The provincial Progressive Conservative party is struggling with an insurrection of rural libertarians with a "very narrow and right-wing agenda," says west-side MPP Norm Sterling, who is blaming fellow Ottawa-area Tory Randy Hillier for a failed bid to steal his riding association out from under him.
Meanwhile, Ed Kennedy, the VP of the Frontenac Sector of Randy Hillier's riding association, says that Wednesday's meeting of the Carleton-Mississippi Mills PCPO riding association to choose its new riding executive was rigged against Jack MacLaren. He also calls Norm Sterling a "bootlicker":
This all goes to demonstrate that there are red tories in the party pulling strings, in my estimation. The left knows and fears that the landowner movement is and will effect changes for the better that embody rural rights and Conservative values but due to the success of Randy Hillier, they failed to stop his entry. They fear two honest men in the party and the more in line to come.
This was not unexpected, the same thing happened to Shawn and is more of the same old, same old. The party had been giving Jack a hard time all along since it was known he was going to run.
The loser of course is the party, choosing bootlickers of questionable character over honest men.
Oh My! And Norm, no stranger to blistering hot rhetoric himself, is suggesting that Randy Hillier
...should either fish or cut bait," Sterling said Thursday. "He should either be a member of the team or he should step outside the team and run as an Ontario Landowner under his own party label."
So far, Hillier is refusing to respond to Sterling's suggestion, dumping the problem on poor Tim Hudak. But Ed is still pushing for a party takeover:
The only individual with the capacity to drive the red tories out, is Randy Hillier. A Hillier/Maclaren combination would have been deadly for these traitors and my opinion was that this whole thing was orchestrated.
Meanwhile, Dalton McGuinty is renting a victory hall in advance of the 2011 election.
3 comments:
Yeah and they wonder why you hold you nose and vote Liberal. That's a great idea, drive out the red Tories, if you want to downgraded to third party status.
"The only individual with the capacity to drive the red tories out, is Randy Hillier."
Indeed. That would be such a smart move. Drive me, and over 90% of the party away and turn the PCPO into the Ontario wing of the Tea Party. Dalton McGuinty will be premier for the next 100 years.
I'm still holding out hope that maybe Elizabeth Witmer could be somehow convinced to run for the leadership once Hudak looses in 2011. Then we can rid of the clowns like Hillier and become a serious party again.
T of KW- I appreciate your sentiment, but I think you're underestimating the importance of the group we're now calling the Landowners in the PC's electoral coalition in rural Ontario, especially Eastern Ontario. I think that Hudak, or whoever is the next leader of the provincial Tories, faces a very real existential crisis concerning whether the party is tenable without the kind of voters Hillier et al represent.
I don't know that marginalizing the OLA, like Steve Clark did to secure his nomination in Leeds-Grenville, is a strategy for long-term success. Likely, however, neither is allowing people such as Clark and Sterling to be pushed out of office.
Post a Comment