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Long Overdue: The Party's Over for Christy Clark
December 19, 2011 - 11:14pm
!!!
Finally BCers are seeing through the hype and BS eminating from Christy's photo-op premiership. She hates unions with a passion yet she was front and centre during a recent photo shoot at RTA in Kitimat. The only problem for Christy is that this union project started a couple of years ago but where's there a camera Christy is sure to be. How do you spell former Port Moody Mayor Joe Trasolini and now BC NDP candidate ?
http://www.vancouversun.com/Christy+Clark+approval+rating+lowest+point+s...
http://www.straight.com/article-560371/vancouver/former-port-moody-mayor...
And Jenny Kwan please take another bow.
Thank goodness for the real leaders instead of the party sychophants!!!
You go girl!
So when will Christy resign or be run out of town by her fellow Liberals?
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Conservatives+cannibalizing+Liberals/5891136/story.html
I'm concerned with this poll... remember how well Carole James' NDP did in 2009? She had 42% of the vote. Now we're seeing 34% in a poll. That 8% disparity could perhaps be explained by an inflated Green vote, which may or may not settle down. But it suggests the NDP hasn't really cemented any gains at all aside from splitting the opposition. There is obviously a lot of work to be done.
Wouldn't it be weird if BC gets its first minority government since that time in the 60's? With poll numbers like these, the BCCons could snag a few seats, maybe the Greens would even take their first provincially (seeing as they've now broken that threshold municipally and federally). Dix would be in an awkward position, though, if he becomes a minority premier and has to cozy up to either Liberals or Conservatives to pass legislation. If enough right-wingers flee the Liberals, the shell of a party left over will probably be more of a centrist core, and might find some common ground with the NDP. Under such a scenario, Dix would be glad to have run a positive campaign all along, rather than shower them in attacks.
A Dix minority, without pulling some opposition support, would be liable to get overturned in favour of a Liberal-Conservative coalition, which would leave us... back where we started. In the 1960s.
Sounds like the pollster didn't really push leaners, I would say... both the BC Liberals and the NDP seem to be about 10% lower than what the other polls are saying (low 20's vs. low 30's, and mid 30's vs. mid 40's). I doubt the Greens will reach the mid-teens, especially if there's no discontent with the NDP to begin with.
Yes things can change on a dime in politics, but so far Adrian is doing just fine and if it continues like this we will have an NDP majority. The big political crisis ls now solidly within the Liberal camp, and Christy's days as leader may well be numbered. The loss of Trasolini may well be the final straw for her leadership. Thank goodness for visionary people like Jenny Kwan, Mable Elmore, and Don Davies who realize the significance of winning power in politics.
Christy is done but I'm sure she will try and hang on to the bitter end.
Falcon may well try and dislodge her though before the Cons become the NDP's main opposition in BC.
Shades of the Gordon Wilson situation.
http://thelinkpaper.ca/?p=12810
Dix And NDP At Top As Christy’s Liberals Slide Amidst Their Poor Performance And Corruption Baggagehttp://thelinkpaper.ca/wp-content/plugins/Viva-ThumbZoom/lib/v-zoom/grap...), pointer; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; " href="http://thelinkpaper.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/bc-110117-adrian-dix.jpg">
VANCOUVER – NDP Adrian Dix has position his party for a decisive win in the next election while Christy Clark led Liberals suffer under the party’s horrible performance, bad governance (HST while defeated is nowhere near being abolished) and corruption baggage stemming from the Basi-Virk corruption scandal that was covered up by the party through a $6 million deal with lawyers representing Dave Udhe Basi and Bob Virk, former BC Liberal insiders who pleaded guilty in exchange for a slap on the wrist.
Hopefully Eby will run again as he stands an excellent chance of winning Point Grey next time.
And then we get another poll released Friday by NRG Research:
NDP: 36%
Lib: 32%
Con: 19%
Other/Undecided: 13%
http://www.nrgresearchgroup.com/newsroom/documents/Prov%20Ballot%20News%...
Looks like the provincial scene is very fluid right now with all of these weird numbers coming out. BTW, both Forum Research and NRG Research don't have any track record polling the BC provincial scene. I'll still stick with ARS, Ipsos, and Mustel in that regard.
With numbers like that, it still suggests that a sizeable chunk of voters who did support the NDP in 2009 are still undecided as to whether they will again. A big part of the election strategy will have to be finding those voters, securing their support and getting them to the polls.
Raif often has his finger on the pulse and I think he is onto something here.
http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2011/12/26/BCTories/
Cummins' Conservatives Could Destroy BC LibsWhy the Tory factor gives Clark's party reason to fear for
"In 1972, the BC Conservatives took nearly 30 per cent of the vote and the Dave Barrett NDP with 39 per cent had a near landslide."
Um, really? It was NDP 39.6%, Socred 31.2%, Liberal 16.4%, PC 12.7%. And at the time anyway, the Liberals were still aligned with the (Trudeau) federals and calling themselves centrist.
In 1975, Gordon Gibson Jr. said: "What we saw happening today was a kind of a tidal wave that was sweeping over British Columbia. In 1972 there was a strong swing to the left. That was a reaction to a long time on the right. Now after a short time over on the left there's been a strong swing back to the right. Sometime, the people of British Columbia are going to find it, I think, to their advantage to stop in the centre on those swings. And the Liberal party's going to be around for that day."
Source: http://archives.cbc.ca/politics/provincial_territorial_politics/clips/11...
Snicker. Apparently they stuck around but swung along on the pendulum ride rather than waiting in the middle. But anyway, at least in the Barrett days the Liberals *saw* themselves as the centre, so to add those Liberal and PC votes together and arrive at almost 30% is not really truthful.
<sarcasm>I fully expect the RCMP to show up at the premier's house anyday now with BCTV in tow to arrest the premier on criminal charges... and then to call a snap election.</sarcasm>
http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2011/12/27/BCRail/
2013 is still a few years away before the PR campaign goes into full swing again.
Mable Elmore was a Carole James "loyalist". She was not one of the "baker's dozen" that forced her ouster, so I think you can lump her in with the "party sychophants" you so eloquently refer to in post #3. She's the same loyalist that the great "visionary" Nicholas Simons was overheard by Global News' Keith Bauldrey, asking if she wanted to "take it outside", because of her support for Carole James.
Quite frankly who gives a tinker's damn what Keith Bauldry says, does, or thinks.
Mable's was wrong about James, but Mable's efforts helped to secure the Leadership for Adrian.
And Mable will get re-elected.
He's probably referring to the Socred vote. The Socreds were the de facto conservatives for most conservative voters in those days. The Campbell Liberals were also basically Socreds. I know Babblers know this, but it's shocking how many people outside BC or the left do not.
The B.C. PC's in the 1970s were very much a "Red Tory" party with leaders like Derril Warren, Dr. Scott Wallace & Vic Stephans. It could be argued that they were to the left of the BC Liberals, with Pat McGeer & Bill Vander Zalm.
They were conservatives, but if they won 31.2% of the vote, why did the Tyee author say "nearly 30%"?
Interesting. But were they to the left of the 1970's BC Liberals, who had not yet severed formal ties with federal Liberals? I would have imagined that the BC Liberals of that decade were more in line with Art Phillips and TEAM. Yes, his wife Carole Taylor later went on to be a BC Liberal, but back in the day TEAM was in competition with the NPA. How did Phillips feel about provincial politics with the NDP and Socreds duking it out?
I had forgotten though that I'd read Vander Zalm was a Liberal first.
I suppose that with Bill Davis as Ontario's PC premier in the 70s, it's not hard to conceive of a similar bent to the BC PC banner.
I was not alive during that decade and I only moved to BC in 2006. But it is interesting for me to get a window into the politics of the day.
I think the Liberals back then were seen as being closer to "big money" than the Tories, they usually represented the wealthiest ridings in the province. Though it should be noted that when McGeer was Liberal leader he took more liberal positions than as a Socred Cabinet minister. And David Anderson (who defeated Vander Zalm for the leadership) had a very "liberal" image at the time.
Politics has certainly made for strange bedfellows didn't it? Especially for people who define themselves as centrist in BC... you never know whose bed you're going to wake up in.
Warren Kinsella on Facebook is trying scare folks into believing that if BC elects Dix, the sky will fall. He's not getting much support.
I wonder why the Vancouver Sun left this part out of the Canadian Press story - just sayin'!
http://www.vancouversun.com/Liberals+launch+attack+website+aimed+leader/5929492/story.html
http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2011/12/27/BCRail/
"No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious."
-- George Bernard Shaw
I love how the screenshot in the Vancouver Sun article quotes the BC Progress Board which Clark is quietly going to kill because it failed to prove that the Liberals had been better managers of the economy.
Yes, Christy's attack ads against the Cons have done wonders for the Cons.
My hunch is that we will be seeing a palace coup sometime this year.
http://www.straight.com/article-574381/vancouver/christy-clark-faces-big...
Just laughing at Kinsella and his unpopularity in BC.
http://www.torontosun.com/2011/12/30/bc-politicking-will-put-new-democra...
And he can't keep track of the sequence of events either... the HST referendum was in August.
Kinsella might just be working for the BC Libs for $$ but I think he's been supported of Gordon Campbell in the past though. Given that the BC Libs aren't even a 50/50 split of Lib/Cons, this just goes to show how rather odious the Liberal establishment is. Kinsella is screaming racist!, reactionary! everywhere and talking about the progressive values of the Liberals are Canadian values, but will throw his lot in with the crypto-Socreds even if a BCNDP with a quickly moving to the centre Adrian Dix has a chance at power.