{"id":1562,"date":"2007-11-04T20:22:00","date_gmt":"2007-11-05T01:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=1562"},"modified":"2007-11-04T20:22:00","modified_gmt":"2007-11-05T01:22:00","slug":"youre-fired-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=1562","title":{"rendered":"You’re Fired!"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Tories have been quietly nixing candidates from running <\/a>for them in the next election. Now, don’t get me wrong – Bill Casey voted against the budget and there should be consequences for that. He knew what he was getting into so it’s hard to shed too many tears for him…especially considering he’s got a good chance of getting re-elected as an independent.<\/p>\n

However, the case of Mark Warner <\/a>is quite interesting. At first glance, Mark sounds like exactly the type of candidate the Tories need. He’s an international trade lawyer with a fantastic bio <\/a>who obviously cares enough about his party to be willing to lose to Bob Rae. Considering some of the questionable candidates <\/a>the Tories have let run for them in recent by elections, this one seems even weirder.<\/p>\n

But, you see, there are some major problems with Mark<\/a>. For starters, he attended an international AIDS conference in Toronto <\/a>last year – a big no-no considering some of the questionable<\/a> characters<\/a> who<\/a> attended<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mark’s also been talking about Toronto centric issues. You know, things like poverty, housing, and Andrew Raycroft’s<\/span> poor play. Given that real leaders set priorities and that these are not in Harper’s top priorities, it would have been insane to allow a Conservative candidate to talk <\/em>about these issues for fear of people getting the wrong idea that they mattered to the Conservatives.<\/p>\n

Makes sense. Given the bedrock of Tory support that exists in the GTA<\/span>, why on earth would you want a strong candidate talking about issues that matter to Torontonians<\/span>?<\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/em><\/strong> I know Stephen Harper is a smart guy but I don’t really think every <\/em>move he makes is part of some master Machiavellian<\/span> plan. Today’s Star <\/a>suggests that these moves are intended to boost the NDP<\/span> in a gambit to defeat the Liberals.<\/p>\n

Umm<\/span>…no.<\/p>\n

First of all, Toronto Centre is a safe seat. And not the same way Outremont<\/span> is a safe seat. The Liberals got twice the votes of their nearest competitor last time out – the real battle there is for second and I fail to see how it figures into Harper’s master plan for his party to finish behind <\/em>the NDP<\/span> in a city they would hope to, one imagines, one day win some seats.<\/p>\n

As for Guelph, where Brent Barr was forced out it’s even more perplexing. Here are the 2006 results:<\/p>\n

Lib 23,662
CPC<\/span> 18,342
NDP<\/span> 13,561<\/p>\n

Even though the NDP<\/span> have a good candidate running, I fail to see how the second place party self-sabotaging would help defeat the Liberals. And, unlike in Toronto Centre where there may be an anti-Rae vote, I tend to seriously doubt the hypothesis that the second choice of soft Tory voters is the NDP<\/span>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Tories have been quietly nixing candidates from running for them in the next election. Now, don’t get me wrong – Bill Casey voted against the budget and there should be consequences for that. He knew what he was getting into so it’s hard to shed too many tears for him…especially considering he’s got a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1562\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}