We will have to take back some of those nasty names we have called Barrie’s Patrick Brown. Sure, he is a sleazebag but he is hardly as ignorant or as frightening as Doug Ford. If we could just have our choice of sleazebag, I guess we would prefer the one we know.
The main difference between the two conservatives is that Brown is a more experienced politician. He would still not know the difference between a good policy idea or a dumb policy idea but he does know some smart people who would. He got those smart people to create a policy booklet for him that was introduced last November as ‘The People’s Guarantee.’ With that booklet in hand, Patrick’s conservatives were running higher in the polls than where Ford is today.
I must have been laughing as hard as other progressives as we watched Doug Ford slag Patrick’s ‘guarantee’ booklet throughout the conservative’s desperation leadership contest. All leadership candidates had signed pledges that they would run on the ‘guarantee’ booklet’s promises but Doug Ford’s word is not very good. In breaking ranks, he forced the other candidates to break their promises. He trashed Patrick’s promise of a having a carbon tax instead of the Wynne government’s Cap and Trade program.
The carbon tax support was an untypically smart move by Brown. He must have been told that Cap and Trade confuses voters and is too secretive, while a carbon tax is very straight forward and transparent. And since the federal government was saying it would impose a carbon tax anyway, why would Brown not support it?
And Brown would have had the political experience to handle Tanya Granic Allen. The social conservatives with their oppressive demands are scaring Doug Ford but Brown would have Tanya toeing the line or out of the contest to be a conservative candidate. As a social conservative himself, Brown learned the lesson the hard way and he would take control.
If I was a really loyal liberal, I guess I would concede that Ford is easier for Wynne to tear apart in a debate. Did he really agree to that one debate? It is my guess that the conservatives will try to keep Doug Ford as far away from Kathleen Wynne as possible.
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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry
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