Wednesday, March 30, 2011

In Fairness to Harper...

...there are way too many Conservative organizers under investigation right now to keep track of all of them:

Another questionable campaign worker sends Harper scrambling

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper is distancing himself from another tainted political organizer who found a home in a local candidate’s campaign.

Giulio Maturi, who was a top official in the campaign of disgraced former Montreal mayoral candidate Benoit Labonté in 2009, was listed as late as Wednesday afternoon as the campaign manager for a Montreal Conservative candidate.

posted by calgarygrit at 2:12 p.m.

12 Comments:

  • Preston Manning wrote in one of his books that the biggest campaign-related challenge was keeping a distance from fringe-minded volunteers.

    If anything he did the Progressive Conservatives a service, because they would flock to him instead of them, but now they have nowhere else to flock.

    The Green and NDP don't have the same problem, because the left-wing fringe aren't seen the same way.

    By Blogger Robert Vollman, at 3:33 p.m.  

  • Showing vastly more leadership and sincerity to unseat Harper than either Michael Ignatieff or Jack Layton or Elizabeth May can muster put together:

    http://ca.news.yahoo.com/ndp-candidate-withdraws-race-back-liberal-bid-unseat-20110330-090009-466.html

    By Blogger Jacques Beau Vert, at 3:48 p.m.  

  • JBV, what kind of message does it send when a member of one party tells you to vote for another?

    By Blogger Robert Vollman, at 4:16 p.m.  

  • Robert, I agree completely with the premise of your question.

    My question: What kind of message does it send when 4 left-of-centre parties run around frothing at the mouth about the Harpergovernment Menace and the End of The Canadian World as we know it..... but, they can't actually agree to work together to defeat him?

    You're right -- the NDP guy dropping out is weird. It's fundamentally weird. I won't argue the point because there's nothing to argue.

    Look, we all saw Lord of the Rings, and we all know Canada could never have saved the world from the Hitler Nazis without backup assistance from the United States and Britain and Australia and Russia and the French who didn't support the Reich.

    Allies have to find bitter, painful compromises if they want to defeat their foes.

    Personally, I'm just uber-irritated by all the "EVIL HARPER" posturing. It's so transparently see-through, because if it really truly mattered, if he was really soooo scary, they'd find a way to work together. It's just vote-attracting propaganda advertising, and they clearly don't believe it themselves.

    Note, I won't be upset if Harper continues to be PM. Whatever, right? If I have to listen to the anti-Harper crowd whining another 2 years because they can't find a way to co-operate, *that* will suck. But hey, I'll live, right?

    It's funny, I actually don't feel "the progressive vote must consolidate!!!". I more or less just feel, "progessives need to put up or shut up."

    Either they work together to defeat the Horned Devil, or they just put forward their platforms and quit clogging my facebook with their (phony) paranoia about the Conservatives....


    So, yeah - you're right.

    By Blogger Jacques Beau Vert, at 4:35 p.m.  

  • Very well put JBV.

    I never understood all the fuss anyway. I know that Harper's policies and actions are different than everyone else's, but not nearly to the degree that people claim.

    Seriously, the word "cosmetic" comes to mind.

    All this exaggeration doesn't help people make up their minds.

    By Blogger Robert Vollman, at 5:07 p.m.  

  • Why get rid of Harper? Just for starters: Harper is contemptuous of democracy. I've been watching for years, and I've never seen anything like it. First PM declared in contempt -- and that was found by the Speaker, not just a committee. Prorogued Parliament twice to avoid its majority will. Stacked the Senate and used it to defeat legislation passed by a majority of the House. First time for that abuse in a long time. He's got a forger for a minister. A lying minister of finance falsely claiming our record massive deficit will be gone by 2015 (PBO disagrees, IMF disagrees). Harper's spent well over $100 million of our money on partisan ads. He's trying to blow billions on military jets that can't fly, while hiding the true -- and growing -- cost of them. And top party members broke campaign spending limits laws in 2006 and tried to rip us off nearly $1 million...

    By Blogger Mark Richard Francis, at 6:56 p.m.  

  • This comment has been removed by the author.

    By Blogger Robert Vollman, at 7:18 p.m.  

  • Mark, all you have shown is a lack of historical perspective.
    1. I'm not sure that the opposition leaders, who kind of have a vested interest in the matter, are the best arbiters of who is in contempt or not.

    2. Prorogation has been used plenty of times by just about every PM in power for a non-trivial amount of time.

    3. Economic forecasts are notoriously difficult to make, and I'd be hard-pressed to find a government that has consistently made accurate ones, or less-than-optimistic ones (although the budget deficit is almost certain to come in smaller than expected this year).

    4. Your definition of "stacking the senate" appears to be "appointing senators", something that is the constitutionally accepted purview of the PM. Mulroney going to the queen to create new senate seats in order to pass the GST may count as stacking the senate (incidentally his goal was to ensure that the will of parliament prevailed), but I can't think of any equivalent action by Harper.

    5. It is pretty clear that Oda was not trying to forge anything. She used the not to indicate her ministerial view on the report.

    6. While the Conservatives were the worst offenders, the other parties also ran something like the in-and-out program. And while the most recent ruling on the matter did not favour the Tories, the previous one did. It seems clear to me that every party was operating in a grey area when it came to what counted toward campaign spending limits (which, in my view, have contributed far more to the unworkable parliament than malice by any particular leader).

    Harper is crooked, but differs little in that respect from the kind of "bastard" PMs that have tended to win elections in Canada. The view that he is a threat to Canadian democracy is a hyperbolic fantasy that seems to have transferred most of the feelings lefties had about Bush to Harper.

    By Blogger french wedding cat, at 7:25 p.m.  

  • Well said h2h, though it's unfortunate you were thrust into the position of defending Harper.

    By Blogger Robert Vollman, at 7:32 p.m.  

  • If Mark Francis wants to base his sentiments on something more solid, I would suggest Harper's use of the CMHC to win re-election. Bowing to government pressure, the value of CMHC-insured mortgages have more than doubled, driving up Canadian home prices with them.

    The ratio of house prices to personal incomes now exceeds that in the US at the peak of the housing boom. If the bubble bursts and people start defaulting, taxpayers could be on the hook for hundreds of billions of dollars (though I don't think it will collapse our credit system like the subprime crash did to the US, simply because we don't employ the same kind of derivatives).

    By Blogger french wedding cat, at 11:43 p.m.  

  • I agree... Crooked but no moreso than Trudeau Mulroney Chretien King McDonald etc.

    Mark Im fine with the idea of Harper going... Just dont believe the " Red Alert " hysteria from people who refuse to cooperate to do so... They're just bluffing. Which btw is lying, which is crooked.

    By Blogger Jacques Beau Vert, at 12:51 a.m.  

  • How many Liberal candidates are currently facing criminal charges?

    I'll give you a hint: it's more than zero.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 2:07 a.m.  

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