John's going negative, and he's doing it poorly too

The media seems to be awakening to the fact that John Tory's provincial election campaign in Ontario, which isn't even officially underway yet, seems to have taken a decidedly negative tone.

And he's not even doing a very good job of being negative. Take this latest incident, luckily captured on video and posted to YouTube, where Tory mocks a voter’s attendance of the University of Ottawa:



The University of Zero? Is that the best Tory could come-up with? As an alum of cross-town rival Carleton University, aka. Last Chance U, Cartoon U and Carleton, where the K stands for quality, I could have provided him with many much more colourful nicknames for the U of O. We even had a whole song, and it’s bilingual too. Granted, much of it is rather vulgar and profane, but if you’re going to insult someone at least do it with style, John!

And then there’s Tory’s coming-out against the Liberal proposal for a statutory holiday in February: Family Day. Yes, that’s right, the Conservatives are opposed to holidays! And possibly families. Tune in next week for Tory’s keynote address “Cuddly Puppies, and why I think they’re lame.” And his coming proposal to stop kittens from playing with balls of yarn.

But seriously though, Tory's negativism goes beyond Ottawa U students, holidays, and possibly puppies. The Cons have released two new radio ads, one about Liberal spending and another about lottery fraud. Take a listen, it's hard to describe them as anything but negative.

And then, as Vicky notes, on John’s own Web site there’s a video that calls Dalton McGuinty a homewrecker. Ironically, John calls his Web site “leadership matters.” I’m not sure how leadership came to equal mudslinging, but alrighty then.

Anyway, so Tory’s going negative, maybe the homewrecker crack is a bit far but so what, politics is politics, and politicians go negative, right? Sure they do. But they don’t usually solemnly promise not to go negative first:

"I will not be engaging in personal attacks, I will not be personalizing, I have no interest in doing that - I'm going to try to raise the bar, in terms of the behaviour in politics and the way people conduct themselves in politics."
--John Tory, The Toronto Star, February 2, 2005

So, in an election where the Conservatives…oh, sorry, the John Tory team…is making such a big deal out of Liberal broken promises, they go out and break a big promise before the campaign is even officially underway.

I’ll give John this, he’s nothing if not ambitious. And negatively so.

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