Former Liberal insider and ex-Toronto mayoral candidate Rocco Rossi jumps ship to the conservative party.

"In politics, your enemies can't hurt you, but your friends will kill you."
--- Ann Richards (1933-2006), Texas Governor (D) '91-'95, defeated by G.W.Bush

Now, when your ennemies become your friends and vice-versa, things can get ugly very quickly.
Case and point, the defection of former liberal Rocco Rossi, who joined the PC party today.

This fall during the Toronto mayoral race, Liberal Spinmaster Warren Kinsella just LOVED Rocco Rossi. See what he had to say...

=-=-=
The scene: a hockey rink in Toronto's East end. The cast: my nine-year-old goalie son; Your Humble Narrator (Kinsela) and a rather, well, porcine fellow sprawled in a chair by the rink entrance, wearing a FORD FOR MAYOR button.)
Goalie son, spotting Mr. Porcine: Dad! Dad! That guy is wearing a Rob Ford button!
Your Humble Narrator: I see that, buddy.
Mr. Porcine, realizing that he is being observed: Blurgh. Urm. Splort.
Goalie son, to Mr. Porcine: Ford's going down! Rocco Rossi's going to win! Yay, Rossi!
Mr. Porcine, scowling: Urgh.
Your Humble Narrator: Well done, son. Now go play hockey.
THE END.
=-=-=

Today this post (and others favouring Rossi) have disapeared from Kinsella's web site. And Warren is now attacking his former "friend".

To deflect, he now notes that Stefan Baranski, from the PC party, was ripping Rossi out every chance he got during the mayoral race.

from @sbaranski
=-=-=
October 3, 2010: "Rossi can't read a simple spreadsheet. Can't add."
October 1, 2010: Rossi "resorts to outright lies in a bid to score cheap shot."
September 15, 2010: Rossi's political plan is "so unrealistic it seems more a hallucination than a workable vision."
September 15, 2010: Rossi's plans are "back-of-the-napkin electioneering bumpf."
September 14, 2010: "Team Rossi continues to defend the indefensible."
September 14, 2010: "Rossi's latest gasping bid to gain attention, mired in fourth place and bordering on irrelevance."
September 13, 2010: "Is Rossi running for Mayor of Toronto or Mayor of Fantasy Island?"
September 7, 2010: "Is politics too serious a matter to be left to career backroom political hacks and former party presidents? Oh wait
August 30, 2010: Rossi's ideas are "Reform-inspired."
=-=-=

Maybe Rocco Rossi is making to many political friends, Ann Richards might say...

Next Ontario Election "narrative"

Before Christmas, I was reading Ill Fares the Land, from Tony Judt, after it was recommanded to me by a politico hotshot from Queen's Park.

I came away with some quotation that struck me as being quintessential to his thoughts AND because it seemed to me the next provincial election in Ontario might be fought on those principles.

Judt, quoting from John Maynard Keynes:
"it is not sufficient that the state of affairs which we seek to promote should be better that the state of affairs which preceded it; it must be sufficiently better to make up for the evils of the transition"

In other words : Are you better off with or without the changes the Liberals brought forward since 2003 (HST, Green Energy Act, etc...) Sounds like a classic ballot question to me.

Tim Hudak and Andrea Horwarth are already criss-crossing the province to make their point.

Dalton McGuinty kicked-off a tour of his own, with a new "Al Gore inspired" presentation.


(BTW, the guy on the photo behind the Premier is a 17 year-old Dalton McGuinty. the pix was taken in 1973 on Lac St-Pierre in Québec)


Other quotes from Ill fares de land:
Tony Judt

"As recently as the 1970, the idea that the point of life was to get rich and that governement existed to facilitate this would have been ridiculed: not only by capitalism's traditional critics, but also by many of its staunchest defenders. Relative indifference to wealth for its own sake was widespread in the post-war decades.

(in a survey of schoolboys in 1949)
It was discovered that the more intelligent the boy the more likely
he was to choose an interresting career at a reasonnable wage over a job that would merely pay well. Today's schoolchildren and college students can imagine little else but the search for a lucrative job."

"if we don't respect public goods; if we permit or encourage the privatization of public space, ressources and services; if we enthusiastically support the prosperity of a younger generation to look exclusively to their own needs; then we should not be surprised to find a steady falling-away from civic engagementin public decision-making. In recent years, there has been much discussion of the so-called "democratic-deficit".

The steadily declining turnout at local and national election, the cynical distaste for politicians and political institutions consistently register in public polls - most markedly among the young. There is a widespread sense that since "they" will do what they want in any case - while feathering their own nests - why should "we" waste time trying to influence the outcome of their actions.

In the short-run, democracies can survive the indifference of their citizens. Indeed it used to be thought an indicator of impending trouble in a well-ordered republic when electors were too much aroused. The business of government, it was widely supposed, should be left to those elected for the purpose. But the pendulum has flung far in the opposite direction."