{"id":12346,"date":"2015-10-21T17:51:16","date_gmt":"2015-10-21T21:51:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=12346"},"modified":"2015-10-28T16:53:54","modified_gmt":"2015-10-28T20:53:54","slug":"politics-as-usual-the-enemy-of-my-enemy-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/politics-as-usual-the-enemy-of-my-enemy-2\/","title":{"rendered":"POLITICS AS USUAL: The Enemy of my Enemy"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Alison Collins-Mrakas<\/strong><\/p>\n

I fully admit that this week\u2019s article is written on the fly.
\nBut in my defence, I did have a completely different article written for this week. That, however, was written before I saw the huge advertisement in the Globe and Mail last week from a group known as \u201cJust the Facts Canada.\u201d
\nWhen I saw that, I tossed out what I had and decided to focus on this extraordinary advertisement.
\nI had to read it multiple times, reading the page over and over, absolutely incredulous at what was presented. All I could think was, \u201cboy oh boy, some folks are really pulling out all the stops to prevent another Conservative government.\u201d
\nIf you haven\u2019t already seen it, the advertisement in the Globe (and I don\u2019t know if it is similarly published in the other dailies), is framed as an Open Letter to Mr. Trudeau, Mr. Mulcair and Ms. May. The tag line? \u201cOn October 19th vote strategically for the Canada you want.\u201d Not sure who the \u201cyou\u201d is or who defines what Canada the \u201cyou\u201d want.
\nThey advocate the parties working, \u201c\u2026co-operatively in strategic ridings.\u201d
\nNot sure they got the memo yet, but political parties in the midst of a knock-down-drag-out fight to the finish are hardly going to get together to \u201ccollaborate\u201d.
\nThe gist of the letter is that some ridings are more \u201cwinnable\u201d by certain parties. The good folks at \u201cJust the Facts Canada\u201d have produced a list (!) of ridings where the parties are likeliest to win against the Conservatives. These \u201cFacts\u201d are supported by stats from what they describe as \u201ccredible polling of threehundredeight.com\u201d. It goes on to list about 20 ridings in which the NDP are poised to beat the Conservatives and about 50 that the Liberals are poised to win.
\nThat is, unless the vote is split amongst the NDP, Liberal and Green party.
\nAnd that is the thrust of the letter. That, to ensure that said parties win said ridings, the others should fall on their swords in support of the common good \u2013 that good being defined as the \u201cremoval of Stephen Harper\u201d.
\nThe enemy of my enemy is my friend, approach to political strategy.
\nThe conceit in the whole thing is the extraordinary premise that the parties \u2013 NDP, Liberal \u2013 are interchangeable, and the Greens are simply an afterthought. It is truly an astonishing premise to posit let alone advocate. The letter actually states that most Canadians would not have a concern with \u201ceither of you\u201d as Prime Minister.
\nWow.
\nSo people do not care if it is Mulcair as PM as long as it isn\u2019t Harper?
\nNDPs would line up behind Trudeau, as long as Harper goes down in flames? Sorry, but I find that truly hard to swallow.
\nThe most galling statement I have to say is the entreaty to Elizabeth May more or less saying, \u201cyou don\u2019t have a hope in heck of winning so don\u2019t act as a spoiler and withdraw.\u201d Okay that is paraphrasing a bit, but not by much.
\nCalls for strategic voting are nothing new. Every election has some level of push, urging candidates in \u201closing\u201d positions to drop out in favour of allowing voters to vote for the candidate that will \u2013 supposedly \u2013 \u201cdefeat\u201d the candidate that some voters do not want.
\nWhat is new about this one though is the level of organization of this campaign. And the funding.
\nThe cost of a full page ad in the Globe and Mail is not exactly chump change.
\nIt will be interesting to see if their efforts have worked. If Harper is defeated, I am sure they\u2019ll take credit regardless.
\nNext week, when all the results are in, I will do a commentary on what if any parts of this strategic voting strategy actually worked.
\nUntil then, stay informed, stay involved because this is \u2013 after all \u2013 Our Town.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Alison Collins-Mrakas I fully admit that this week\u2019s article is written on the fly. But in my defence, I did have a completely different article written for this week. That, however, was written before I saw the huge advertisement in the Globe and Mail last week from a group known as \u201cJust the Facts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-3d8","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-04 06:14:42","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12346\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}