6:35 pm: Fairly flat opening statements for all four leaders. Vision, future, prosperity, puppies, sunshine. <\/p>\n
6:42 pm: Health Care starts with a very substantive discussion between Sherman and Redford, then Mason and Sherman tag team arguing the “two conservative parties” want to privatize Health Care.<\/p>\n
6:48 pm: You know what this debate is missing? Gilles Duceppe.<\/p>\n
6:51 pm: Raj Sherman uses the term “Fudgeit Budget” twice to describe Redford’s budget. I don’t think that’s going to catch on.<\/p>\n
6:52 pm: Brian Mason has crunched the numbers and believes Alison Redford’s plan will bring in one billion more than she estimates, which is…bad<\/span>? <\/p>\n And, no offense Brian, but I would have quoted someone with a little more credibility on economic forecasts than yourself. Like, say, an economist, or a Ouija board.<\/p>\n 6:55 pm: Raj Sherman says “Alberta is not Alabama”. True. It definitely isn’t snowing in Alabama today.<\/p>\n 7:05 pm: So the format calls for a question to each leader to kick off the debate. Redford got a tough question on Health Care, Sherman was asked about his plan to raise taxes, and Danielle Smith got the abortion question. Brian Mason’s question: “that no meet committee is awful, eh<\/span>?”. Tough one.<\/p>\n 7:32 pm: Redford goes after Smith on giving money to candidates who crossed the floor. Smith: “the chief electoral officer is too busy investigating PC corruption to look into this<\/span>“. Redford goes after Smith for her lack of experience. Smith: “You’re right, I don’t have experience. I don’t have experience running deficits. I don’t have experience intimidating doctors. I don’t have experience giving myself a 30% pay hike<\/span>“.<\/p>\n 7:52 pm: Danielle Smith hints about how she’d be able to work with the Liberals and NDP in a minority (coalition?) government. That comments probably inspired 30 newspaper columns and 2 sitcom pilots.<\/p>\n 8:00 pm: I’ll do a proper write up tomorrow morning, but my initial reaction is that Smith is winning the election but Redford spent more time than her on defense tonight. So I give it to Danielle, even though she wasn’t quite as charming as she comes across in photo ops and sound bytes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 6:35 pm: Fairly flat opening statements for all four leaders. Vision, future, prosperity, puppies, sunshine. 6:42 pm: Health Care starts with a very substantive discussion between Sherman and Redford, then Mason and Sherman tag team arguing the “two conservative parties” want to privatize Health Care. 6:48 pm: You know what this debate is missing? Gilles […]<\/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":[950,49,241],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3287"}],"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=3287"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3416,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3287\/revisions\/3416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}