Posted on 01/24/2006 12:32:41 PM PST by Squawk 8888
Call it the revenge of the hockey Moms and Dads.
The font of all Canadian wisdom, as everyone knows, is the local rink. Parents huddled on cold benches, clutching cups of coffee, swapping stories about their kids, shaking their heads about those dummies up in Ottawa. Being Canadian.
Back in November, while watching my daughter play at a hockey rink in Toronto, I posted something to my Web log using my BlackBerry. On it, I suggested that the election was going to be about hockey Moms and Dads versus the elites. With Stephen Harper championing the former, and a Westmount millionaire named Paul Martin personifying the latter.
Was I right? Well, I can now reveal that -- right after I posted that observation -- I received e-mails from two senior guys in the Tory war room. They told me that's exactly what they hoped to do.
And so they did. With every photo op (particularly the one showing the Tory leader taking his kids to an Ottawa hockey rink), with every positive statement (Harper stressing his middle-class roots), with every critical statement (the continual references to Martin's millions, and his decision to fly his ships under foreign flags), the Tory campaign was all about the revenge of hockey Moms and Dads.
It wasn't about Left versus Right. It wasn't about Urban versus Rural. It wasn't about East versus West. It was about Tim Hortons versus Starbucks.
Stephen Harper won because he told the story people want to hear. We federal Liberals had lost touch -- with Canadians, with each other -- and we deserved to lose. If you'll forgive the obvious metaphor, we deserved some time in the penalty box, and now we're going to get it.
Harper's whole campaign was about what political types call "retail" -- street-level, pocketbook stuff, aimed at regular folks. His advertising campaign was deliberately downmarket, too: especially the famous coffee shop ad, complete with ordinary folk shaking their heads about Liberal perfidy. It wasn't fancy, but it did the trick. The Tory leader proudly left the glossy, rich-looking Madison Avenue bafflegab to the Liberals.
The aforementioned photo of the PM-elect taking his kids to a rink in the family van was, to me, the beginning of the end for Martin. Canadian parents saw that photo and murmured: "That's me. He knows my life." At around the same time, they started to suspect Paul Martin has never struggled to balance mortgage payments and the hydro bill. Ever.
But what about the Liberals? Why did the hockey Moms and Dads reject Martin after once rewarding the Liberals with three back-to-back majorities?
Besides beer and popcorn? Besides RCMP criminal investigations? Besides comparing people to animals? Besides offering us no policy whatsoever? Besides looking tired and old? Besides the attack ad that defamed the military, while our soldiers are risking their lives for the rest of us in Afghanistan?
Those things were important, to be sure, but I believe the main impetus for change came mid-campaign, over the holidays. Families gathered at the end of December, and they came to a collective decision: We want change, and if Stephen Harper is the only way to achieve that, so be it. Pass the cranberries.
Canadians also saw what those Liberals who'd worked in the Jean Chretien years had seen, when Martin was minister of finance. Many of us who worked for Chretien -- with the exception of three senior men in the leader's office, all of whom now regret their miscalculation, or should -- regarded Martin as irredeemably weak, and willing to say anything, absolutely anything, to please whomever walked through his doorway.
In any event, none of that matters now. Paul Martin is on his way out, and Harper will be around for quite a few years to come. Should we be anxious about that? I don't think so. I don't fear Stephen Harper, and neither should you. This is the greatest country in the world, and I believe -- I know -- he wants to make it better, just like the rest of us do.
Let's give Harper his chance. If nothing else, it'll give us all something to talk about at the rink this weekend, won't it?
LOL! And what about "fer sure." ;)
Love that show--Canada does political satire very well.
IIRC, that was the ad, which was pulled in record time, where the Martin crew bemoaned some policy proposal by Mr Harper to beef up the Canadian Reserve Forces as "putting *military troops* in our cities, IN OUR CITIES!!" Definitely over the top, and it didn't play well in Winnepeg, or so the story goes...
the infowarrior
Isn't it sad...
the infowarrior
These Liberals had become SO ARROGANT that they honestly thought it didn't matter what they said or did. They had a bad case of the spirit of entitlement!! In fact worse than entitlement - they could STEAL, REARRANGE THE BOOKS, PASS TAX PAYERS DOLLARS AROUND IN SUITCASES, ARRANGE KICKBACKS, ENGAGE IN PATRONAGE, You name it, they DO IT and DID IT. They seriously thought everyone should just FORGET ABOUT IT. I call that 'OUT TO LUNCH" not out of touch!!
LOL - I picked that up too!! I have Texas friends and they are NOT New York Yankees!!
While that might be Kinsella's message, it is easier said than done. One must first understand what the individual parts are, after one has done the disassembly, to understand how the total system works. Something I fear is quite beyond them, without a fundamental philosophical change on their part. Witness the delicious death-spiral of the Democrats today. They are either unwilling, or are perhaps completely unable, to shift their philosophy into a coherent *post 9-11 worldview*. Ergo, they are weaker now, than they've ever been...
the infowarrior
Gobsmack time...
Stephen Harper is just great in person, eh?
Congrats on the Pontiac win!
Then they should have voted for a majority government.
To be honest, I didn't think Harper –a conservative- had a chance of winning. Hopefully, with him in power US-Canada relationship should get better.
I'm glad he won, he's good for Canada and the US.
He sure is!
He did a fantastic job of making his case in Quebec. My Gaspesienne mother-in-law voted Conservative for the first time in her life yesterday, for exactly the reasons specified by Cannon and Harper: We've got to get rid of the Liberals, but Quebec's interests cannot be adequately represented by a party that doesn't have a national voice.
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