Election 2015

[George Wallace]

I doubt the crisis has hurt him amongst reasonably committed conservatives, but I think the media fuss ~ some of which highlighted Prime Minister Harper's perceived "hard heart" ~ has influenced, for now, some (many?) undecided respondents.

Some of the media still seem to want to dredge up the falsehoods behind the story about the little boy that drown.  They refuse to retract their incorrectly reported news, but continue to accuse the Conservatives of not acting on a refugee case, one that did not exist.  For the bleeding hearts that don't want to do their due diligence in researching the facts, that still hurts the Conservatives.

 

[Jed]

Mr. Campbell has a nasty tendency of just reposting those things that are found in the public domain.  Aggregating them in other words. 
And in doing so he performs a great service to members of this site.

He attributes his sources and posts all sides of the debate.  He allows himself the liberty of passing comment on the words of others.  And you enter into debate with him at your peril.

And, like Royal Drew, if he ran I would vote for him.  I particularly like the sound of "Senator E.R. Campbell".

There are two other individuals on this site that I would single out for approbation, Tony Midori - aka milnews.ca, and the owner of the site, Mike Babbitt.

If we could all emulate these gentlemen the tenor of debates round about here would be greatly improved.

Hear, Hear. Well stated.

 

[Kirkhill]

... I self describe as a classical, 19th century liberal, influenced, mostly, by John Locke and John Stuart Mill, and a utilitarian, influenced by the same Mill and Jeremy Bentham. I am, therefore, a party of one, and I don't care, at all, if anyone agrees with me.

And there you have the conundrum for the politician on the right of the spectrum - that individualism thing.

The Libertarian-Anarchist interface and the Fascist-Communist interface: Where Left meets Right.

And ER - even I can spot the difference between Toni and your Midori

Now if it wasn't for these brain farts.....

 

[Altair]

I miss the point about the Syrian refugee crisis hurting Harper.  Is it likely that a potential Conservative voter would change his/her opinion to speed up immigration from an idealogical nut-house like Syria.  Has anyone seen poll results indicating that a large number of Canadians care?  Any Syrian is free to apply to immigrate to Canada on their own or as sponsored immigrants.  All people that want more Syrian immigration have to do is pay for it.

All about optics.

This is getting 24 hour news coverage. It was in every paper in the country. It was on twitter, Facebook,  instagram, tumbler,  and word of mouth during the long weekend.

Every person with a soul felt for that little boy, more so every parent and one of the first things they heard was that little boy wanted to come to canada. Even when  that turned out to be another member of that boys family,  the initial feeling of sadness with a Canadian connection.

Mayors across the country are trying to get more refugees here, premiers across the country are try as well, even harpers lone ally among premiers wants more refugees here, and it looks like for all of Canada that the one guy standing in the way of this wanting to do more for refugees is harper, talking about screening and bombing ISIL.

Yes. Yes this is hurting him.  This is not good.

 

[Kirkhill]

....
Yes. Yes this is hurting him.  This is not good.

Your concern is touching.  I thank you.

And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled

or in the modern idiom:

 

[Altair]

When 66 percent of voters are actively seeking change, kcco  might literally be the worst thing one can say.

 

[PuckChaser]

When 66 percent of voters are actively seeking change, kcco  might literally be the worst thing one can say.

66% of 1,000 people on a phone survey from polling companies who failed to predict a Conservative majority last time? Yep, panic over the numbers.

 

[Remius]

I think next week will be a more telling picture of the state of the campaign.  We'll be a month away, we'll have had 2 post labour day weeks of polling and the real gloves will be coming off. 

 

[Good2Golf]

66% against (I see how you lumped 'undecided' in there - interesting Def'n of 'active') sounds bad until you realize that full-on Majority Governments have been elected with 62% 'against' them...

*yawn

 

[Bird_Gunner45]

When 66 percent of voters are actively seeking change, kcco  might literally be the worst thing one can say.

The NDP in Alberta won with less than 50%... odd that that's not brought up

 

[Edward Campbell]

I'm sure the LPC and NDP would be very happy if the CPC said, "Oh, there's no hope" and dropped out, even though the time remaining is about as much as most prior elections.  I doubt anyone is going to win a majority.  That leaves a minority, and the prospect of having enough seats to form a second minority after the first loses confidence, to fight for.

For those who need to elect a NDP government to find out that the NDP is the most centrally, top-down controlled major party in Canada, fill your ballot accordingly.  Keep subsequent lamentations to yourself, please.  How far can you trust them?  A short while back I asked a NDP supporter - now candidate - what the policy was on a particular issue.  The response was basically: you'll have to elect us to find out.  Where does that rank for "secretive"?

You don't need to go back very far to understand that pretty much everything Harper does is based on lessons learned from predecessors from PET forward.  Given that knowledge, you can dismiss the fantasy that a different leader/party will make a difference to practices (the promises go by the board as soon as they get briefed in and start trying to do things) and focus on policy.

Understand: this is an election about nothing significant.  The strongest slogan the opposition parties have is "ABC" (really, "ABH").  Usually voters don't reward opposition parties for merely saying, "We'll do/be better than the incumbents.  We promise"; but sometimes they do.  It'd be a shame to reward such laziness.  The rest is basically "tax more, spend more" fly-sh!t issues and party quiffs; and, there are a lot of frustrated, organized, and vocal groups out there who lost their rice bowls and want them back.  The biggest issues the media wants to discuss are "Duffy is a poor senator" and "more refugees, please".  As immediately recent events demonstrated, in the internet age the proverbial lie is now orders of magnitude faster than the truth in getting out there.

We should be talking about whether "stimulus" works very well - if at all - in the Canadian federal context, and whether it is even appropriate for a commodities price slump.  (From announcements I read today, AB is going down the "stimulus" sinkhole.)

We should be talking about whether the economy has been constrained by consumer deleveraging (debt acquired during the 1997-2007 "boomlet"), and is about to be more constrained in the near future when deleveraging for the current round of low-interest debt acquisition comes due.  So much future spending (hence future taxation) is being pulled into the present that there is bound to be a big, hard recession (a true one: a demand shock).

I predict that if the next government is not fiscally conservative, Canada is going to be caught moving in the wrong direction (higher taxes, increased social spending commitments) when the recession strikes.  And, there are no cushions left: the dollar is low, interest rates are low, commodities prices are down, consumers are over-indebted, most of our trading partners' economies are lacklustre.

Higher taxes can be fixed by the next government ... Stephen Harper proved that, but increased social spending is a rat hole from which there is no politically acceptable escape. A new government can "stop digging," as Denis Healey advised, but it is well nigh impossible to backfill a social spending hole: the voters feel 'entitled to their entitlements,' like good Liberals everywhere.

 

[Lumber]

Higher taxes can be fixed by the next government ... Stephen Harper proved that, but increased social spending is a rat hole from which there is no politically acceptable escape. A new government can "stop digging," as Denis Healey advised, but it is well nigh impossible to backfill a social spending hole: the voters feel 'entitled to their entitlements,' like good Liberals everywhere.

This is a sad and frustrating truth. It's the same with salaries. You can't claw them back, but you can slow or halt their growth.

 

[McG]

Many of you would probably disagree, but in this election, I really don't feel like voting for anyone. Each party has aspects that I support, while simultaneously having aspects that I not only disagree with, but vehemently oppose:

Have you engaged any independents in your riding to see if they might more closely represent your views?  There are options outside the big three parties.

 

[PuckChaser]

The NDP in Alberta won with less than 50%... odd that that's not brought up

And note none of the Tory supporters there were grandstanding to change first past the post. Seems like its a lefty thing to do: don't get elected, cry the system is unfair and change it so you can win easily next time.

 

[Remius]

Have you engaged any independents in your riding to see if they might more closely represent your views?  There are options outside the big three parties.

More and more, I think that MY vote will be for the candidate that I think will best represent my riding. 

 

[Altair]

The NDP in Alberta won with less than 50%... odd that that's not brought up

Harper and the CPC also scores low in the second choice category,  much less than the NDP 52 percent and the LPC 49 percent.

He doesn't have much room to grow to get to the Rachel Notley levels of support.

Long time to go yet, but I strongly disagree with the nonchalant stance by many regarding the conservative campaign. While I'm obviously biased, and I am hoping for a CPC/harper loss, I don't think I'm miss reading things here. This had been a terrible campaign.

 

[PuckChaser]

Rachel Notley levels of support will only last until her socialist budget hits the road (which she won't release until after the election to save Muclair), when she destroys whats left of the oil industry in the province with huge corporate tax increases. If Muclair doesn't get a majority, his budget will crash and burn, as will his support if he bows to the Union/Socialist back benchers.

The big difference between the NDP and the Tories, is that Harper has been able to marginalize his far-right side of the party but keep their support. The NDP unionists and hard lefties will be hands into the trough if he wins, and I strongly doubt he has the same gumption to say no, which will be disastrous for Canada.

 

[Privateer]

And note none of the Tory supporters there were grandstanding to change first past the post. Seems like its a lefty thing to do: don't get elected, cry the system is unfair and change it so you can win easily next time.

Not necessarily.  The British MP, Tony Benn, who was "old" Labour, made a strong speech against proportional representation in the British House of Commons.  He cautioned against the use of lists of potential MPs created by political parties, as opposed to MPs elected directly by their constituents, as he believed this would lead to a loss of independence in MPs.  The fear was that the party could remove the MP from future lists, if the MP followed his or her conscience and/or the best interests of his or her constituents, instead of voting the party line.  Interestingly, this evil has found its way into our system, through the requirement that the party leader sign off on the nomination papers for candidates.

Mr. Benn's speech on proportional representation, together with other speeches by Mr. Benn, was later set to ambient music by Charles Bailey, and released as "Tony Benn's Greatest Hits": http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tony-Benns-Greatest-Hits-Benn/dp/B0032N18YE

Yes, I have the album.  The quality of his speeches to the House makes you weep for the current quality of speech in our own House, regardless of whether you agree with his position.

 

[McG]

The British MP, Tony Benn, who was "old" Labour, made a strong speech against proportional representation in the British House of Commons.  He cautioned against the use of lists of potential MPs created by political parties, as opposed to MPs elected directly by their constituents, as he believed this would lead to a loss of independence in MPs.  The fear was that the party could remove the MP from future lists, if the MP followed his or her conscience and/or the best interests of his or her constituents, instead of voting the party line.  Interestingly, this evil has found its way into our system, through the requirement that the party leader sign off on the nomination papers for candidates.

There have examples where MPs, dumped by their parties for supporting the constituency, are rewarded in the next election when they are returned to Parliament as independents.  So the voters maintain an over-ride in first past the post or preferential ballot, but there is no such mechanism in proportional representation.

 

[Kirkhill]

Harper and the CPC also scores low in the second choice category,  much less than the NDP 52 percent and the LPC 49 percent.

He doesn't have much room to grow to get to the Rachel Notley levels of support.

Long time to go yet, but I strongly disagree with the nonchalant stance by many regarding the conservative campaign. While I'm obviously biased, and I am hoping for a CPC/harper loss, I don't think I'm miss reading things here. This had been a terrible campaign.

Mate, do yourself a favour and stick to your knitting.  Rather than worrying about the CPC's campaign focus on your own candidate's.  Or is this your assigned task - trolling and sowing dissent?

Don't bother answering.  You have successfully reached my Ignore Quotient.