“Pink Floyd” and the Clampetts.Rae Days and massive deficits.With Andrea Horwath’s NDP showing continued momentum in the Ontario election, is it time again for the Bob Rae monster to burst out of the bedroom closet at night? Will he do an encore as a scary apparition at the stroke of midnight around the spooky electoral bonfire?Doug Ford and his Progressive Conservative team are trying to let the Rae bogeyman out of the cage for one more tour.Why not? It has worked before.It was used by Stephen Harper to push back Jack Layton’s 2011 Orange Wave at the Ontario border, by Ontario Tories and Liberals to great effect any time a provincial NDP leader so much as showed a pulse, and it was a strong counter-current to Rae’s attempt to run for permanent leader of the federal Liberals.Read more:As Horwath’s poll numbers rise, Doug Ford focuses his attacks on the NDP An NDP government would not use back-to-work legislation to end strikes, party leader Andrea Horwath saysOpinion | Martin Regg Cohn: The referendum on Andrea Horwath’s NDP is just beginningIt has even been used by a federal NDP leader, Tom Mulcair, who told 2015 election audiences that New Democrats could be fiscally responsible “with one exception — but he’s a Liberal.”Rae is not the only former NDP premier to be effectively demonized. British Columbia Socreds effectively did the same with the Dave Barrett government of the early 1970s, but that hex, while powerful, did not have the legs of the anti-Rae effort.Mockery, mythology and mendacity have been the hallmarks of those who have practised the Rae voodoo over the years.New Democrats have been reticent to defend the Rae record, and federal Liberals had little appetite for defending his NDP legacy as a potential federal leader.In short, the ghost of Rae as this province’s only New Democrat premier has shown enduring resilience over almost 28 years since his Sept. 6, 1990 election.But we ...
|
