Beyond The Commons

Aaron Wherry covers all the goings-on in and around Parliament Hill. Follow Aaron on Twitter: @aaronwherry

Categories: Beyond The Commons, Capital Read

BTC: Everyman (III)

by Aaron Wherry on Sunday, September 21, 2008 1:54am - 36 Comments

“On the one side you have a minivan-driving hockey dad from the suburbs—the most middle-class prime minister Canada’s ever had,” said one Conservative official.
—Sun, Sept. 7

“My wife says ‘I don’t want to do all that driving around.’” Harper threw up his hands: “I said ‘the police drive you around.’ We don’t even have a car.” The family sold its van because they never used it.
—Toronto Star, Sept. 20

Tags: Election Watch, Stephen Harper

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Sophie

Um…
this is hypocritical perfectly normal of the conservative campaign.
Sophie

crud, hypocritical was supposed to be struck through. Oops.
Phillip Huggan

My estimate of the high ROI spending in the Green budget is about $174B. In the Conservative budget, not even $11B. Why can’t the Bloc platform be en anglais?
The down to Earth (like a fallen angel) Harper isn’t using his position of power to make the world a better place. E.May would.
Not that budget ethics is the only leadership criteria. It has become painfully obvious Canadians want a Mussolini, Hitler, or Castro level of public speaker. I wonder what the psychological basis of this is? If it could be deprogrammed (up until its utility), the deprogramming methodology might be useful for fighting tyrants.
An improvement on our system of government that recognizes this overemphasis on sermon (in this context), might enact a new post combining elements of monarchy, the Seante, M.Ignatieff’s post (deputy opposition speaker, I forget), some Interior Minister pop-culture duties (control of marginal levy or tarriff ratios on gas, electricity, bread), maybe set TV regulations to some degree….mostly cosmetic, but empowering nonetheless.
Be better than using pontification as a proxy for defecating on our children.
madeyoulook

Oh please, can we please all settle down? Yes, there is no shortage of dumb-ass gaffes in the Conservative campaign. But this really shows you’re trying too hard and should try instead to grow up. The suburban middle-class hockey dad in the minivan became prime minister. Deal with it.
http://deleted Sandi

He’s not your usual middle class suburban hockey dad…he’s been in politics most of his adult life. He’s obsessed with strategy and tactics and has goals of a prime minister.

How many “average” middle class guys have these goals?

Enough of these Americanize “labels”. I don’t care if a guy is middle class, upper poo poo – can he do the job.

Why not a middle class suburban guy who doesn’t have a kid playing hockey?

This is just so stupid.
http://carnewsandviews.com jwl

Middle class is a state of mind, not based on salary.

And what do those two quotes prove, exactly? That he’s a minivan driving man from the suburbs who sold the family vehicle after he became PM because he and his family are chauffeured around now.

If anything, this proves he’s green. Getting rid of excess vehicles is a good start to saving the world from global warming. It would be great if all people who believe in global warming acted the same way, but they don’t.

It’s too bad you didn’t find out how many cars Dion family owns, Aaron, to see if they are as green as the Harper family.
beary

Good post. It’s these little things which drive the point home that Harper is a liar and can’t be trusted.

As for the Conservative supporters’ comments…everytime one of you tells Canadians to “deal with it” or “suck it up” you’re telling us you don’t care about us. That just proves what we see in Harper. He has an agenda which is not good for Canada and it’s based on his hatred of Canadians. If all of you hate it here so much, please leave and move to a different country instead of hijacking Canada. True Canadians don’t want you here.
Jarrid

I know some people around here get a little tired of the MSM left-wing bias comments but the evidence keeps piling up as the campaign unfolds.

As Norman Spector said on his blog, the big loser in this election to date is the CBC and their biased coverage of the campaign focussed on “gaffes” as opposed to issues. Christie Blatchford exposes the CBC’s coverage for what it is. Her September 20th article in the G&M is a must-read piece – it’s about the media’s handling of Gerry Ritz jokes.

jwl said in comment in a post below “If you believe the Tor Star is out to get Dion, think again. Linda Diebel was on Duffy this week talking about how her, her newspaper, and other reporters are deliberately withholding info from the public about Dion and Lib campaign to help them out.” What a shocking and depressing admission by the MSM. They’re totally unabashed about it.

I saw the political panel on CBC Newsworld with Don Newman and what I saw were a bunch of jaded media types living in a cocoon. Fortunately Canadians arent’ being swayed by the perverted media coverage thus far.
kody

So he sold his minivan after he became PM and required RCMP protection.

Tell me, if the man who farmed all his life became PM, would you mock him for claiming to be in touch with farmers, because he now lived in Ottawa.

The leftist media standards are really quite ridiculous. The PM becomes instantaneously out of touch with his minivan driving, skate tying ways, the moment he became PM,

his common person life banished from the media record, and to raise it again is to face ridicule and claims of dishonesty.
catherine

Jarrid, that sounds like an interesting Duffy episode.

But, a reporter going on national TV to say that she is purposely withholding information from the public about the Liberals in order to help the Liberals out, sounds like a most peculiar approach to take in helping someone out.

Is this really what she said?
kody

Which leaves the question:

who’s being more dishonest,

the one proclaiming Harper’s close to the common person,

or the one writing a post denying he’s close to the common person because of circumstances every PM encounters once in office?
Jarrid

Catherine, I’m quoting jwl’s post. I didn’t see the show myself that day. From what I’ve seen of his comments on these blogs, jwl strikes me as a straight forward fair-minded person so I’m taking his word for it.
catherine

All this common person talk! are the Conservatives adopting the class system now? Perhaps they will abandon capitalism next!

Is anyone else noticing how the Conservative and NDP talking points are fusing together in this election? Layton throws out the pot smokers. Harper throws out the elite. They all meet in the middle with the common man.
Jarrid

Catherine – do yourself a favour and read Norman Spector’s take on the election to date.

The Conservatives and the NDP, while they have very different solutions to the problems of the day, are both adressing the problems of the day. They are speaking about issues that are of concern to the average voter and those issues are economic. As Spector notes:

“Canadians are preoccupied by what’s happening in the U.S. economy – and they’re terrified that the mayhem could spread to Canada. They’re worried about their retirement savings, the value of their homes and their life insurance.”

Not this pie-in-the-sky, save the planet stuff, that Ph.D professor Dion is serving up. Not this gotcha negative ad stuff that Dion’s alter ego is serving up either.

Catherine – the Conservatives and the NDP are talking to issues that resonate with people who are going to decide the election, middle-class voters, get it now?
kody

Catherine,

that’s bang on. Layton and Harper, are, I believe, both going after the same segment from opposite sides of the political spectrum.

Which leaves the out-of-touch academic elite latte liberals, of the variety that like to jet off to the Bahamas for vacations (or conferences in Bali) while chiding us to take the bus and have colder houses in the winter to “save the planet”,

to Dion.

It’s a good fit I’d say.
http://carnewsandviews.com jwl

Catherine and Jarrid

I can’t find the clip on CTV site but Diebel was on this week, Duffy at 8 pm edition they are doing for duration of election, and she was talking about her article that appeared in the Tor Star that day about what a shambles the Lib campaign was in.

Diebel said that she and reporters from other news sources knew the Lib election campaign was a mess since day one, and have known that people within Lib party had serious misgivings about Dion’s leadership style well before that, but waited more than a week to write about it because she, and her paper, had to be ‘careful’ about what they printed.

She was saying that Tor Star has Dion’s back but they couldn’t wait any longer to print what they know to be true.
catherine

Kody, why the hate-on for academics? Has this always been part of the Conservative position or just since Harper. Mike Harris had a hate-on for any kind of teachers and Ontario’s educational system, from elementary schools to universities, took a big hit. Do you support that kind of divisive politics?
beary

It’s extremely clear that kody does support divisive politics. Conservatives have that as their cornerstone – divide and ruin.

The Liberals are not pie in the sky nor are they the ones jetting to foreign lands to bask in sunshine. Err…Mulroney has a house in Palm Beach where he spends most of his time.

The Liberal plan encompasses everything the NDP and Cons are talking about, with the added benefit of a view to the future. They are the only party, besides the Greens, who are thinking ahead for this country and Canadians. We are past the point of band-aids being enough (ie. NDP and Con promises). And I don’t for a minute believe that the NDP would know how to handle being in power, much less have the talent for it; nor do I believe that Harper will keep any of his promises made during this campaign.
http://tigerinexile.wordpress.com Ben

“Stop these divisive politics” = “Stop disagreeing with us and winning”. “Stop using wedge issue politics” means “stop using issues on which the public agrees more with you than with me”.

***

Mind you, the “middle-class Harper” vs. “Professor Dion” dichotomy is a little silly, given that Harper was headed straight into academia when he ended up as policy chief of the Reform Party. (And his top campaign guy back in the day, Tom Flanagan, is an academic.)

We’ve basically got the Conservative academic and the Liberal academic going at it hammer and tongs.
catherine

jwl, that sounds like the usual anonymous Liberal insiders. I hadn’t realized that we were given a one week pass on those stories, but if so, I hardly see how that qualifies as particularly newsworthy.

There is no question that Dion is not your typical political leader. He doesn’t seem comfortable with the either the glib soundbites or the aggressive posturing of typical leaders. On the other hand, he has plenty of intelligence, commitment, integrity and determination. In listening to him, I am struck with the amount of content – always dangerous for a politician. Some are drawn to him just for this reason (along with his commitment to the environment and other issues) and others will be put off by it. That some of the latter are inside the Liberal party is no surprise.
kody

Catherine,

have you ever heard the expression “those who can, do, and those who can’t “teach”.

Teachers/professors make great educators (except when they indoctrinate our kids into a leftist progressive world view). Many are very, very nice people with good hearts.

But they don’t make great “do-ers”.

They focus on the abstract, the theoretical, and the radical, as opposed to the concrete and practical. They are also overwhelmingly left leaning (those from the humanities that is – the sciences and engineering actually tend to be more conservative – though in the university setting, still less so than the general public).

In short, they are the last ones we want actually running a country and setting policy.

Dion’s wacky policies (the latest a massive “carbon pipe” that neither of the two provinces involved in have heard of or want) should surprise no one who has experience dealing with academics.
catherine

Ben, it is all marketing strategy. Ontarions didn’t really want to erode their education system but the marketing worked. For a while. Then you spend a couple decades putting the pieces back together.
kody

Beary,

I won’t be shunned by catchwords designed to disqualify me from being in a political debate.

If you identify and disagree with progressives, your “divisive”,

if a progressive identifies and disagrees with conservatives, their merely stating the obvious.
http://tigerinexile.wordpress.com Ben

Harris introduced a new curriculum and got rid of grade thirteen. Seems sensible enough to me. (Though I did really enjoy my OAC year in the late ’90s.)

Seeing as McGuinty didn’t reverse the reforms, I’m thinking that they took.
Austin So

Yet another example of BS from the Harper camp, and the weenies come out in full force.

But this one is key, isn’t it? The “hockey-mom-dad” tripe.

Tell me…Harper has been in Ottawa for how many years? And how old are his kids? And what the hell did he do before that?

Yeah…”middle class is a state a mind”…

ROFLMAO~!

I wonder…is this level of stupidity is something that comes naturally, or do you actually strive for it?

Austin