Blue Like You

Archive for September 21st, 2007

I was wondering how long it would take before someone finally said enough is enough.

You won’t believe the nightmare this couple has been living in Caledonia. This is happening in a supposedly civilized country!

Well, Premier McGuinty, you bought the land, which the taxpayers had to pay for, and now you’re being sued, which the taxpayers will have to pay for.

Meanwhile things seem to be going from bad to worse.

Four more years of this???

“It’s so strongly worded. It’s more or less saying we’re shutting Haldimand down”

Wow! Did we all watch the same Ontario Leadership Debate last night?

Depending on which editorial or column you read this morning, opinions range all the way from a clear win for McGuinty to an uncontested Tory victory; with Howard Hampton picking up a few points along the way. (Interesting to see the Star and the Record at odds.)

However, the biggest surprise by far was reading Lorrie Goldstein’s Point of View - Game, Set and Match to McGuinty. What??????? But on closer inspection, I wonder if Lorrie is suggesting that it wasn’t McGuinty’s actual performance which won the debate, but rather his handlers’ clever manipulation of the media and public opinion:

Even the wording of the questions revealed how McGuinty has convinced everyone — including the debate organizers — that a relatively minor promise by Tory is the defining issue.

So is he saying that the Liberal strategists won the debate?

Geoffrey Stevens doesn’t think so. I rarely agree with Stevens’ POV, but today I almost choked on my morning java:

Whoever prepared Premier Dalton McGuinty for the leaders’ debate last night should be fired. He or she should be drummed unceremoniously out of the Honourable Fraternity of Political Savants and Gurus.

The Liberal strategy was appalling. McGuinty did what a prize fighter should never do - he led with his chin. He opened with a video in which he did a mea culpa, apologizing to Ontarians for breaking his 2003 election promise not to raise taxes. “I hated it,” he declared, rather pathetically.

Yes, I wonder who had that brainstorm? Stevens goes on:

I’ve been covering leaders’ debates for years and I have never seen one as one-sided as last night’s. If TVOntario’s Steve Paikin had been a referee rather than a moderator, he would have stopped the carnage at the 30-minute mark and declared a TKO victory for the tag team of Tory and Hampton.

And here’s his knock-out punch for McGuinty:

If other people watched the same debate that I did, John Tory should gain some momentum. He looked stronger and more confident than McGuinty. He looked more like a premier than the premier did. If I were grading the leaders’ performances, I’d give Tory an A, Hampton a B-plus and McGuinty, to be charitable, a D.

Will Dalton have time to heal before Ontario voters have to make a final decision? I suppose it depends how gullible and disinterested the electorate is.

One thing for sure. The Hampton-Tory tag team worked remarkably well, as it has in the past when dealing with ‘Colle-gate’ or Cricketgate, when the NDP and PC’s combined force and persistence finally led to Dalton crying ‘uncle’ and calling in the Auditor General Jim McCarter to investigate the slush fund controversy.

Leadership debates allow the candidates to talk straight to the people. With the exception of those new taped bits at the beginning, the format is relatively free of spin and interference from handlers who try to divert attention and control access.

Make your decision, Ontario.

Do you really want four more years of a healed Dalton McGuinty?