Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Taylor's Alterations

So over at Stephen Taylor’s site, careless Aerosmith fans are straining to read deep thoughts on all the trouble the Top Tory Typist sees on the horizon for Jack Layton and the NDP.

Taylor’s site is usually a good indication of where the Conservative Id is at, but the warmed-over hooey he’s offering as a substitute for analysis of the NDP is just thoughtless.

A few of the more objectionable klunkers:

He says “the Green Party is eating Jack’s porridge.” WRONG. If the Greens are taking votes away from the NDP as the thoughtless orthodoxy has it, then how can both the NDP and Greens be up in the polls? (Check the most recent Ipsos.) The NDP and Greens aren’t fishing from the same pond.

He says the NDP is having trouble “with low polling numbers”. WRONG. Poll after poll has the NDP holding steady near the 17.5% it got in the last election. Both SES and Ipsos have them at 17, with the latter showing surprising strength in BC and growth in Québec. Down from 36.3 to 31%, it’s the Harper-ites who should be worrying.

He says “big labour is knocking down [Layton’s] attempts at carving out any discernible green platform.” SO WRONG IT HURTS TO LAUGH. Probably best to not confuse the recent brown-talk of Buzz Hargrove with anything going on in the NDP. Besides, the NDP is the only party that has had a coherent green plan for longer than a year. The Liberal spokesperson who runs the Green party used to say so at every election.

2 comments:

susansmith said...

Blogging Horse, that last comment, about having a green plan for more than one year, was that a shot at the Harper cons - Green Plan 2 - or a short the Dion libs - intensity targets good, flip-flop, intensity targets bad?
Anyway, I was just wondering because it could be inferred either way.

Blogging Horse said...

An astute observation, JftB.

The Liberals are on, what, their 5th climate change plan since signing Kyoto in 1997? And as you say, each one says something different about intensity targets and something different about caps on large final emitters. So sure they fail both the "coherence" and "longer than a year" tests.

For their part, the Conservatives are on Eco-Action-Clean-Trust-Air-Plan II: Electric Boogaloo. While wrong, they are at least coherent in sticking with their Dion-style intensity targets, but they fail the "longer than a year" test.

So it is a shot at the Libs or the Conservatives? Hmmm. Can't it be both?