Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty doesn't have enough on Conservative leader Tim Hudak to defeat him in an election, so Dalty has dusted off his Ouija board to resurrect the ghosts of elections past. Instead of campaigning against Hudak, Dalton is planning on campaigning against a former Premier who has been out of politics for nearly a decade. I proudly proclaim myself to be a "Mike Harris refugee" (a term I first heard from the mouth of Scott Reid during Coup Scam) and I believe that he was a far better Premier than many pundits remember him, but Tim Hudak is his own man. They are not the same person. It's like Obama fighting an election against McCain but campaigning against George Bush. It is a stupid strategy, and just because Obama rode the perfect storm does not guarantee that the same playbook will give Dalton a 3rd term.
Here's the bottom line; Dalton McGuinty has been a terrible Premier. It is tough enough for a Premier to win 3 consecutive mandates; I don't think dusting off the 99 and 03 campaigns is going to lead to victory. If he is just going to run the same campaign, why not just run the same commercials? Remember those winning campaign commercials? "I will not raise your taxes" the man said over and over again.
This is Dalton talking about his first tax raise in his first budget.
What a f**king shocker! There wasn't enough money to pay for his campaign promises, duh! Since the multi-billion dollar health tax levy, he has introduced a number of new taxes. He "hated" raising taxes the first time, but evolved to become much more comfortable with it. "I will not raise your taxes" by Dalton McGuinty, the most violated promise in the history of provincial elections.
I emigrated from Ontario after Dalton's first budget. I added to the statistic "number of University graduates who left Ontario during the McGuinty administration."
Harris was premier for 8 yrs, and Dalton will have been premier for 8 yrs next election. And he thinks going back to how things were 16 yrs ago is a winning strategy. There will be a lot of first time voters, who were children during the Harris years, and lots of them had Harris supporters as parents.
ReplyDeleteI would also imagine a lot of voters from the past 16 yrs are no longer with us on earth.
Plus many have moved from the Province and more have come in. What happened 16 yrs ago will mean nothing to them.
Harris did mightily wallop Premier Dad when they went head to head in 1999.
ReplyDeleteBy the current look of things, Hudak should do the same next year, as I just don't think most Ontarians really see the Harris reality and legacy the way McGuinty and kind see it - but they do readily see the have-not status of Ontario today.
OMG, enough already with all of these politicians. What we really need is a leader that will actually sit in his office, monitor and clean up wasteful spending instead of wasting time attending all these social functions. That is the reason we always get screwed. Bcos these guys never pay attention to business. They just waste time by delegating and then attending functions.
ReplyDeleteIf a leader has to hire consultants, that right there is a sure sign that the guy does not have any common business savvy what so ever. So, get rid of him once and for all. And McGuinty relies on consultants to do the thinking for him.......so out he goes!
Heck, I still think that we should be hiring CEO's to work for us and not politicians. Politicians only concern is to be re-elected, so they pander for votes. CEO's hired on a contract performance base, have no need to pander or attend social functions, bcos they would have no need to be voted in.
It's time we really look at changing the way we, the tax paying people run our gov't. Politicians make lousy decisions bcos they are NOT business savvy at all.
Having said that, there is always the exception. We have finally been blessed with an Ontario Mayor, who IS business savvy, Mayor Rob Ford.
And it seems that Tim Hudak, also IS business savvy, so in MHO, it's best to give Tim Hudak a shot at the Premier job, seeing that we still rely on the old system of politicians to run our cities, provinces and country.
God help us all if Tim Hudak ends up being just another expensive wind bag.
I am praying that he will be the answer for all of our sakes!