Thursday, February 24, 2011

Stop the Presses! A Balanced Article by Yaffe

Barbara Yaffe usually is in PM Harper Conservative basing mode but has actually written a pretty balanced article today although she does  manage to get a few jabs in at the end. Guess she just can't help herself. But anyhow she says if there's an election the Conservatives will be going into a campaign in a position of strength.
The fact is, if forced into battle as a result of a lost budget vote, there's every possibility the Conservatives would win a majority government.
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After five years and two election wins, many Canadians finally have grown more comfortable with Harper. A Nanos poll Wednesday shows 48 per cent of respondents would be comfortable or somewhat comfortable with a Harper majority. He's not warm and cuddly but neither has he implemented any restrictive social policies domestically. And there's no denying, on an increasingly pertinent world stage, the Conservative leader has looked good. Nor has he overseen any major scandal involving the blatant squandering of tax dollars.. Conservatives enter a campaign with additional strength among immigrant communities, having worked doggedly for and won over ethnic support that used to belong to Liberals.
. Liberals, again, are poised to split the left-leaning vote with New Democrats, especially because so many of their policy positions of late have been similar.
. Conservatives are presenting a disciplined platform that gives priority to issues of prime concern to Canadians: Jobs and the economy.
This is the most common sense  she's made in a long, long time. Maybe she's just starting to come to terms that her leader and favorite party are toast.

BTW On Another Note.-If the coalition is banking on the Bev Oda affair sinking the Conservatives, they better think again. According to a new poll from Harris Decima not actually a Conservative loving polling company, the Oda affair is not catching  fire with the public.
OTTAWA - A new poll suggests the Bev Oda document-altering scandal may not be as damaging to the Harper government as opposition parties had hoped.
The Canadian Press Harris-Decima poll found that half of those surveyed had heard nothing about the affair.
Of the 50 per cent who were aware of the controversy, 32 per cent said the international co-operation minister should resign from cabinet, 10 per cent said she should stay and eight per cent were unsure.
The poll comes as Liberals and New Democrats are vowing to turn up the heat on Oda when Parliament resumes Monday after a one-week break.
Opposition parties have already been relentlessly hammering away at the issue for two weeks, which revolves around an altered document from Oda's officials that ultimately denied funding to a church-based foreign-aid group.
The telephone poll of just over 1,000 Canadians was conducted Feb. 17-20 and is considered accurate within 3.1 percentage points, 19 times in 20.