An open thread, for those who wish one.
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Update: Something tells me this wasn’t the takeaway the NDP were looking for.
Update: Lance’s Remarks
PM Harper was strong and factual during the economy segment. He was on defence for the whole thing, but held ground. He wisely let the progressives push their cred against each other during environment. During that segment, I was taken aback at the hypocrisy from the previous segment. During Economy it was all attacks on things like “Canada is in a recession”, “job report is bad”, etc. The sector that’s causing that is the oil and gas sector, everything else is growing. Then immediately go into the environment topic and it’s all “we have to be more responsible”, “are you for Kinder-Morgan”…. Does the left actually think about what they’re saying? No one touched him on the Foreign Policy segment. PM Harper forgot to say thank-you during his close. He did, however, ask for my vote.
May was May with one exception, when she called out Trudeau and Mulcair during their separatism fight. I thought that was golden, but totally naive. Just elect her Speaker of the House and be done with it. Not only will it shut her up, she’ll probably be good at the job.
Trudeau did better than expected, but he was debating Mulcair, not the PM. He was auditioning for the Opposition. His closing statement was…umm…far out.
Mulcair was off-putting to me during the whole time. He was articulate and explained his points well, but his method of speaking was disconcerting. After the Parliament attack last fall, his manner of speaking was bang-on correct. Show calmness, don’t show anger, forceful yet quiet; but tonight it was completely the wrong tone. In my mind he’s run too far away from the ‘Angry Tom’ label. I completely disagree with most of what he said, of course, so I won’t comment on the meat of his statements.
Aided and abetted by the media Mulcair in his usual style of distorting a quote is given a free ride by the media in reporting as fact and attributing something to Prime Minister Harper that he didn’t say.
Mulcair said ” according a lot of observers we are already in a recession”
To which Harper replies
” I am not denying that”
That answer by Harper does not say he agrees with those observers that we are now in a recession as Mulcair and some in the media are saying today.
Harper would not and could not deny that a lot of observers say we are in a recession – however there are also a lot of observers who say we are not already in a recession.
Can Mulcair deny that?
To clarify what was said can the media ask Mulcair that question. Canadians know the answer but Canadians also want to know if Mulcair’s answer would be further misrepresentatiom and misinterpretation
Congratulations to all the commentators here, I purposefully did not watch the debate. By the sounds of it I didn’t miss anything. It sounds by the comments that this one went as well or should I say badly as the last one, a Harper pile on. The minor characters may have changed but their lines have remained the same and are not worth listening to, and the cameo appearance did not add to the play. A big round of applause and hearty thanks to Shamrock and Occam for their insight and their staying power to view probably a debate that would have been thrown out of a grade ten debating class in any Canadian high school in the Sixties. Thanks to both of you I was able to watch the Blue Jay game uninterrupted knowing I’d get a full report from someone here at SDA.
Political debate: a battle of wits between unarmed combatants.