D’oh! Dipper leader skewered by Johnson

It’s a pretty rare day when the likes of Charlene Johnson can score a major political blow but land one the provincial environment minister did on Friday, square between the eyes of the province’s New Democratic Party leader.

Seems Lorraine Michael served on an environmental panel in 1999 that approved use of a natural pond as a storage for tailings from Voisey’s Bay. Now Michael and her federal Dipper counterparts are lambasting the provincial Conservatives for doing the same thing at Vale’s smelter project in Long Harbour but made no reference to her own views of another project barely more than a decade ago.

There’s nothing like hypocrisy to damage the political cred. Johnson’s release must have sent the Dipper opposition office into a major tailspin trying to figure out how to unfrack themselves from this simple but devastating gaffe.

Then again that’s the sort of thing that happens when you do one thing and say another. Next thing you know, the New Democrats will try and erase many of the ideologically progressive ideas from the party constitution or push regressive tax reform all in an effort to appear more like Conservatives.

Oops.

Too late.

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The Last Post: Dead Dipper Dale

Tickling Bight  is no more.

It has ceased to be.

Bereft of life, it has run down the curtain and joined the invisible choir of political blogs in this province that vanished without a trace and without warning.

It has hydroqueened, you might say. Where is Hydroqueen these days, any way?

Tickling Bight may not have managed to last for one rideout, the shortest measurement in local politics. One rideout is 43 days, the length of time Tory Premier Tom Rideout held office in 1989. .

Tickling Bight was the partisan outlet for Dale Kirby, a local New Democrat organizer.

There’s no word on why the blog – which started without much fanfare -  slipped quietly into the night.

Resurrection Update:  And then just as mysteriously as it vanished, Tickling Bight reappears.

Again, just like the hydroqueen.

Someone forget to pay the bill or something?

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All things to all people, NDP version

You gotta love the New Democrats. 

They want to get elected soooo badly that they are willing to saying anything to anyone if it means a chance of a vote.

The Sternest Daughter of the Voice of God, the quintessentially Canadian pile of self-righteousness is now the Whore of the North.

And right there at the top of a panel on a little brochure in your mailbox is the Dipper’s slogan for all this: 

New Democrats: Your only partner in Ottawa

Only partner, that is, unless you happen to be an Anglophone in Quebec or a Francophone anywhere else in Canada.

Then, you are on your own.

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And then, things went horribly wrong…

Ryan Cleary tells CBC’s Chris O’Neill-Yates his version of why he wants to get into politics.

Rather than settle questions, Cleary just makes his situation worse.

Note that Cleary brings up and then ducks the question of spending more time with his family.  Then he admits the decision for him to leave VOCM’s employ was entirely VOCM’s business decision:  he wanted to stay;  they ended the relationship.

That doesn’t sound like:

Tonight [Cleary] he told me he simply made a decision to put his kids first, despite the fact that he enjoyed talk radio and has great respect for the team he leaves behind at VOCM. He just could not make the long term commitment needed by his employer to keep doing the Nightline program..so they parted ways.

Unfortunately, the cbc clip seems to cut out abruptly in the middle of things.  Let’s hope they can fix it and get the rest of it posted.

In the meantime, it’s interesting to hear Cleary handling yet more controversy over his candidacy.

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It’s official…

As Bond Papers reported yesterday, Ryan Cleary is looking for the New Democratic Party [name under review] nod in St. John’s South-Mount Pearl.

We can say it’s official because Cleary’s blogger buddy carried the story a day after Bond reported it.  The story is also filled with a raft of jabs and barbs. 

Guess the other parts of the Bond Paper’s post  - about the “spending time with family” thing being a nose-puller of a media line  - must have been right too.

Now it’s only a matter of time before the rumoured other candidate – a “name” – comes forward.  you can tell that part of the story is accurate since Cleary’s blogger buddy denies there’s a contender and wants the Dipper executive to get the nomination over with most ricky tick. 

The only candidate wannabes who look to get nominations over right away are ones worried about challengers who could guarantee their plans to spend more time with the family.

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Wannabe candidates and nose-pulling

Ryan Cleary’s departure from voice of the cabinet minister came as a surprise to most.

There was speculation he’d been fired for campaigning with Jack Layton.  Cleary supporters came forward with other views including one version, reputedly straight from the horse’s mouth, that he left to spend more time with his family.

Here’s the way Cleary’s closest blogger-buddy put it:

However, he [Cleary] did say that the toll on his family was too high.  He was missing way too many sports matches, PTA meetings and was not home to put his kids to bed.  He told me that he could not make a long term commitment to Nightline.  He was having trouble reconciling his love of family with the hours of the job.  I think we can all understand that.

Tonight he told me he simply made a decision to put his kids first, despite the fact that he enjoyed talk radio and has great respect for the team he leaves behind at VOCM. He just could not make the long term commitment needed by his employer to keep doing the Nightline program..so they parted ways.

Well, that last one seemed like a real politician’s nose-puller.  How many times have you heard a politician quit a job of leave politics claiming it was to spend more time with the wee ones?  It’s used a lot but it’s seldom the story, the whole story and nothing but the story.

Turns out the bloggerated version from Cleary’s pal was a nose puller worthy of the love child of Karl Malden and  Jimmy Durante.

Cleary told a gathering of local New Democrats over the weekend that he will be looking for their nomination in St. John’s South-Mount Pearl in the upcoming federal election.  The Steele crowd wanted a long-term commitment, it seems, and Cleary couldn’t give such a commitment and run for the Dippers too.

Now if any of you know anything about politics, especially federal politics, you’ll know it’s not a venture for a guy who wants to spend more time with his life-partner and offspring.  To the contrary, federal politics can be brutal on home life. 

Missed birthday parties come with the territory.   Putting the kids to bed would be something from a fantasy world.  Getting to hockey games or school plays will also be dodgy and that’s even if the whole clan ups-stakes and moves to walking distance of Hy’s. 

Add in any considerations of more complex family situations and you can see that politics would not be the life for someone who found it problematic to spend a few hours at night sharing pearls of wisdom with the likes of the Moon Man rather than helping the wee ones snuggle down in their Spidey jammies.

Now on the other hand, Cleary may have nothing to worry about.  He might wind up with plenty of time on his hands.

The other New Democrat buzz from last weekend concerned an unnamed – but reputedly high profile  - candidate who is also eyeing the seat Cleary wants.  Unlike the relative walkover he faced last time in getting the nod, Cleary may have to organize to win the nomination in the first place.  He’ll have to start banking some cash, assembling the team and indentifying supporters.

And then he would have to win the election.

In the meantime though, that story about leaving Nightline to spend more time with the kids sounds like the kind of stuff  you get from certain kinds of politicians.

Bullshit isn’t an auspicious start to a political campaign.

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How not to win friends but influence people

Former New Democratic Party national director Gerald Caplan offers some insights into national politics in the Globe and Mail this week.

His comments are biting and their wisdom clear. These are not the remarks of someone who feels the need to sugar-coat his views in order to curry favour.

New Democrats and Liberals should therefore consider his advice seriously.  They should heed his counsel if for no other reason than he clearly is not bent on winning friends.

He should win them nonetheless and influence people in the process.

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The lesson from Nova Scotia

In Newfoundland and Labrador these past few days some local adherents of the Orange Creed – that’s New Democrats, not Protestants or Dutch – have been buoyed by the success of their Nova Scotia brothers and sisters.

Others have been talking about the prospect of local New Democrats doing the same thing here that Darrell Dexter and his party did in persuading Nova Scotians to take a chance on voting NDP.

Therein lies the first lesson local New Democrats should learn:  Darrell and the crew didn’t ask Nova Scotians to “take a chance” on anything.  They presented a professional, credible alternative to the other two parties. 

There was no chance involved.

There was a choice.

A few years ago, the Nova Scotian Dippers were like other labourites.  Being a New Democrat was to be part of a social cause or a social group, not a bunch who seriously thought of winning an election.  That’s not unusual. Other labour parties have gone through the same thing.  The Labour Party in Britain once cherished ideological purity over electoral success.  So too did New Democratic parties across Canada.

But, like those other labourites elsewhere,  the Nova Scotian New Democrats decided it was better to be in office than standing impotent on the sidelines with their ideological purity intact.

That’s the second lesson the local New Democrats need to learn:  there is no substitute for power.  You can have all the lovely ideas you want but if you don’t win the election it’s just as well to order another round at the Ship and explain your theory to the bottom of a pint of Guinness.

You get to win by organizing.  Find volunteers.  Get people who know how to organize. Raise money and put it in the bank.  Find candidates.  Reach out and bring new people and new ideas into the fold.

Inevitably, there will be a crowd who will get pissed at the loss of ideological purity, but that’s the price of shedding the sack-cloth and the stench of burning martyr and donning the mantle of government.

Equally inevitably, for every old bolshevik who abandons ship for the Greens, there’ll be two or more new people who either weren’t in politics before or who defect from another team.

The two major parties don’t get elected because people vote the way their parents and grandparents did.  That’s a convenient excuse dreamed up by someone who just can’t face facts. 

The two major parties get elected because they hold onto a cadre of supporters and then add on a whole bunch of people who change their votes from time to time. The other two major parties appeal to voters with the platforms and promises by finding out what voters are looking for and then offering it to them.  Put another way, they get elected by building coalitions of people who have similar views or who can find enough reasons to vote for one team over another. 

That’s basically what politics is about:  bringing people together and that should be what New Democrats do naturally.

But they don’t.  Instead, they try to not just distinguish themselves but drive a wedge between themselves and voters.  New Democrats of the old school make it seem like it is a sign of moral weakness to have voted for the other two parties at some point.  Before one can vote New Democrat one must first  admit the sins of ones voting past.

That’s the essence of that common NDP refrain that the other two parties are all alike.  Predictably, it turns voters off.

Think about that for a second and then look at two New Democrat leaders.

Think about Jack Layton, he of the “they are all alike” school.

And then think about Darrell Dexter.

If you can perceive the differences, and you are a New Democrat, then you are well on your way to learning the Lesson from Nova Scotia. You are well on your way to bringing a genuinely competitive alternative to voters.

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The politics of strange bedfellows

Bob Ridgley is the Provincial Conservative member of the House of Assembly for St. John's North and part of a family clan that dominates a significant chunk of Conservative vote in the metro St. John's area.

Since his provincial district sits almost entirely within the federal riding of St. John's East where more and more incumbent MHAs (all Provincial Conservatives by the way) seem to be turning out in support of the New Democrat's Jack Harris, it's a fair bet that Bob will be voting Orange in October.

That's hardly surprising given that the Liberal  - Walter Noel - is a former provincial cabinet minister and the Conservative candidate is a guy who has been a perpetual thorn in the side of Premier Danny Williams.  Former journalist Craig Westcott did a game job today of defending Stephen Harper following a speech by the Premier at the Board of Trade,  but it's got to be getting harder and harder for Westcott to keep up a defense of the clearly indefensible.  He said the words but they lacked conviction. It's too bad to see a decent guy like Westcott - the contrarian's contrarian - do this kind of damage to himself.

But that's digression.

CBC News this evening included an interview with some local politicians on the federal campaign.  Energy minister Kathy Dunderdale  - a provincial Conservative - proudly announced she'd be working for the Dipper's Harris.  Not surprising given that she punted Noel to the curb in 2003.

But what of the others, like Ridgley?

While he didn't say so in a Telegram interview on Tuesday, Ridgley made clear a couple of other things. 

First of all, it's pretty obvious he is a Conservative - Provincial and usually federal - right down to being a voter in the merger election that saw Stephen Harper elected. 

Yep.  It is a Family Feud at heart and no one should be naive enough to believe that in a few years time this whole thing won't have snapped back to the usual friendships, relationships and voting patterns.

But here's an even more interesting  turn of phrase in Ridgley's e-mail response to the Telegram reporter:

When Stephen Harper was running to be the leader of the 'new' Conservative Party, I supported Belinda Stronach;  I thought she was as shallow as a saucer but I believed that she was the only one who had a chance of stopping Harper...

Ridgley keeps going, saying next that he was persuaded Harper was alright a little later on.  Ridgley's conversion to the Harper cause survived two federal elections.  Ridgley evidently kept pounding doors or whatever a key local Tory organizer does to get Stephen Harper elected despite the concerns raised about Harper, the evident problems Ridgley had at the time Harper became leader and well, just about anything else that might have given him pause.

Okay?

Well, not really.

You have a guy here who was prepared to get into political bed with someone he believed wasn't qualified for the job  - lacking in intellect is the polite version of what he said - because he believed that candidate was the only way to stop someone else from winning about whom he claims he had serious misgivings at the time.

How serious?  Well serious enough to vote for someone who to him seemed too shallow to be a national party leader.

What's the word for that sort of logic? 

Facile.

Well, yeah. 

But there's a better one.

Shallow? 

Yeah, shallow.

When that first shallow bit of logic didn't work out, Ridgley changed his mind and got into bed with Stephen Harper.

If that's not enough to make you a little uneasy, there's maybe the whole reference to Stronach as being "shallow as a saucer". 

That's gratuitous. 

It's a cheap shot.

It's a pretty low personal attack, along the lines of calling someone a quisling or a traitor or showing a puffin crapping on the leader of a rival party.

If nothing else, it was totally unnecessary in the context of the e-mail on any level and that too says as much about Ridgley's judgment as the other stuff.

It will be interesting to see how Nancy Riche, among others, reacts to having Ridgley knocking doors on behalf of Jack Harris. Does Bob share Jack's views on choice and equal marriage for example?  There's a set of questions to pose to the Blue Crew who are turning Orange suddenly.

Ridgley's backing the ABC thingy  for a very specific reason and when the reason goes away he and the rest of his "progressive" Conservatives will head back home, just as he was prepared to switch from Belinda to Steve when it suited.

Politics can make for some truly strange bedfellows.

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Another resounding victory...

1. In the cause for electoral reform or political reform or some kind of reform: another riding taken by a party already in dictatorship territory, with 38% of the vote.

2. For incompetence: Proof the current executive of the party - and especially the president - need a vacation.

Well, more like a retirement, actually, but a bit more permanent.

3. Blindness: New Democrats. A wake-up call that there is no "labour" vote. Re-think your approach to politics

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