{"id":19923,"date":"2018-02-22T11:33:41","date_gmt":"2018-02-22T16:33:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=19923"},"modified":"2018-02-22T11:33:41","modified_gmt":"2018-02-22T16:33:41","slug":"politics-as-usual-politics-unusual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/politics-as-usual-politics-unusual\/","title":{"rendered":"POLITICS AS USUAL: Politics Unusual"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

I was on vacation last week getting some much needed sun, sand and ocean waves.
\nMy timing was clearly perfect given the huge dump of snow and freezing temperatures that occurred while I was away. Coming home to a driveway with 15 centimetres of snow on it \u2013 with a crunchy icy top no less \u2013 was certainly a rather bracing \u201cWelcome home,\u201d but I\u2019ll take it. It\u2019s great to get away but it\u2019s always great to come home to Aurora.
\nWhile I did manage to disconnect from work \u2013 well, I still checked in for emails and a few outstanding matters \u2013 politics was still ever-present. The hotel had international CNN so, of course, I watched that while getting ready for dinner each day. And I caught up on Canadian news by reading the Globe & Mail (and The Auroran, of course)
\non-line at the beach.
\nAnd goodness what a week in political news it was, and yet quickly surpassed by an even greater political debacle this week.
\nThe US is still the circus sideshow it has been since November 2016, but now even more so. Now even the adults in the room, the folks that ostensibly have the credentials to keep the lights on and the office humming, are screwing up royally. An entire office of staffers without security clearance? After more than a year in office, there are still thirty staff and counting, without the necessary clearance to be there, including a number of senior staff with direct access to the Oval Office.
\nIsn\u2019t it the job of the Chief of Staff to \u2013 I don\u2019t know \u2013 staff an office? Folks can\u2019t pin this mess on Trump. Kelly should wear this.
\nAnd back here in Canada? Provincial politics in Ontario has been turned upside down with the incredibly fast downfall of opposition leader Patrick Brown and the coterie of folks around him. When I first wrote this article, Patrick Brown had stepped down as Leader of the Opposition, the PCs had an interim leader and will be having a leadership contest within a matter of weeks \u2013 all just less than four months before the provincial election. But it got all that much more bizarre this past Friday when Brown announced in dramatic fashion that he was seeking to run for the very position from which he literally just resigned (or did he?).
\nThis, the same day that the guy that replaced him in the job that he\u2019s now seeking removed him from caucus. Can you keep that straight?
\nSo, he will be running to the lead the party that won\u2019t let him even sit with them. Yikes.
\nPersonally, I am unclear how entering the race at this point is in any way a positive thing for himself or for the party, for that matter. What is the end game here? Honestly, I just don\u2019t get it. This cannot end well for anyone.
\nFurther confounding the issue is that the recently released PC provincial policy platform \u2013 the Peoples Guarantee \u2013 is on shaky ground. The carbon tax \u2013 an integral part of the People\u2019s Guarantee \u2013 is not popular amongst the party faithful, and three of the leadership hopefuls do not support it
\nSeems then that the People\u2019s Guarantee \u2013 the party\u2019s platform – is in danger of circling the drain depending on who secures the leadership.
\nSo, less than four months out from an election, the opposition party arguably has no clear leader and no clear platform. Seems pretty grim to me but things have been turned around before so who knows what will happen next.
\nRegardless, this is going to be a very interesting few months in politics.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Alison Collins-Mrakas I was on vacation last week getting some much needed sun, sand and ocean waves. My timing was clearly perfect given the huge dump of snow and freezing temperatures that occurred while I was away. Coming home to a driveway with 15 centimetres of snow on it \u2013 with a crunchy icy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_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},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","category-opinion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-5bl","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-21 23:34:08","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19923","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=19923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19923\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}