Monday, October 25, 2010
NDP Frightened About Rural Seats
With rural voters set to turn on the NDP for Jack Layton's stand on the gun registry, they are grasping for straws ahead of the upcoming Winnipeg byelection bid to keep a seat that voted overwhelmingly NDP in 2008. Now they are saying that there should be no federal tax on heating oil, where any tax elimination often appeals to Tory voters. I'm just wondering how this jives with the NDP anti-fossil fuel global warming crowd? Is Jack Layton giving up on increasing the cost of fossil fuels? Should we not cap and trade heating oil? What about all those millions of Canadians who heat their homes by the miracle of coal-fired electricity? Should there be no tax on coal because it heats Canadian homes? Or are the NDP just trying to stop their rural bleeding ahead of an upcoming seat defense byelection?
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Personally I hope the dippers share last place with the Greenies in the next election over the LGR vote.
ReplyDeleteThe Democrats made a tactical mistake in 2008 coup attempt. They followed up with whipping on LGR.
ReplyDeleteDemocrats are not tax fighters. They fight for big government as Liberals and Bloc.
A movement in Quebec and Toronto has caught on. NB was not a single issue in dumping Liberals.
Voters are frustrated with rhetoric and increases without benefit.
Jack is trying to champion the poor while promising to raise taxes on Employment Insurance (est $7 billion annual) and Carbon. The media are ignoring his track record in voting against every tax reduction bill. In November to avoid an election he saved the Conservatives as Ignatieff did "time is up" stunt.
Will the media provide analysis, context in the NDP ads or just provide free publicity as they did with Liberal ads?
There's another aspect to why Jack is running these ads ... Every political party sends out fund-raising letters, asking for money so that they can "fight the other guys, blah blah".
ReplyDeleteAt some point, donors will want to see proof that their donations were actually USED to "fight the other guys". Otherwise, donors will feel manipulated.
For example, I got a letter from the CPC, giving details on how, where, and how much they will spend on an advertising campaign. This is all good, from my point of view.
In contrast, I remember when the Libs were crowing about how much money they raised, as a backlash against our 'just visiting" ads. Libs were spinning that they wouldn't stand by, and let Harper define Iggy, like we defined Dion. They were going to fight fire with fire, yadda yadda.
So how did the Libs "fight back" with all those donations ? They put a 90 second video of Iggy on youtube ! Some Lib posters on Lib blogs, weren't much impressed with that kind of feeble response.
Jack's gotta SHOW his supporters that he is doing more than just hoarding their donations in his war chest.
Why just heating oil? What about those households that use natural gas or electric?
ReplyDeleteThe Price of Natural Gas has gone down since May 2008 Oil Spike.
ReplyDeleteTraders, surprised by higher-than-expected U.S. supply statistics released Thursday, pushed natural gas down US24.8¢, or 6.4%, to close at US$3.617 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) on the New York Mercantile Exchange. That marks the lowest closing price since September of last year, and the largest one-day decline since the end of April.
http://www.financialpost.com/Natural+price+plunges/3640075/story.html
Oil has somewhat recovered but Natural Gas has not.
http://www.neb.gc.ca/clf-nsi/rnrgynfmtn/prcng/ntrlgs/cndnmrk-eng.html