SchemesVille
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Sunday morning update at the bottom of the post.
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Well, well well, whadd'ya know...
According to Rob Shaw at least, writing in the now glacierified Orca media outlet, the Con/Soccer Party deal began when a couple of surrogates got together in a backwaterish-type room:
...It started Sunday, when Caroline Elliott, the United candidate for West Vancouver-Capilano, former party vice president and Falcon’s sister-in-law, reached out by text to Angelo Isidorou, the Conservative party’s executive director. Would he be willing to meet and talk about where things are at, she asked...
{snip)
...Elliott and Isidorou sat down at Browns Socialhouse in North Vancouver’s Lonsdale area for an informal chat Sunday evening — two trusted interlocutors from either side feeling out, over a Guinness, whether there was enough common ground for a formal meeting...
Now, leaving aside the fact that the two bosses lacked to the intestinal fortitude to start the 'talks' themselves for the moment, here's what, again according to the esteemed Mr. Shaw, happened next:
...Tuesday, at 2 p.m., Elliott and United executive director Lindsay Coté gathered in a boardroom in Vancouver with Isidorou and Conservative president Aisha Estey.
The Conservative staffers took the meeting with low expectations. Some of the same people had tried unsuccessfully to broker a deal in May. The failure to do so, had led to three BC United MLAs defecting to the Conservatives...
More lackeys!
Quelle surprise.
But then, if the extremely insightful and plugged-in(able) Mr. Shaw is correct about all tis, things got downright interesting, and just a wee bit Machiavellian:
"...United then offered up its large package of opposition research on controversial views held by Conservative candidates (the party had been planning to release information on a Conservative candidate who believes in the chemtrails conspiracy on Wednesday, but did not) and divulged which Conservative candidates it believes have documented problematic views."...
And, so, did Mr. Rustad take the bait?
According to the exalted Mr. Shaw, who appears to have reached the highest of high points on this story that no other Ledgie Boy has even begun to scale so far, the answer is yes.
According to the exalted Mr. Shaw, who appears to have reached the highest of high points on this story that no other Ledgie Boy has even begun to scale so far, the answer is yes.
...Rustad had for months refused to consider any deal with United where it would require him to dismiss candidates he’d previously recruited and were loyal to his party — even if they ended up being revealed to have extreme views on social policies, science and COVID-19 vaccines.The question he faced now was, would it be worth compromising on that position, and replace a few candidates with United members, if it meant removing the United party off the board entirely for the Oct. 19 election?Ultimately, he agreed...
So, no matter how hard super fine folks like, say, Marky Mark, who used to have backroom clout, try to deny that it could happen, it is entirely possible that Mr. Rustad will soon try to jettison the flotsam as he starts to tack back towards the center.
The only problem with such a strategy, which would, of course, welcome any and all deflector media spike spin from very fine 'columnists' who work for previously not-so-secret right-sided prop organs, is that it will be pretty hard for Mr. Rustad to jettison himself.
If you get my (way, way, rightward) drift.
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Sunday morning update: Cindy Harnett has a story up at the Times Colonist that confirms the broad strokes of Mr. Shaw's story including the players, the rooms and the handing over of the oppo research...What it does not have is Mr. Rustad taking the bait/agreeing. Instead, Harnett quotes Falcon saying that he got a 'commitment' from Rustad to work in 'good faith' taking Falcon's 'advice' which he could 'choose to ignore'...Oh, ya, and Falcon also conceded that his actions in the days prior to Wednesday's announcement of the big deal may have been viewed 'as perhaps' duplicitous...You think?
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6 comments:
That was an entertaining read. If we'd been able to film it, it might have gotten an award for something. Sleezy sleezy easy. One might want to ask themselves would you really want to vote for Rustad and his gang. There doesn't appear to be a whole lot of integrity.
It would appear it is easy to get rid of a political party in this province.
What I'd like to know is, why did the woman arrange for the meeting? What caused that, did anyone force this type of a meeting? From what it said on the news, a number of sitting B.C. United MLAs were blindsided.
Never have been keen on the two parties. However, there were people who voted for the B.C. United, they elected MLAs who thought they were going to run again as B.C. United candidates. How did Falcon obtain the authority to eliminate the party from this election without consulting MLAs, the executive of the Party, etc. What this "deal" has done is disenfranchise a number of B.C. citizens.
There are people in this province who have been voting for this party, with one name or another for decades. Now they are disenfranchised. Many may well not vote for the conservatives, given their views on a number of issues. They won't vote for the NDP, so where do they park their votes. It wasn't up to Rustad and Falcon to decide the party they belonged to and voted for would be eliminated from the ballot in the upcoming election. If these two can get away with this, it wont be hard for this to happen in other parties. That isn't how democracy works or ought to work. Couple of scum bags.
Don't like either party, but if they are not going to have as many seats in the Leg. it ought to be by a vote of the citizens of the province not a couple of back room manipulators. Gee it might be easy to do it to Rustad's group next time or another party.
When WAC left the Conservatives and the eventually became a Socred, it made more than one person unhappy. As a kid I can still remember people talking about him "crossing the floor" and y, he didn't tell the members of the party he belonged to.
Re: Rustad dismissing himself
He seems to be a bit of an outsider to begin with and his party has grown with the exodus from another party, many of whom are consummate insiders. There is a good chance that he will get the heave-ho at the first opportunity as the BC Cons suffer the same fate as the BC Liberals of 1991 and Gordon Wilson, being eaten from the inside out. Falcon and Rustad have done a serious job of enshittifying a political process that was already pretty tattered in the best Doctorow tradition. It's akin to what Jimmy P. has done to the wonders of the grocery shopping: you have to buy what he's selling because he owns most of the other guys, so even the appearance of choice has pretty much disappeared. Sturko waits in the wings, and the "press" can recite a whole rosary of boy-oh-boy-oh-boys in their delight at the facilitation of the whole nasty process.
Do they have the time to change the name/s back to Social Credit before the next election?
It would be the finishing touches to an awful cake.
TB
So apparently, Rustad will change all the wingnuts out with regular nuts as a condition of the deal, BC United will supply a case of WD40...
I am going to put my cards on the table first, I will vote Green because it is my belief that current Premier Eby and conservative leader Rustad and their politcal parties are unfit for office.
Do not demonize Rustad, because it will cloud your logic.
The Social Credit Party, as a combination of both Liberal and conservatives which made great progress in BC in the 50's and 60's and had great vision for the province and that party was filled with "whack-a-doodles".
The 1970's saw the social Credit flounder in politcal hubris and ennui, and started the notion that politics was all about rewarding politcal favourites.
This politcal philosophy continued with the Harcourt and Clark NDP in the 90's and finally Gordon Campbell's full blown Trumpian politics (15 years before the age of Trump) became the norm. Despite boos from the left, this continued with the Clark Party and the Horgan. Eby governments of today.
Both the NDP and the Conservatives are guilty of "Gish Gallop" a rhetorical technique in which a person in a debate attempts to overwhelm an opponent by abandoning formal debating principles, providing an excessive number of arguments with no regard for the accuracy or strength of those arguments and that are impossible to address adequately in the time allotted to the opponent.
Eby has abandoned any sort of ethical government (TransLink is a prime example) and yet his supporters condemn the Conservatives, who, as yet, have not shown how they will pervert ethical government.
Basically it is a pox on both their houses.
Did someone running claim to study somewhere but the detail was for 5 days.?
How about how long fir retired cc at sobonne?
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