Friday, March 06, 2009

Is it too much to say...

That Dalton McGuinty just won his third government? A bit, but not too much. We've seen this story before: odds are that the Tories pick somebody from the Neanderthal caucus to replace Tory, and it will be too easy for the Liberals to say, in 2011, that the new guy is too new, too crazy, too radical, whatever.

(Alternative hypothesis: the only man or woman Tory ever beat will return to Provincial politics to try and reclaim the Harris throne.)

Meanwhile, I'm relatively confident that McGuinty will, in fact, lead his party in to 2011. I've heard rumours that he's mused about leaving after his second term, but I don't buy it. These jobs suck men in, and even when you think you should leave, you convince yourself that the next guy will be even worse.

So yeah, I think McGuinty/Crazy Person 2011 is going to be a win for the Liberals, yet again. It's a shame, because as I've said before I think John Tory is as good a Conservative as one can hope for. The problem is that he's leading a party that doesn't particularly like him, as evidence by him losing what was supposed to be a safe Tory seat.

So, prediction time: by the time the 2015 election rolls around, the Liberals will have been in power for 12 years. The provincial Conservatives will have endured two more leadership campaigns, and continue to wallow in crazytown, wondering why they can't get elected.

4 comments:

Mike said...

The issue isn't with Tory, its with the PC's. Because they aren't the PC anymore. They have been infiltrated by Reform Party psychotics like Randy Hillier. The Party is no longer the party of Red Tory conservatism like Bill Davis.

No one told John Tory that. He knows now.

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't put money on that outcome. Too many wild variables involved, the biggest of which is the current of recession.

By 2011 enough Ontarians might be angry enough that a shift to the right might happen. Its what caused the swing from the NDP to Harris in the first place.

Or their might be enough unemployed that the NDP will have a legitmate shot again.

Or McGuinty proves to have a steady hand on the tiller and he's rewarded.

Pick any, or mix and match to split the vote, its too close to call in my books.

john said...

Catelli: I never put money on my predictions, but I still like to make them -- and try and be honest about when I blow it. (See, oh, anything I wrote about the Dem. Primaries last year.)

While I agree that the recession makes predictions hopeless, I'd still say based on the conditions at this moment in time that the next election is McGuinty's to lose.

celestialspeedster said...

I like John Tory, too, but considering the stupid misfires that he repeatedly engages in (his municipal campaign of the bridge to the Toronto Islands, his provincial campaign of public support for religious schools, running in the riding of Don Valley West, taking a popular PC MP's riding), I shudder to think what kind of damage he would inflict on Ontario if he were in power.