A relatively small number of voters in battleground ridings may decide the future of the country and the political parties.

I'm not getting excited at this time. I have already said that neither party will get a majority as long as dion and harper are the leaders. In the end, the contest will be decided by who makes the second last mistake.

By JimTan, at 1:34 a.m.

Friday, September 12, 2008

Awful Mental Images

23 Comments:

About

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Friday, September 12, 2008

Awful Mental Images

23 Comments:

About

Previous

About Me