{"id":2324,"date":"2009-06-24T22:36:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-25T02:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=2324"},"modified":"2009-06-24T22:36:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-25T02:36:00","slug":"go-randy-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=2324","title":{"rendered":"Go Randy Go!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m not a PC Party member so I’m not going to make any endorsements. Well, scratch that, I endorse Randy Hillier. Please vote for Randy. Not just because it would mean an easy win for McGuinty<\/span>, but also because, as was pointed out to me by a clever grit this weekend, it raises the very real possibility of a PC campaign run under a “Are You Feeling Randy<\/em>?” slogan.<\/p>\n

In all seriousness, Hillier has run a solid campaign. As I said in my profile of him<\/a>, he’s latched on to some good conservative issues people can relate to, and has been nothing but a consistent voice for the right wing of his party. Whoever wins is going to have a tough time marginalizing Hillier, especially if he’s able to move his votes to Hudak<\/span> for the win.<\/p>\n

Frank Klees<\/span> may <\/em>be a good candidate. But, for the life of me, I’m so incredibly uninterested in his campaign and him that I don’t think I’ll be able to bring myself to complete my website profile series (other than to say: Damn, that is one big picture of Frank on his website<\/a><\/em>). In fairness, a lot of people probably said the same thing about Dalton McGuinty<\/span> when he ran for Ontario Liberal leadership in 1996, and they certainly <\/em>said the same thing about Ed Stelmach<\/span> when he won the Alberta PC leadership in 2006. But, I’m not a PC member, and life is just too short to spend it researching Frank Klees<\/span>.<\/p>\n

So this weekend’s vote, if the pundits are to be believed (always a risk in leadership contests), comes down to Tim Hudak<\/span><\/a> and Christine Elliott<\/a>. Of the two, I think Elliott has run the best campaign, would make the better Premier, and would be a more formidable opponent to Dalton McGuinty<\/span> in 2011. In a leadership race lasting all summer, I don’t doubt for a second that she could have reeled in Hudak<\/span> and won it.<\/p>\n

But Hudak<\/span> had a leadership-ready team in place, and a big lead when this thing started. In a short contest, that’s worth a lot more than substance. In a delegated convention, he might have been Iggy’d<\/span> in a front-runner gang-up, but I suspect the individual voters’ second choices will scatter (or they’ll leave the ballot blank), allowing Hudak<\/span> to eek it out on the third ballot.<\/p>\n

We’ll find out this weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m not a PC Party member so I’m not going to make any endorsements. Well, scratch that, I endorse Randy Hillier. Please vote for Randy. Not just because it would mean an easy win for McGuinty, but also because, as was pointed out to me by a clever grit this weekend, it raises the very […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2324"}],"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=2324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2324\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}