As pointed out by Red Tory today, we had conservative bloggers like Steve Janke howling with glee at the personal leaders preference out of the Sun yesterday which showed Dion’s personal rating in 3rd place, and also showing that he’s a concern troll, asking how much more us Liberals would tolerate of this supposed weakness we have at leadership.
Unfortunately for Janke, and others of like mind, we elect parties to power here in Canada, not presidents. Leadership ratings aren’t the be-all and end-all to getting elected (as pointed out by Darren here). This morning, the Con. party that Mr. Harper leads has now, with all this supposed Liberal leadership weakness, and with all these tax cuts designed to give them a boost in electoral fortunes, managed to fall into a dead-heat tie with the Liberals in the latest Strategic Council Poll:
The survey by the Strategic Counsel for The Globe and Mail/CTV News shows the two parties each with the support of 32 per cent of Canadians. The Conservatives had led the Liberals 34 per cent to 29 per cent in a poll taken two weeks before the mini-budget, which included income-tax relief and a one-percentage-point cut to the GST.
I love this quote by Peter Donolo:
“Two weeks ago, when they had their mini-budget, with billions and billions of tax cuts, they couldn’t have imagined that the Canadian public would thank them by seeing their numbers drop,” he said.
Maybe I should be asking Mr. Janke and other BT’ers how long is it going to take to realize that voters and people simply aren’t that comfortable with the Con. party or their policies to trust giving it a majority government. An example of one such policy that makes voters uncomfortable? A majority of voters disagree with the Cons. decision to no longer seek clemency for Canadians who face the death penalty in other countries.
At the moment, there is enough discomfort out there with Con. policies to not even guarantee the Cons’ re-election, despite what voters may think of Mr. Dion, and despite the Cons. attempts to seduce voters with tax cuts.
I could have also talked about the NDP drop in support in this poll, or the fact the Greens are now, for the first time, actually ahead of the NDP nationally (though obviously within the MOE and for all intents and purposes a dead-heat) , but I’ll leave others to talk about that angle of the story. I believe the real story here is the voting public isn’t buying what the Cons. are trying to sell.
The latest Strategic poll clearly shows that Dion has a solid Liberal base on which to build for the next election. Harper’s attempt to buy his way into majority territory with tax cuts simply hasn’t worked. And now the Mulroney fiasco which is blind-siding Harper will make it doubly difficult to achieve a Conservative majority. Dion has said on more than one occasion that he expects to be prime minister of Canada. I think he will.