Doug Ford Shouldn't Let Andrew Lawton Run For PCPO Nomination in London

Andrew Lawton is running for  the Ontario PC party’s nomination in London West.  Doug Ford should not let him.

For many reasons, but this one is my favorite.  Back in 2010 Andrew and some buddies wanted to bring alt-right notable Mark Steyn to London (Ontario).  First to the  University of Western Ontario and then, when that fell through, to the London  Convention Center.  But it all went South on them at the LCC as well, and they blamed Islam.  From Andrew's old blog, which doesn't appear to exist anymore:

“The reason offered by the LCC [in a Tuesday morning phone call] was that they had received pressure from local Islamic groups, and they didn’t want to alienate their Muslim clients. It’s interesting to note that the LCC is owned by the City of London, and is therefore a government operation,” wrote Strictly Right’s Andrew Lawton at the website.

But as I argue here, Andrew's explanation doesn't work.  Basically, the site for Steyn's speech had already changed once, and it would have been impossible for any of these "Islamic groups" to have known which new potential venue to threaten.

Andrew actually responded to my argument in the comments, and pretty much admitted the major points of it.  As I wrote at the time:

Andrew,

So will you acknowledge that, whatever you might have been told by the LCC, it would have been impossible for local "Islamic Groups" to have had any real influence on their decision. This is not to say anything about the LCCs decision making processes, which may well have involved considerations about what how their Muslim clients might have reacted to Steyn's appearance.

So, in short, Andrew Lawton tried to arrange to have an alt-right lunatic speak at the LCC, bunged it up, and blamed Muslims.  If Doug Ford wants to convince Ontarians he isn't a Trump clone, one way to do it  would be to kibosh this nomination run.

Patrick Brown's Piss Poor Prospects

Kid's already got issues.  A PCPO exodus has already started:

I’ve been a member of the Ontario PCs more or less continuously since about 1972 and have voted for them in every general election, and in the odd by-election, since then. But I must admit that the selection to lead the party of an obscure federal back-bencher with little or nothing in the way of accomplishments is just too much for me to swallow.

I’m a conservative and will only ever vote for a party which promises fiscal conservatism, so I can’t say I’ll never vote for a Brown-led Ontario PC party. I will not, however, remain a party member.

On the other hand, there's this:

— Steve Paikin (@spaikin) May 9, 2015

OMG!!!  Look at all them brown-skinned folk!  But really:

This will be his problem.  He's reaching out to certain minority groups by pandering to latent homophobia in them.  https://t.co/wZv521hCOd

— Bigcitylib (@Bigcitylib2) May 10, 2015

The problem is Brown's "outreach" in this direction will prevent outreaches in other equally necessary directions.

Hudak Caught: PCPO Made Ilegal Robocalls

OTTAWA – The CRTC will soon announce it is fining both Alberta’s Wildrose Party and the Ontario Progressive Conservatives for automated polling calls that failed to identify the pollster.

The hapless PCPO leader has some explaining to do---$85,000s worth.  And, perhaps not surprisingly, RackNine is involved again.  They are these guys.

BCLSB EXCLUSIVE! Hudak Flip-Flops AGAIN!!!!!!!!!

As I and others have noted on numerous occasions, the PCPO's Tim Hudak is running an election campaign rather short on specific commitments. Furthermore, in one high-profile instance where he has made a concrete proposal--to maintain the McGuinty health-care premium and (if I am remembering this bit correctly) redirect funds raised by it to front-line services--Hudak reversed himself in less than a week. Not good politics, I'm afraid.

And, I have discovered, this is not the only flip-flop Mr. Hudak has executed in the past several weeks.

Specifically: one of the other bits of policy that PCPO have floated recently is for the initiation of a "mandatory Sunset Review Process". As Hudak said back in November:

Folks, I think you’ll agree with me that the private sector simply cannot afford to support a
bloated public sector any longer. To help reign in spending and get government focused on the basics families need most, I am calling for a mandatory Sunset Review process that forces
every government body to justify their existence and continued value to the public. And if they can’t – they go...

Hardly pulse-pounding stuff, nevertheless it iss something concrete that Mr. Hudak said he would do differently if elected to power here in Ontario.

However, there appears to be even less to this promise than was at first evident, for it appears that that Ontario's Separate School system will not be required to participate in the review process. This example of back-peddling seems to have been first noted in a letter to the Orangeville Banner:

Dear editor,

Tim Hudak, leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, met with the Arthur and District Chamber of Commerce on Jan. 13.

Wellington County Catholic School Board trustee Jim Coffey asked about any possible changes to Catholic education. Mr. Hudak replied he “won’t muck around with Catholic education.”

Apparently his proposed “mandatory Sunset Review process that forces all ministries, agencies, boards and commissions to justify their existence and continued value to the public” won’t be mandatory after all.

Just to be clear, this is not a question of whether we support or are critical of the Ontario Catholic School system. In November, Hudak specifically stated that every government body would be asked to justify the money it gets from the province, and that the province would not take "no" for an answer. That's what "mandatory" means, after all. Now, it appears that some groups will be exempt from the process. So either Mr. Hudak spoke falsely in November, or he's changed his mind since then. If the latter...well, "flip flop" is the term you use in such circumstances.

Tory Turmoil: Your Saturday Morning Round-Up!

New stories on the PCPO civil war breaking out in Eastern Ontario. Two of them mention Hudak's promise to abolish the Ontario Human Rights Commission, a promise made to attract Hillier delegates to the Hudak cause during last year's PCPO leadership convention.

If you recall, in the run-up to that convention, provincial Tory leadership contenders fell over one another moving right so as to appeal to Hillier's gang of "rural libertarians". So, for example, Frank Klees promised to make "White's Only" signs legal again (or, more precisely, strike down that portion of the Ontario Human Rights Code that made them illegal). However, Hillier saw through that scheme...it wasn't radical enough for him...and eventually Hudak upped the ante, promising to chuck out the whole provincial human rights apparatus and replace it with...something...some day.

But, as Michael Warren notes in his Owen Sound Times editorial, Hudak hasn't talked about this plan much since winning the leadership race. And that's not surprising. Polling at the time showed that such a pledge would be a vote evaporator among the general populace. So Hudak put it in a little box and never spoke of it again.

Except that now he may have to so as to keep Randy Hillier inside the PCPO tent. Therefore, a sincere thanks (from myself and all Ontario Liberal supporters) to Randy Hillier for taking that item off the secret agenda and putting it squarely back on the, well, non-secret agenda.

Tory Turmoil To The Max!

It's a civil war in the PCPO. Tory MPP Norm Sterling is blaming fellow Tory MPP for sicking Jack MacLaren and the Ontario Land owners on him (see here for details):

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.

The Revolution Begins Today?

The Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Carleton Mississippi Mills Provincial Progressive Conservative association (CMMPCA) will be held at Sacred Heart High School, on Wednesday Dec. 1. Registration will start at 6 p.m.

And when it ends we will know if rural revolutionary and former Ontario Landowners Association President Jack MaClaren has unseated sitting Tory MPP Norm Sterling. I've written about the consequences of a MaClaren candidacy before...the provincial Tories slide off the right side of the political spectrum...but if you want to know the cut of a man's jib, I say look at the web-design of the sites they're associated with. Mr. Maclaren was just elected a director of the Canadian Justice Review Board; here's their "articles" page. When I look at the colour scheme, the old "kookometer" hits about a 6.8. So, not as nuts as they could be but, yeah, nuts.

They've Survived The Purge...So Far

But folks aren't happy in Hillier country:

Here is a photo [...] of the Ontario PC Party in the Toronto Pride. … how can you people possibly support such a party.

Any PCPO Reds worried about the impending Day Of The Rope can seek shelter here. Cost you $10.