The Shotgun Blog
« Free markets and leftists: Open question thread | Main | Will Beijing's crackdown in Tibet hurt their friends in Taiwan? »
Monday, March 17, 2008
Tories Win Big in Saskatchewan, Barely Miss in Vancouver
With most of the polls reporting in, the Tories look to have taken the open Liberal seat in Saksatchewan by nearly 17%.
Meanwhile, Joyce Murray seems to have won Vancouver-Quadra for the Liberals... by one hundred and fifty-one votes. Not a good sign for them at all.
Dion's leadership is going to come under serious fire after this debacle. Especially as, given the way in which the Liberal nomination in Desnethé--Missinippi--Churchill River was handled, he has to bear primary responsibility for the loss of the seat.
Posted by Adam T. Yoshida on March 17, 2008 in Canadian Politics | Permalink
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/22305/27203276
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Tories Win Big in Saskatchewan, Barely Miss in Vancouver:
Comments
Well, talk about a cockeyed optimist, Marble Mouth Dion full of the false bravado is now proclaiming he has a much stronger team than Harper. Never mind they LOST a seat and nearly LOST another.
Toronto remains a write off due to brain free brand name voting. The fun for Steffi is just beginning.
Of course the VERBOSE M-H Findlay is an adoring fan of his, she'll be rewarded with a front row seat.
Steffi sitting between Buffalo Bob and Puffin Iggy will be a lovely "Happy Families" sight to behold.
Let's say they lost a seat. Conservatives gained a seat. That's it, that's all, except for the fawning media's brainless banter.
Posted by: Liz J | 18-Mar-08 6:02:30 AM
In actual fact the real significance of this By Election is that Taliban Jack Layton's Socialist Horde was wiped out -Liberal Strategists created the By Election to ensure Liberals continued to infect seats which they have had for many decades. One thing Conservative Planners should consider is publishing all the nasty comments about Robert Rae
generated by Liberals over the decades. The Irony is
that the MSM Toronto and Ottawa Media did in Rae's
Government and set the path for a Conservative victory by Harris and Associates. Dion was barely articulate on the Liberal owned CTV network this morning. He needs an English Immersion course.In any event Robert Rae and Second Hand Rose will be looking to replace Citoyen Dion at the first opportunity. MacLeod not surprised in Moncton NB
where Howdy Doody is Premier - 18 March 2008
Posted by: Jack MacLeod | 18-Mar-08 7:20:07 AM
We have to stress the number of votes Rae and MHF got as compared to how many their predecessors got. Not a good showing. Same goes for Quadra and Sask. Liberal vote was way down, and ndp was almost wiped out. Liberals can now be called the Abstaining party, both in the HofC and in the court of public opinion.
The message to all leaders, don't handpick candidates, especially from other partys.
Posted by: MaryT | 18-Mar-08 8:07:10 AM
We have to stress the number of votes Rae and MHF got as compared to how many their predecessors got. Not a good showing. Same goes for Quadra and Sask. Liberal vote was way down, and ndp was almost wiped out. Liberals can now be called the Abstaining party, both in the HofC and in the court of public opinion.
The message to all leaders, don't handpick candidates, especially from other partys.
Posted by: MaryT | 18-Mar-08 8:08:44 AM
Is second hand Rose , Iggy or Martha ? With her cheesy scarves and ear rings. And before Elizabeth May gets too excited about being second in a blanket finish , that could be expected in TC . The migration of the weirdo vote from NDP to Green is the real story. The real shocker was in Quadra. Contrary to the Star which is trying to spin this into a Liberal resurgence , I`d say Dion , after this , is on life support.
Posted by: daveh | 18-Mar-08 8:26:47 AM
Is second hand Rose , Iggy or Martha ? With her cheesy scarves and ear rings. And before Elizabeth May gets too excited about being second in a blanket finish , that could be expected in TC . The migration of the weirdo vote from NDP to Green is the real story. The real shocker was in Quadra. Contrary to the Star which is trying to spin this into a Liberal resurgence , I`d say Dion , after this , is on life support.
Posted by: daveh | 18-Mar-08 8:26:55 AM
MP and Cabinet Minister Tony Clement won his seat by 28 votes, MP Rob Bruinooge won his by 111 votes, MP Pierre Lemiux won his by 203 votes, and Alberta MLA Fred Horne won his by 64 votes. I suspect they all sit back and enjoy a win as a win.
Perhaps the real back-room concern ought to be in the Tory caucus over why the voters shifted from Liberal to the Green Party, who saw their votes triple in Vancouver Quadra even though the Tories had just announced what they characterized as the best comprehensive green plan. In a riding where people still vote on environmental issues, this was a kind of repudiation of the Tory plan that could affect how more environmentally agnostic voters see the plan, and take a little eco-wind out of a future national campaign. You know, like if the dog hates the new dog food, the cat probably won't try it either.
Posted by: Pattern Recognition | 18-Mar-08 8:53:34 AM
"In actual fact the real significance of this By Election is that Taliban Jack Layton's Socialist Horde was wiped out." -- Jack MacLeod
That won't stop Taliban Jack from claiming he speaks for Canadians, as in "Canadians want ... (insert Dipper belief here)". And the media will continee to treat him like he matters.
Posted by: JMD | 18-Mar-08 8:57:19 AM
Boob Rae is a very big new knife that Dion has to keep his eye on. Boob is pursuing the PMO on behalf of the Power Corp, the Demarais people that include Chretien, Mo Strong and cast of thousands of would be world elite rulers with ties to the Bilderbergers. (Google Bilderbergers)
We can only hope that Ontario still resents Rae enough to not allow him to become more than an MP.
Rae is dangerous because is socialist-stupid, but wealthy and well-connected. He is also too old now and should go hang out with Rick Mercer we there can show each other their pee pees down at the lake all day long.
Posted by: John West | 18-Mar-08 9:14:53 AM
It could be , PR , that long time Liberals were parking their vote Green , not wanting to capitulate completely in their dumping of Dion . It takes more than one by election to overcome decades of media brainwashing . Speaking of which , just what is worse for the environment , years of flogging propaganda on a useless Kyoto or taking real incremental steps to force industry to clean up . Nobody ever said that voters applied logic , when it came to having their minds made up , for them .
Posted by: daveh | 18-Mar-08 9:42:22 AM
Robert Rae and Peterson almost put Ontario out of Business -after the impressive decades of Premier Bill Davis and his highly professional government which attracted many millions of dollars into Ontario in the aerospace and technology sector,Life in Ontario during the unfortunate tenure of both Peterson and Rae was a horror story for many Ontario businesses.Mile Harris was never accepted by the MSM, but he saved Ontario from business extinction.
The once mighty Ontario Aerospace Industries never recovered from the tenure of Peterson and Rae.Citoyen Dion by the way is required as a Citizen od the Republic of France to serve his mandatory term in the French Military.Some yeras ago actual service could be remanded if an individual like Professor Dion served a subsidized Contract at a Canadian University acceptable to France and Canada.Dion ran away fro actuall donning a uniform and taught the Acadian version of "Political Science" at the University of Moncton NB which ain't really a University, has no real academic standing is considered essentially an Acadian Community College among the long established real Universities like Dalhousie, Acadia, Saint FX and Saint Mary's in Nova Scotia.
Maybe the Government of France will consider that Citoyen Dion playing at Liberal Politics is not fufiling his mandated contract,(breach of contract) and should be compelled to serve like millions of other real French Citizens. But the Rae and Iggy operators will be seeking to dispose of Citoyen Dion as quickly as possible. Macleod
Posted by: Jack Macleod | 18-Mar-08 9:48:05 AM
Line of the night was by Tim Powers,went something like this:
"St Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland on this day,
To-day, the snakes are getting driven back into the Liberal caucus by Dion.
Posted by: Bocanut | 18-Mar-08 9:58:55 AM
"It could be , PR , that long time Liberals were parking their vote Green"
Definitely.
I'm noticing though that the Green gains came from both sides. I wasted a stack of time this morning in a spreadsheet looking at the numbers, adjusting them for by-election apathy etc. and there's still more growth there than there is combined losses from the competition.
The numbers suggest three factors in the Greens gains:
1. The Dion thing. Frustrated Liberals migrated bidirectionally.
2. The Jack and Dion thing. (cue Mellencamp tune) Neither has forced action on either the Kyoto straw man, or the actual heavier action called for by Flannery et. al.
3. The Dear John thing. Environment Canada—perhaps liberal but at least a domestic source—blew off Baird's plan as token since it substitutes "pre-certified investments" for carbon offsets.
It does at least serve as market research for a future national election. The Liberals will need to find a real leader. The NDP need to find a real leader. The Conservatives need to find a real environment minister. The Greens need to capitalize on social-issue exhaustion*.
*Limp voter turnout in both these by-elections and the Alberta election suggests while we care about the economy we largely see it as affected by larger forces than Canadian policies, and while we do care about social issues, we don't care enough to hear about them day in and out very loudly, and while we're told the economy can't take back seat to the environment, it may be, just maybe, that voters in BC sent the first hint that a future collective response might be, "imagination can't take back seat to indignation."
Posted by: Pattern Recognition | 18-Mar-08 10:07:50 AM
To me, the most interesting result is Vancouver-Quadra.
150 votes?
After an all-out effort by the Liberals the last two weeks attempting to paint Harper as untrustworthy as evidenced by the Cadman controversy?
Seems to me that strategy has totally backfired.
Instead of a near 20% (48-29) result as in the general election, it's in recount territory.
So, how are the Libs going to weasel out of this botched strategy? Should be fun to watch them squirm now.
The smearer ended up getting smeared. Hahahahaha.
Posted by: set you free | 18-Mar-08 10:08:07 AM
"The smearer ended up getting smeared. Hahahahaha."
Set You Free, the Liberals got 18,500 less votes than they got in 2006, the Conservatives got 6,840 votes less than they got in 2006. The greens got 818 more votes than they got in 2006. By the numbers, Cadman wasn't even on voters' minds except to say enough about Cadman already.
Neither large party drew anyone to the polls over the Cadman feud, rather one party managed to bore fewer of it's people than the other did, while a third party somehow (others can discuss) managed to draw out all of its people and add 818 more.
Posted by: Pattern Recognition | 18-Mar-08 10:24:11 AM
PR:
I'm all in favour of individual responsibility on environmental issues, since we all have to live in our surroundings and have to pass the earth onto our children.
As far as giving up individual freedom for the collective good, as advocated by the narrowly-focused Kyoto/CO2 template, count me out.
There's much more to environmental responsibility than CO2. Some people are going to be clean freaks, others are going to be pigs. That's human naure.
As history has shown, any utopian group is always doomed to failure, because their frustration about their inability to control others' behaviours ultimately leads to violent solutions.
To me, it's much more productive if I clean up my own act.
That way, I can be an example for others to emulate.
The political approach is a non-starter to me because of its divisiveness ... the ‘I'm better than you are, so you have to do what I say' approach has never worked.
Perhaps you have an example that I may have missed. I'd be eager to hear about it, since I believe I'm open-minded enough to change my opinion if a better idea comes along.
So far, the Green Party has failed to convince me it has any better ideas.
Posted by: set you free | 18-Mar-08 10:51:56 AM
PR: "The Liberals will need to find a real leader."
Except for the MSM cheerleaders, who will see to it that the Canadian electorate crowns the "Librano leader" of their choice, none of the potential candidates for LPoC Leader fits the bill:
Iggy: an elite ivory-tower intellectual, parachuted into his Lakeshore-Etobicoke riding, like a rare bird into the pigeon-droppings-everywhere inner city (read: dirty politics). 'Doesn't have the muscular thrust-and-parry needed for battle in the HOC...
Martha 'all-Friendly: As other commentators have asked, "What's with her?" 'Nothing particularly noteworthy, except that she's a WOMAN (so?), a LAWYER (so? They're a dime a dozen), and really, really, really Librano-Dion-friendly (so? That's a plus?). Leadership qualities? 'Don't actually see any...
Bobby Rae: Other than being a fairly mean jazz pianist, which is a plus, what else has he got going for him?: I mean, on his own without Power Corp behind him? He's a pompous, arrogant, not-comfortable-in-his-skin, tyring-to-be-smooth, turncoat who almost ruined the Ontario economy--and is the #1 reason why it takes a newcomer to any community in Ontario MONTHS to find a doctor.
I guess with STRONG tie$ to Uncle Mo and Paul Desmarai$ Jr.'$ Power Corp (Rae's brother John is a CEO), Bobby will be a shoe-in for Librano Leader, but what a $et-up. It $tink$. How much doh-re-mi will it take to crown Bobby? The sky's the limit when it comes to the Strong/Desmearai/Power Corp coalition.
'Just what Canada needs: Another Puppet-Master- manipulated PM, after Trudeau, Mulroney, Chretien, and Martin.
And we call this a democracy?
Posted by: batb | 18-Mar-08 11:16:40 AM
What is the big deal that Dion can't speak English perfectly? His English is a lot better than Harper's French and I appreciate both leaders for trying their best in a second language! I speak both English and French as well as Cree and I don't bash others because of not being perfect at a language. It can be quite humorous at times like Chrétien speaking English, Joe Clark's French. I think the all time best was Diefenbaker speaking French.
Now by-elections never give a great picture of what would happen in a general election. All four ridings seemed to be more focused on the actual candidates rather than the parties as a whole. Some people like to portray certain party leaders as being weak, strong, in control, not in control but right now it seems that ALL the party leaders are pretty weak. There is a real stalemate happening. Maybe only the Green Party is making tiny gains but it is not translating into seats.
Posted by: Tim Trudeau | 18-Mar-08 11:20:12 AM
"Perhaps you have an example that I may have missed. I'd be eager to hear about it, since I believe I'm open-minded enough to change my opinion if a better idea comes along."
Right on. Yeah I doubt the GP has any one specific policy that warrants their capturing the votes they're capturing. I agree (so do most environmentalists) that Kyoto is too flawed. So do most GP members I know. They're there because it's a place to stand as much as it's a place to not stand while they try to find a way to explain how with a little imagination and a lot of ideological flexibility we can prosper and preserve. (Mind you like every movement, along they way they've found some really insane hangers-on, but they come & go.)
Anyway it's a place to go, and be free to try to pair imagination with personal responsibility, free of most of the legacy thinking and forced identity that the bigger parties drag with them. That idea seems to have gotten out there and shaped some of the vote in Vancouver this week.
Posted by: Pattern Recognition | 18-Mar-08 11:44:26 AM
Well Dion got what he wanted at least in TO, an easy win, by a fellow lefty who will sharpen his knife and do a whole lot of chop licking.
Posted by: Sounder | 18-Mar-08 11:46:18 AM
I guess it would have been too obvious if Dion had parachuted him into northern Saskatchewan , where his knife would be out of range.
Posted by: daveh | 18-Mar-08 12:00:54 PM
I guess it would have been too obvious if Dion had parachuted him into northern Saskatchewan , where his knife would be out of range.
Posted by: daveh | 18-Mar-08 12:02:53 PM
I guess it would have been too obvious if Dion had parachuted him into northern Saskatchewan , where his knife would be out of range.
Posted by: daveh | 18-Mar-08 12:03:33 PM
I guess it would have been too obvious if Dion had parachuted him into northern Saskatchewan , where his knife would be out of range.
Posted by: daveh | 18-Mar-08 12:03:58 PM
"What is the big deal that Dion can't speak English perfectly?" -- Tim Trudeau
Tim, it is not that he is imperfect. He is terrible. This country is more than 80 per cent anglphone and this guy cannot communicate adequately with four out of five Canadians. Yet he wants to be Prime Minister. He is awkward, mashes metaphors and mangles or misuses idioms. Harper will murder him when an English-language debate gets heated and Dion gets off-script. Dion makes Chretien (da proof is da proof ...) sound eloquent.
Posted by: JMD | 18-Mar-08 12:17:06 PM
Tim Trudeau (cousin of Justin? Liberal supporter?): "His [Dion's] English is a lot better than Harper's French"
ARE YOU KIDDING?
I'm not fluent, but I speak not bad French and understand French, and PMSH speaks the language very passably. He doesn't flounder, he has vocabulary and idioms at his disposal and IMO his French is more than competent.
I am fluent, on the other hand, in English, my mother tongue, and can barely understand Dion's mangled use of it.
I don't know what footage of Dion you're watching to say that his English is better than PM Harper's French, but it's not the footage I'm watching.
Maybe it's your rose-coloured glasses... ;-)
Posted by: batb | 18-Mar-08 12:36:12 PM
>"(Mind you like every movement, along they way they've found some really insane hangers-on, but they come & go.)
Anyway it's a place to go, and be free to try to pair imagination with personal responsibility, free of most of the legacy thinking and forced identity that the bigger parties drag with them. That idea seems to have gotten out there and shaped some of the vote in Vancouver this week."
Pattern Recognition | 18-Mar-08 11:44:26 AM
So, Recog, as one of the insane hangers-on, when are you going to go?
Do you really think that as a bigger party the CPC, which you stated earlier was a NEW party like the Wildrose Alliance, has more legacy thinking and forced identity than the Greenies whose roots come from the Comintern?
(insane hangers-on with Red/Green blindness)
Posted by: Speller | 18-Mar-08 12:43:02 PM
"Do you really think that as a bigger party the CPC, which you stated earlier was a NEW party like the Wildrose Alliance, has more legacy thinking and forced identity than the Greenies whose roots come from the Comintern?"
No more than I believe the CPC or the WAP are supposed to be moribund with legacy thinking. On paper the Greens should be more moribund (mostibund?) than the CPC or the WAP, but for some reason folks in one group don't seem to give themselves permission to be "new" and others don't give their adopted party permission to be "old". CPC-ers evoke the Tory 80's and new GP members seem to not know who Gerhard Schröder was. Crazy. I know. But it keeps it fun.
In any event, this is all just my observation and guess about where voters are migrating. The numbers are there, the anecdotal evidence is there, now the onus is on the Greens' competition to permit themselves to test whether it's happening, and see what they can do to redirect the flow of voters and similarly tap the larger so-called 'apathetic' dormant 50-60% swing vote.
Posted by: Pattern Recognition | 18-Mar-08 1:01:02 PM
>"CPC-ers evoke the Tory 80's and new GP members seem to not know who Gerhard Schröder was. Crazy. I know. But it keeps it fun."
Pattern Recognition | 18-Mar-08 1:01:02 PM
CPC supporters don't "evoke" the Tory '80s.
The enemies of the CPC, for instance you, do that and then pretend that it's the CPC that does.
The Greens will die when the myth of Global Warming is widely exposed for the fraud that it is.
They are a single issue party build upon a house of cards.
They are pole-sitters whose pole is being chainsawed out from under them.
GP members seem to not know who Gerhard Schröder was?
Do tell.
Add that to the long list of things they do not know, for example, that warming drives the increase in CO2 not the other way around.
The Greens do not seem to know the connection that fact has to the way they should or shouldn't care about "carbon".
Posted by: Speller | 18-Mar-08 1:16:18 PM
I have spoken to many, who after becoming disillusioned with the 2 major parties,expressed a desire to vote green in the last election.This was not because of their outstanding policies and ideas but mostly because of frustration and to give the feel-good underdog a lift. This trend is greater in by-elections as many do not consider them to be all that important. If one was actually voting for a possible change I believe that the feel-good greenie votes would return to the mainstream parties. BTw,MR T T,I am one of those people who do care about a person's ability to communicate. When the prime minister speaks,it is a very good thing to be able to understand him rather than have to ask around the room"Did anyone catch what he just said?"
Posted by: wallyj | 18-Mar-08 5:32:00 PM
Why on Earth would the Tories be worried about the Green result? As I've said for a long time, the left in Canada is now fractured three and a half ways and the right is united. Harper should forget about pushing policies which everyone likes.
If Harper can make himself the choice of 37% of Canada, he can be Prime Minister pretty much forever.
Posted by: Adam Yoshida | 18-Mar-08 6:45:21 PM
Wow, I can't believe someone has the nerve to label me due to my last name! So all Clarks must by tory, all Turners liberal, all Laytons NDP...etc. Insulting to me that someone would be so prejudiced! I am half Cree (mother's side), quarter French-Canadian (where my names comes from) and a quarter Scottish. I live in Northern Quebec. I do not belong to a political party but I normally vote for the Bloc federally and PQ provincially. No I'm not a separatist but I vote for those parties based on their policies aside from sovereignty issues. My MP is Bloc and my MNA is PQ and much of the population in my huge riding is either Cree or Innu.
Being a Quebecker I know for a fact that Harper is not well liked here. People find him bland and boring. Some people are just happy that he's not Liberal but they don't go on and on like some of you in western Canada and southern Ontario about how he's gonna get a majority etc. He won't pick up seats in Quebec and I think Ontario isn't warming to him. My guess is that we will have identical results to the last election...there's a real stalemate going on.
Now Harper's French is not that great but for an anglophone who's not a Quebecker I have to say it is decent. But Dion actually can speak faster and gets his message across in English better than Harper in French. Dion's problem in English is that he sounds too friendly and not so serious. Harper's problem in French is that he is very boring, coached and never has good comebacks in debates.
Now someone said that 80% of Canadians are anglophones??? WRONG!! According to Statistics Canada 66% of Canadian households speak English most often at home. 21% speak French, 11% speak a non-official language, and the rest (2%) a combination any of the the first three.
Posted by: Tim Trudeau | 19-Mar-08 2:20:32 AM
Thin-skinned Tim: "But Dion actually can speak faster and gets his message across in English better than Harper in French."
What message would you be talking about, TT? I can't see that Dion has got any message across. In fact, Dion is the anti-politician, the anti-comminicator. There's a kind of black hole around him.
Why do you think the LPoC can't wait to replace him with Bob Rae?
TT: "Being a Quebecker I know for a fact that Harper is not well liked here." So that's why you can mean-mouth his French? Being "boring" is a very different thing from not being able to speak the language. But you seem to have some difficulty making that distinction.
Dion is not only boring he can't speak da Eeng-lish.
Posted by: batb | 19-Mar-08 8:55:02 AM
I lived in Ontario for 4 years when Bob Rae was Premier. After what the people there went through, I don't think he be elected leader of the party as was a huge flip flopper.
Posted by: Tim Trudeau | 19-Mar-08 10:16:40 AM
"If Harper can make himself the choice of 37% of Canada, he can be Prime Minister pretty much forever."
In 2006 he won 22.09% of the total potential vote. I know that's the third level of lies—statistics—but I know you have an iPhone and you know that in 2006 Apple had 0% market share in the smartphone business. By 2008, without even denting Blackberry or Windows Mobile platform unit sales, Apple had 27% of all Smartphone market by sales.
The iPhone is a terrible Blackberry and an even worse Windows Mobile smartphone. Likewise the Greens offer pretty much nothing to many of the commenters here. So just as a thought exercise to get into the heads of some of those Green Voters who came out of that big 40-50% nowhere, why did you go to the trouble of buying an iPhone?
Posted by: Pattern Recognition | 19-Mar-08 10:38:47 AM
Who cares if Dion can speak da En-lish or not ?
It's the French Quebec branch of the Libs that dosent want him as a potential PM after his unfamous Loi sur la clareté...
And I'm telling you that, uninterested of whom may be the head of any Federal parties.
Posted by: Marc | 19-Mar-08 11:37:04 AM
Marc:
Speaking of who cares.
Who cares about Quebec's self-righteous politicians?
The people are fantastique, though. Very much like Albertans, from what I hear and from my experience meeting them when they come out here looking for work.
Posted by: set you free | 19-Mar-08 12:13:45 PM
Happy Easter check out my blogsite at www.hammertimegp.blogspot.com
Posted by: Paulo | 19-Mar-08 3:32:36 PM
What's your point Set ?
There's Quebecers working around the globe.
Quebers working in Alberta are doing few months only and then come back 'cause they can't follow the fantastic night live and the open mind locals.
Posted by: Marc | 19-Mar-08 9:35:06 PM
My fellow Quebecer Marc is exactly right! People here in Quebec are much more open minded as compared to the rest of Canada. Most of us find the federal Conservatives to be dull, boring and uncaring. Just look at how poorly they are doing in the polls in Quebec.
Posted by: Tim Trudeau | 25-Mar-08 11:59:13 PM
Post a comment