Thanks Jim. It Took Courage To Highlight Left Wing Media Bias

One Tory's no-fuss Path to Victory
April 20, 2009 Jim Coyle
Political leaders are forever talking about change. What's curious is how few are actually willing to do things differently.
That's why Christine Elliott, one of four contenders to succeed John Tory as Ontario Progressive Conservative leader, probably deserved a little better than she got last week.
The Whitby-Oshawa MPP held a news conference to set out a plan to defeat Premier Dalton McGuinty in the 2011 election. For her efforts, she received just about zero coverage.
In a way, this was understandable. There was no fire and brimstone in her presentation. There was little of what usually qualifies as news.
Yet there was no small novelty in what she had to say, not to mention the noteworthy evidence of a mature intelligence at work.
Elliott set out what she called The Path to Victory, a two-year tactical plan to defeat the McGuinty government. And one needn't share the aim to be impressed with the thought invested in the proposition.
Even the title of Elliott's plan had one of those quaint subtitles of the sort usually found in such weighty works as The Origin of the Species or Reflections on the Revolution in France – it being, the reader was advised, "a chronological path to victory establishing key milestones necessary to engage party members, stakeholders and the public in the exercise of making the Ontario PC Party a credible alternative to Dalton McGuinty's Liberals in 2011."
No sound-bite artist here. The plan committed Elliott to a remarkably detailed timetable of organization, policy development, candidate recruitment.
That level of commitment is the sort from which action often flows. It's one thing, after all, if someone says they might drop by this weekend. Another entirely when they say they'll be there at 6 and what can they bring.
If Elliott is not seen as the heir to Mike Harris in this race (that honour conceded to consensus front-runner Tim Hudak), she's borrowed the former premier's successful tactic of the early release of his commitments.
It was a full year before the 1995 election that put him in office that Harris launched his Common Sense Revolution. And voters obviously felt comfort in being able to kick the tires before purchase.
What Harris's election also ended was a period in Ontario in which governments, in the memorable phrase of a David Peterson-era Liberal, "just sort of happened."
Both that government and the NDP version that followed were bolts from the blue. Elliott warned, however, that no such luck can be counted on again.
PCs "cannot expect electoral success by betting that Ontarians will be tired of Dalton McGuinty," she said. "To win, we must present an alternate vision that is hopeful, optimistic and confident."
To that end, she put timelines on developing policy, new technology, raising money and membership, finding candidates, expanding the party beyond its traditional geographic and demographic core.
And there was that change refrain again. "Though I haven't been at Queen's Park as long as some of the other candidates, I don't necessarily see that as an impediment."
That's Elliott's campaign theme – that there's little future in trying to reprise the ways and means of the Harris era and dubious wisdom in choosing a leader with little experience beyond the hothouse of elected politics.
"There are no shortcuts to victory," she said. "I am committed to the hard, serious work that goes into winning elections."
Granted, the exercise won Elliott no headlines.
But most folks looking to fill a job opening, and being presented with such a detailed blueprint for how the applicant intended to do it, couldn't help but be a little impressed.
Jim Coyle's provincial affairs column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.