The party, when he put in his nomination papers for his first election. And, the party should do a follow-up check with each nominee with each subsequent general election.
But ultimately, the parties have limited powers to check that. If you’ve got four or five individuals seeking the nomination in a riding, does the riding association have the resources to do a deep dive on each one? They don’t have the investigative powers of Time magazine or the G&M.
And then you get the candidate who has [del]blackface[/del] a skeleton in his closet and is too “embarrassed” to reveal it, thereby breaking the rules of his own party. Should the riding association assume that each candidate is “embarrassed” and not giving a forthright answer? Or should they assume all candidates are being forthright? Would they rather put their limited resources into private investigator fees, or campaigning?
Remember when the Tories revoked a candidate last election because the news found out that he was a performance artist who ran as part of his act. Or the urinator! Ha! Good God. The urinator. That was gold.
The answer is to use the same oppo people used against your opponents, and have them run checks on your guy with the same vigor they use against opponents. Make their pay or a large bonus contingent on their opponents not discovering something before the election that they missed, so they are suitably motivated. Make it an automatic part of the process for becoming leader of the party.
I am surprised they aren’t doing this or something like it already.
I saw a little bit of the debate, but find them unwatchable. Hard to believe many people base their decisions on these. Too many people on stage. Too little time to give substantive answers. Leading questions. Too many sound bites and lots of posturing.
I see that Scheer’s strategy in the debate was as expected; Attack Trudeau personally, and hope that everyone else hates Trudeau as much as he does. This seems to be the main policy platform of the Conservative Party now.
It wasn’t surprising that Scheer would attack Trudeau, nor that he would retaliate, nor that the NDP candidate would proffer himself as a third alternative.
From a debating perspective, Scheer came off better than I would have thought. Trudeau kept his cool, didn’t talk much and stuck to talking points. Singh easily did the best of all, but I don’t attach much importance to a debate. I like politics, but these things are unwatchable. I heard they got Singh’s name wrong three times.
The PPC candidate has some courageous policies. I don’t agree with them, but his opponents played the man and not the puck, arguing against “straw policies” more extreme than stated. This took a lot of time and so probably benefited the Liberals. If even 3% of the vote goes there, that will hurt Scheer.
I confess I did not watch the debate - just caught up on some of the post-analysis. I don’t think I would have come away more informed if I had watched it though…
I watched the first 90 minutes of the debate and then sat on the remote and accidentally shut off the tv. I may not have seen the remote as I had gouged out my eyes about 15 minutes in. In retrospect, I should have pulled a Van Gogh instead.
Unrelated to the debate, my father received a mailer from the Conservatives addressed to “The Fins Family” and suggested that as Jews the Tories are the only option. My father was very offended and feels that the Tories are suggesting that Jews have dual loyalties.
Wait what? The Conservatives are sending mailers out that target specific religions, that tell you how your specific religion should vote? Are you positive this was a real mailer, and not a hoax by some other party? Yikes.
It’s real. It was couched in similar terms to a Trump piece about being the Tories being a “Friend of Israel”, unlike the other parties rather than as an ultimatum but implied that good Jews support them.
I have to agree that this is probably the least motivated I’ve ever felt to vote. And I’ve voted in every election (at every level) in which I’ve been eligible. I consider it an important civic duty, but it really feels like all the choices are bottom of the barrel, except Singh who has really surprised me. But he’s NDP. I wish he was the Liberal leader.
I’m thinking that all the Conservative strategy is going to accomplish at this point is to increase their winning margins in places like Alberta and Saskatchewan, where the voters really REALLY hate Trudeau. And that’s the #1 issue. In those places.
Yep. The only reason they’re even close on a national level is that they’re winning Alberta and the Prairies by a HUGE margin, but they’re trailing in Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic provinces by enough that they’ll likely lose most of those seats. And there’s no way they can form a government just with those western provinces. BC looks to be a coin flip at the moment.
You can find the comparisons here:
Scroll down for the regional breakdown, and look at the last two month’s worth of polls.
It’s also interesting to compare the 6 month to 2 month data for Ontario. The Conservatives have been losing support pretty steadily.
