4/28/18
Note to a few friends on the upcoming Ontario election:
....(Said with self deprecating irony) Just as I knew Caroline Mulroney would sweep the PC leadership race, I offer you a contrarian thesis.
The conventional wisdom is that had Christine Elliott won it, she’d have been a shoe-in compared to Doug Ford, (who has my vote, btw.)
I beg to differ.
Elliott’s moderate political presence would have tamped down base enthusiasm and middle voter enthusiasm for change. She’d have been seen as a right leaning establishment figure of politics as usual, not decidedly different from Kathleen Wynne, more of the same than different, different the way Frick and Frack are different.
Ford for good and bad is markedly different, polarizing and a lightning rod to be sure, but he generates excitement in being so different.
My call is that middle range voters, those not tied to particular parties, will be attracted to this marked difference on the grounds that:
(1) they’re just not, by and large, voting NDP, though it will siphon off left leaning votes from the Liberals;
and (2) they can’t abide more of the same whether it leans right or left.
A version of the foregoing, although the players were different—you had Smitherman rather than Wynne; and you had 7 years of Miller standing in for all the last many years of Liberal government—got Rob Ford, who I voted for, elected. And it will, I predict, get Doug Ford elected too.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/grenier-ford-harris-1.4636845.....
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