Friday, March 24, 2006

It's Garth Again!

Garth Turner is showing what he thinks of the recent PMO order to have all communications vetted beforehand to make sure everybody's staying on message:

Maverick Conservative MP Garth Turner is once again playing the thorn in his government's side, publicly calling on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to scrap part of the Tory election platform that he says is proving unpopular.

But, while he issued a press release yesterday announcing this, the Ontario MP refused to identify which election plank he thinks his government should drop.

Mr. Turner said he's delaying releasing his recommendations until March 29, after he has delivered a copy to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty.

....

He said his recommendations are based on feedback from more than 10,000 Canadians via the Internet, interviews and town halls.

His news release billed the exercise as "what's believed to be the largest prebudget consultation in Canada's history." The MP said it was what he heard during this freelance effort that convinced him part of the Tory platform needed to be shelved.

"I don't think it's affordable, I don't think it's workable and I don't think it really jibes with our themes of doing the greatest good for the greatest number of people," he said of the plank he wants dropped.


How clever of Garth. He'll be keeping this story alive in the media by having everybody guessing what's inside the mystery box, all the while claiming that whatever it is, it's what the people want.

And who can verify Garth's claims independently? Who's to say that dropping this plank came not from the people but from Garth?

Is he going to play the same games about voting against the budget if this mystery plank isn't dropped that he did when he mused about defecting because he couldn't share the same caucus room as David Emerson?

Watch for Garth Turner to try and upstage his own government's budget. He still wishes he, the greatest investment expert in Canadian history, was finance minister.

Source: Globe and Mail

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Much as we need the seat - I sort of wish he would cross over the any one of the other parties!

no sleep said...

Dump him now. He means harm. If he's talking about the day care plan, as I suspect, he belongs with another party anyway.

Anonymous said...

Is there any way we can get Garth Turner to run for the Liberal leadership? He seems to want to take on the role of the official opposition anyways.
And Liberals are disloyal, treacherous and of course, ego maniacal and know it alls who believe their ideas are the only ones with merit and the rest of the world is stupid.
Garth would fit right in.

Anonymous said...

I have it on good authority that Garth is very close with one Joe Clark. I'm not sure if hes trying to sabatoge, but I think he is trying to make the CPC more secceptable for a pink tory take-over.

JM

Anonymous said...

Garth is the sanest one among you Tories

Anonymous said...

Garth should know by now that press releases are not the way to get Stephen Harper to do something. On the contrary, if you make it appear that you're bullying him into something you're far less likely to succeed. If he actually wants to make changes to the party, he could do it privately. If he wants more publicity for himself so he can continue his power trip, he can keep doing what he's doing.

The sad thing is, he's almost guaranteed reelection at this point, since he's one of the better-known MPs right now.

BL said...

Sorry, make that:

http://langhjelmletter.blogspot.com/2006/03/garth-turner-broken-promise-contest.html