Monday, April 03, 2006

Give 'Em A Chance Til The Saviour Comes

When it appeared that the Liberal minority governmemt might fall last spring, the MSM dutifully produced a steady stream of polls and stories to convince people that they didn't want an election at that time.

When the government fell, the media simply did a find and replace of "Canadians don't want an election" to "Canadians will punish the opposition for forcing a Christmas election".

Now it appears that Canadians really, really, don't want an election, and the media can't find a way to tell people that they do:

Four out of five Canadians expect opposition parties to give Prime Minister Stephen Harper some breathing room over the next year to implement his Conservative agenda, a new poll shows.

The Ipsos Reid survey, conducted from March 28 to 30 for CanWest News Service and Global National, found little public appetite for an election.

Only six per cent of respondents wanted the new Conservative minority government to be defeated "as soon as possible,'' while 81 per cent said they wanted it to survive for at least a year.

This means Harper will have a "pretty strong hand'' to deliver on his Top 5 priorities when the House of Commons opens for business this week, said Ipsos Reid president Darrell Bricker. "This doesn't mean that (the Conservatives) have carte blanche,'' Bricker said. "What it means is that the public is prepared to see them implement the agenda as they understand it.''


Never mind that three elections in three years would try the public's patience; it would try the media's patience even more.

Not even the most partisan Liberal or media enabler believes that forcing an election before the leadership convention is worth trying, not even if the country should somehow end up embroiled in the worst of all crises.

The media and party need to figure out who the next leader will be before it can develop a joint campaign to make (fill in the blank) the second coming of Trudeau/Laurier/MacKenzie King/Pearson/Other.

So for now, the election drumbeat will be silenced.

But when the Liberal leader emerges out of the crowded field of has-beens, wanna-be's and never-were's, the drumbeat will be sounded all the louder and harder.

Source: Ottawa Citizen

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Never mind that three elections in three years would try the public's patience; it would try the media's patience even more."

Have to disagree. The MSM is already complaining about the PMO for throttling them, they secretly would love an election. Easy postings for them.
Mark Ferguson

The Tiger said...

If anything, Bricker's a Tory.

It's a great poll -- Harper could go pedal to the metal for his five priorities, and die on the hill if he must.

Follow-up election brings an increase in seats -- "he did what he said he'd do" -- or possibly even a majority.

***

I'm slightly more risk-averse -- but is the PM?

no sleep said...

Didn't the MSM dutifully produce the Ipsos poll?

OC

Ted Betts said...

Shhhh, OC. Don't dispell the MSM is out to get us myth. Too many conservative psyches depend upon it. Even neutral reporting like this must be used as evidence of bias because of what it does not say but you know (through telepathy?) that it really wants to say.