They did it. They voted. They screwed themselves. Babel voters must be immune to common sense. They already have a nebbish representing them in Ottawa. Why send another embarrassment to Queen’s Park?
But they did! Babel is the lynch pin of central Ontario and they took it out of the loop at Queen’s Park. It means Babel will have a tough route to get the support needed to fix those constricting and dangerous interchanges on the 400. It means foot-dragging on funds for Royal Victoria Hospital. It impedes the building of Babel’s downtown university campus. Babel will have nobody of any influence with the province. The city has gone from lynch pin to backwater in one stupid vote.
Not that the Liberal candidate in Babel deserved to win. Mind you, he certainly spent enough. He appeared to be working hard. He was just as right wing as his Conservative opponent. He walked blindly into an unfortunate situation between the federal and provincial liberals here in Babel. People worked hard to try to solve the problem but it needed the candidate to pull it off. He needed to call and sit down with key people in the electoral district to bring the team together. He lacked the political experience needed to make that happen. He was also a bit arrogant. That did not help.
As recently as election day, there was still the hope that enough Babel voters would recognize that the Conservative candidate in Babel was a loser. He had lied to them about his leader’s position on uploading provincial expenses from the municipality. He quoted statistics that were ludicrous to support his biases. And he had nothing to offer.
And if voters thought his leader was any smarter, they were kidding themselves. Tiny Tim Hudak took a huge lead in the polls at the beginning of the campaign and ran it into the ground. He wanted a breakthrough in Toronto and started out calling new Canadians ‘foreigners.’ He annoyed Ontario’s municipal leaders. He ridiculed McGuinty and the Harmonized Sales Tax and then said he would keep it. He said he would take the former Ontario Hydro’s debt off electrical rates but failed to say how he would pay it off.
Frankly, it was a bad campaign all around. McGuinty bored us. Hudak insulted us. And Horwath never lived up to her potential. We give them about three years of stalking each other before the next election–depending on how the economy goes. McGinty would be smart to cash in his chips in two years and let someone with a personality take over.
It will also be amusing to see what the extreme right-wing Ontario Landowners faction does to Tim Hudak. Andrea Horwath also needs to find out where the Ontario New Democrats want to go.
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Copyright 2011 © Peter Lowry
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