The Longest Campaign

We may still be some four months away from the Ontario election and the writ won’t be officially dropped for quite some time yet but make no mistake, the campaign has already begun in earnest.

As an aside, this is one of the arguments to be made against fixed election dates: the exceedingly long campaign period, starting well before the official campaign begins. It’s going to be a long, hot summer.

A little light-hearted comedy can help with the electoral humidity though, and the provincial Liberals are doing their part with ToryTube.ca. There’s no fake blog from John Tory’s goldfish, but the multimedia Web site takes a comedic approach to pointing out some of the inconsistencies, glaring omissions and downright whoppers coming out of the provincial Conservatives. It’s worth a look.

Speaking of comedy, although of the unintentional variety, the John Tory Conservatives have another an attack ad out. Because like his federal friend Decivin’ Steven, he seems to have little of substance to offer. The ad though, which attempts to smear McGuinty as a fibber, does so by comparing him to several U.S. presidents, including Bill Clinton (h/t Darren):



Now, as Jason points out Bill is pretty darned popular in Ontario so the value of such a comparison for the Tory Cons is dubious at best. They also compare McGuinty to Republican presidents Nixon and Bush the Elder, they’re probably not as popular here.

Let me ask my Conservative friends this, however. Particularly those who were up in arms when the Martin Liberals referenced our American cousins in the last federal campaign. Where’s your outrage about the Americans being used as political bogeyman now guys? Where are the posts glowing with white hot rage at this American bashing? Anyone? Hello?

While I’m not holding my breath, this weekend was of course the provincial Conservative convention here in the T-Dot. This year’s theme: Mike who? No we’re totally moderate, honest.

I blogged earlier about Super John’s plans to cut taxes by billions while maintaining health care spending in a single bound, and he is still at it. Now, in addition to cutting the health premium while finding billions in “efficiencies” to not only replace that health funding but increase it, while lowering taxes elsewhere too, Tory is now also going to spend billions more on transit too and increase funding for “faith-based” schools.

Still no word though on how he is going to pay for this without plunging the province back into another Eves/Harris style deficit, or just where he intends to find these billions in “efficiencies” or what programs he’ll cut to get there.

But trust him. He’s Super John.

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers