Conservative incumbent John Weston riled a lot of people this week with his two-sided mail-out intended to strike a blow at Liberal candidate Pam Goldsmith-Jones. One side of the glossy card was packed with John’s impressive resume and long list of accomplishments as two-term member of Parliament for West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country. The other side, looking deceptively like an ad for Goldsmith-Jones, listed her comparatively meagre achievements as former mayor of West Vancouver at the top, emphasizing a pattern of high spending. The bottom half of the Goldsmith-Jones side was a sea of white nothingness with one referenced line in the centre: “Just another career politician.” The stinging putdown is a quote from an article by Nick Davies that appeared in the Whistler Question.
What makes the attack ad hilarious is that in a follow-up article in the Question published on Oct. 12, the same Nick Davies castigates the Conservatives as un-Canadian fear mongers and concludes about the voting choices in the riding: “There will be no perfect fit, which is why we should send Pamela Goldsmith-Jones to Ottawa, notwithstanding she is a career politician.”
So even Weston’s quoted authority on Goldsmith-Jones is voting Liberal and urging everyone else to follow suit.
The episode is yet another example of how everything seems have gone the Liberals’ way in this long, shallow election campaign.
Given the NDP’s huge surge in 2011 to official opposition status, the 2015 election was supposed to be the perennial third party’s big shot at the title. Instead, four days away from the vote, pundits are discussing a possible Liberal majority. The nationwide campaign to “vote strategically to oust Harper” has completely played into the Liberals’ hands, sucking up soft NDP and Green support like a Hoover. Who would have guessed that Canadians, given the choice between a leader who resembles Mr. French from the old TV show Family Affair and the dynamic son of the dashing, cosmopolitan Pierre Trudeau, would take a pass on Mr. French?
Unless Canadians prove the pollsters wrong again on Monday, it looks like we’re all about to embark on Justin’s excellent globalist adventure.
