Apolitical Staples

Well, McGuinty is campaigning on bigotry and anti-religious hatred, so he has it in the bag. Blind foaming hatred is the one thing Ontarians are real good at.

By coast, you mean stand out of the way while John Tory self-destructs???, then yeah

Yeah, I agree…and I’m a Conservative who lives in McGuinty’s riding, and has met Tory twice. I’m not impressed.

I long for the good ol’ days when Mike Harris was a true conservative. If you want Liberal policies, why vote Tory when you can always vote for Dalton.

The only thing saving my vote for the Conservatives is that I could never bring myself to vote for a McGuinty.

If Tory keeps going the way he is going, it could even open the door for some protest votes to go Hampton’s way. Hey, stranger things have happened.

Politics is Strange. The Conservatives used to be the party of the hateful anti-Catholic Orangemen and the Liberals used to be the party that Catholics voted for. Modern Liberals have become socialists and the current Conservatives follow a small “L” old time liberal philosophy. ( i.e. classical liberalism as the political scientists talk about.)

Yes, McGuinty campaigning against religion while promising free dental care and holidays and lots of new spending will probably be a sure fire winner. He definitely has the media behind him not to mention those “grass roots” coalitions No Gun No Funeral and Working Families.

As for me, whether I agree with faith-based funding or not , I am beginning to admire John Tory for having the courage to stand up for what he believes in the face of derision and ridicule. I always thought he was kind of a milquetoast but I think he is showing a lot of fortitude right now. If you remember, no-one thought Mike Harris had a chance to win either.

Who is Hampton?

Chretien would call you guys “nervous nellies.”

Perhaps you are too young to remember that Harris had early missteps in a couple of his campaigns too.

Put on some clean underwear and get to work.

P.S. I see a drawback to ever allowing advertising on my blog: there’s a link to Dalton.ca here!

Problem, for me, is that I’ve never been a fan of Tory’s so there is no work for me to get to.

Joan: you can block specific domains if you wish, when showing Google Ads.

Why wouldn’t one want to make money from Dalton.ca google ads?

I’m with Joan T. on this. Don’t give in to the nervous Nellies. J. Tory has learned from the Harper election handbook. Get your “social policy” scary policy (Harper: gay marriage free vote - Tory public funding to religiuos “separate” schools) out on the first day of the campaign or, in Tory’s case, before the campaign even starts. The campaign dynamic then takes over, but you are noticed because you have taken a “risky” principled stand.

Now McGuinty has swallowed the bait and attacked Tory proposal using intemperant language (social cohesion, segregation, etc). No only has he mocked church-going voters, he has insulted non-Christian minoriti who are already sending their children to other scholls but also paying taxes to support both public and Catholic systems. They are listening. McGuinty has compounded his error by welching on the Catholic funding issue. Now he has to spend the rest of the campaign explaining why only the Catholics deserve public funding. And given that he is a producy of the Catholic system, he looks and sounds like a hypocrite (even a bigot).

So Tory on the first day shores up his base (small town, church-going Reform voters) and reaches out to minorities who help pay for other childrens’ education while paying for their own children out of pocket. Then he goes after the swing voters by saying “how is it fair that only the Catholics get public funding? PCs are fair to ALL Ontarians!”

PC vote has been fairly steady for years. What enables Liberals to win is collapse of NDP vote. If (principled, honest) NDP reaction to Tory’s plans causes more voters to look at the NDP, this will subtract from the Liberals (dishonest, unprinicipled). If Hampton can pull 5-10 % away from McGuinty, then PC’s have a shot at government.

It’s risky, but it’s savvy. The key for Tory is to be like Harper and not lose your nerve, The Toronto media reaction was predictable, and the Liberals fell into the trap. This has to be the plan.

PS: Note how Mulroney gives one interview criticizing St. Trudeau and this blows all the anti-Tory headlines off the front pages. Mulroney must be a good friend of John Tory. And in politics, as in comedy and sex, timing is everything.

Orval, that post was so insightful, I think it deserved to be duplicated.

How very, very interesting. I’m not a big John Tory fan, but I’m less of a Dalton fan, so anyone but Dalton is my man!

Who’s laughing? Are these the same people who think seventeen bearded brown-skinned guys named Muhammed arrested together for plotting to hack off the head of the prime minister are ‘from a broad spectrum of society’. And the sinister fella you’ve referenced once tried to retail the notion that these were radicals and nothing more. Yep, if the people laughing are members of this deluded left-wing clique, Tory’s just fine.

Joanne: thanks for the compliment. The way I see it, Tory is going after the same voters who voted for Harper in 2006. Those voters either liked Harper’s views on gay marriage, or they didn’t care enough to vote for another party.

In 2006, Harper (CPC) got 35.1% in Ontario. Martin (LIB) got 39.9%, Layton (NDP) got 19.4%, and Greens got 4.7%. If these trends prevail for the Ontario 2007 election, then McGuinty has a minority. But history tells us that incumbents decline during the course of the election campaign, which is only starting. If Tory, Hampton and the Greens in combination pull 5% of the vote away from McGuinty, then the Liberals are defeated.

So Job #1 for Tory is to solidify his starting 35%. He does this through such policies as full public funding for all schools, including religious schools, teaching the Ontario curriculum.

Then you go after as much of the five percent as you can get. Ontario people are fair-minded and dislike hypocrisy as much as anyone, so Tory’s message about fair-ness will resonant with voters despite the bigotry of the Toronto media. McGuinty’s lame defence of the Catholic system will only highlight the hypocrisy. If Tory can catch most or all of the 5 percent, and if Hampton comes on strong as well, then Tory will be the next premier of Ontario.

So Job #1 for Tory is to solidify his starting 35%. He does this through such policies as full public funding for all schools, including religious schools, teaching the Ontario curriculum.

Then you go after as much of the five percent as you can get. Ontario people are fair-minded and dislike hypocrisy as much as anyone, so Tory’s message about fair-ness will resonant with voters despite the bigotry of the Toronto media. McGuinty’s lame defence of the Catholic system will only highlight the hypocrisy. If Tory can catch most or all of the 5 percent, and if Hampton comes on strong as well, then Tory will be the next premier of Ontario.

There, in a nutshell, is why we need MMP. The vast majority of this province do not want funding extended to all religious schools. Yet they may end up getting just that, if the splits are just right and Tories can get just 40% of the vote. Crazy? Yes and possible too under FPTP.

Dr. S., what are they if not radicals? Are you suggesting that they represent mainstream Muslim opinion in this province? Your tone would suggest your answer, but I am curious.

Principled stand on religious funding. What flavour was the fucking Kool-aid? It’s called pandering for the ethnic vote and it is definitely right out of Harper’s playbook. In fact i think he now has several chapters on pandering. There is nothing principled about this when one of the main talking points is, “well the courts will make us anyways so lets pander for votes FIRST!” It has a lot of more serious conservatives upset because there is absolutely no principle to it at all. A principled stand would be “we’ll never allow this corrosive policy and will fight it every step of the way.”

The 800 pound gorilla of illogic in all this is… if they are teaching the Ontario curriculum then it isn’t really a religious school at all. Sure sure they have religion class, but if your religion is that important to you then you are free to see to it your children our instructed in its tenants outside of public school. It used to be called Sunday school. I have German friends who every Saturday had to spend the morning learning proper use of the umlaut and what made good Bratwurst. If your religion is so fragile it needs public subsidies to thrive then you have bigger problems you need to worry about. There is no avoiding the fact that this is going to lead to taxpayer funded madrassas and that is why it is such a ridiculous policy. What is the incentive for the government to crack down on a school that teaches the Ontario curriculum and then spends a whole lot of time on a rather broad definition of what constitutes “religion class”? Cowering bureaucrats, politically well connected school backers and more fear of lawsuits and aggressive youths from the “broad strata” of society. Oh yeah this is going to work out real fine.

The Freedom Party usually runs a candidate in my riding. i’ll park my vote there.

“So Tory on the first day shores up his base (small town, church-going Reform voters)”

Gosh given the great historical success of the old Reform Party, I can only guess you are not from Ontario or some kind of John Tory Fanboy. Ontario is home to the Red Tory old PC party, not Reform.

Look, Tory botched it, trying to pander to minorities. His base, even on the BTs aren’t buying it - they don’t want to be associated with creationist nonsense - and even the John Pacheco-Lifesite-socons aren’t buying it - they see it as a way to trap them with funding to then impose a curriculum that forced evolution or puts creationism into “religion class”, not science class, neither of which the fundies really want.

So who exactly did the brain trust at PC headquarters think this idiocy was going to win over?

I have no horse in this race, but it doesn’t take a genius to see Tory blew it, completely. Then again, he did that back in 93 too.

It does however, take a particular talent in cognitive dissonance to see all this as some masterful plan and then to recommend that Tory continue and act like the least popular- most popular leader in Canadian history, in a province where the CPC is way behind, and think that is a winning strategy.

Just wow.

If the issue becomes fairness, then Tory is positioned on the right side of that argument. Leaders’ debates should be very interesting this time.

Thanks to Joan for suggesting I’m too young to remember Mike Harris.

When I was younger, we used to campaign in BC for the Liberal-Conservative Coalition government of the early 1950s against WAC Bennett’ Socred and the hated CCF.

I wonder if the same thing will happen to Stephen Harper? When we went door knocking no one would ever admit to voting for Bennett, but whenever an election rolled around Bennett would win. I predict that the same thing will happen in the next federal election. In public BC voters pretended they did not support Bennett, but in the privacy of the voting booth, they voted for his guts and leadership rather than the wishy washy policies those politicians form the traditional parties we supported.

In the meantime, John Tory has yet to reach that kind of trust among the voters.