{"id":15668,"date":"2012-06-26T10:49:58","date_gmt":"2012-06-26T15:49:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=15668"},"modified":"2013-05-15T10:09:05","modified_gmt":"2013-05-15T15:09:05","slug":"the-draft-andrew-coyne-movement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/06\/26\/the-draft-andrew-coyne-movement\/","title":{"rendered":"The &#8220;Draft Andrew Coyne&#8221; movement"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve met Andrew Coyne. We had a pleasant chat about political matters a few years ago (although I was one of dozens of Toronto-area bloggers he talked with that night: I doubt he remembers me). I often agree with his writings (and even when I don&#8217;t, he&#8217;s usually <a href=\"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?s=Coyne\" target=\"_blank\">quotable<\/a>). But how would he fare as a candidate for the Liberal leadership? <a href=\"http:\/\/abacusdata.ca\/2012\/06\/26\/coynemania-the-numbers-behind-andrew-coynes-favourability\/\" target=\"_blank\">Abacus<\/a> ran the numbers:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Nationally, most Canadians told us they didn\u2019t know enough about Mr. Coyne to say whether they had a favourable or unfavourable impression of him. Sixty-four percent were not sure of their opinion while 15% said they had a favourable impression while 21% had an unfavourable impression. Unfortunately for Mr. Coyne, the percentage of respondents who had \u201cvery unfavourable\u201d was higher than those who had a \u201cvery favourable\u201d impression of him (9% very unfavourable vs. 3% very favourable).<\/p>\n<p>Nonetheless, there are \u201cpockets\u201d of Coynemania out there.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Men are slightly more likely to have a favourable impression of him than women (men 18% favourable, women 12% \u2013 women were also much more likely to be unsure).<\/li>\n<li>There was no significant age difference although older Canadians (no surprisingly) were more likely to be aware of Mr. Coyne.<\/li>\n<li>Regionally, he is more popular in Manitoba and Saskatchewan (25% favourable) than in other regions of the country. He is a tough sell in Quebec where his favourable rating is a mere 8%.<\/li>\n<li>Considering his occupation and the audience likely to read and watch him, it is no surprise that respondents with a university degree were most aware and favourable to Mr. Coyne. 24% of those with a bachelor\u2019s degree and 29% of those with a post-graduate degree had a favourable impression of the <em>National Post<\/em> columnist.<\/li>\n<li>He is also more likely to be viewed favourably by those who live in urban communities (urban 18% favourable, suburban 13% favourable, rural 12% favourable).<\/li>\n<li>Mr. Coyne is also viewed more favourable by those who own stocks, bonds, or mutual funds: 20% favourable vs. 10% among those who don\u2019t own those kinds of investments.<\/li>\n<li>Finally, there isn\u2019t a significant partisan difference. Those who voted Liberal in 2011 are only slightly more likely to view him positively than NDP and CPC voters but the differences are marginal. He is a post-partisan candidate!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know if he&#8217;s actually interested in a political career, but he&#8217;d at least be a different kind of candidate than the Liberals have had in decades. I&#8217;ve never voted Liberal in my life, but I could imagine voting for a Liberal if Andrew Coyne was the Liberal leader. He appears to actually believe in smaller government and free markets &mdash; which is why he&#8217;d never be able to run as a Conservative. He&#8217;s on the record as being almost libertarian in his views on individual rights (especially on Nanny State issues) &mdash; which is why he couldn&#8217;t run as a New Democrat.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not clear whether there are any members of today&#8217;s Liberal Party of Canada who could cope with a classical liberal as leader. But it <em>would<\/em> create a viable third choice in federal politics: that&#8217;s worth a lot in my books.<\/p>\n<p><b>Update<\/b>: There&#8217;s a Twitter hashtag for the movement: <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/search\/%23coyne4lpc\" target=\"_blank\">#coyne4lpc<\/a>, and Jesse Helmer points out that there&#8217;s a Facebook group, too:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/nrusson?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@nrusson<\/a> you may want to check out <a href=\"http:\/\/t.co\/HeQMo71H\">http:\/\/t.co\/HeQMo71H<\/a>. Started by Liberals, so there&#39;s certainly some who support the idea.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Jesse Helmer (@jesse_helmer) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/jesse_helmer\/status\/217649296869310464?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 26, 2012<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><b>Update, the second<\/b>: Apparently Andrew Coyne is getting into the swing of being a big-time politician, having already fired his first campaign manager:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Can&#39;t believe the way <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/acoyne?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@acoyne<\/a> callously sacked campaign manager <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/npsteve?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@NPSteve<\/a>. Will hurt him with the prized cartoon-reading-illiterate demo.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Colby Cosh (@colbycosh) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/colbycosh\/status\/217662904047116289?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 26, 2012<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve met Andrew Coyne. We had a pleasant chat about political matters a few years ago (although I was one of dozens of Toronto-area bloggers he talked with that night: I doubt he remembers me). I often agree with his writings (and even when I don&#8217;t, he&#8217;s usually quotable). But how would he fare as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10,28,53],"tags":[817,572,908,550,322,213,458,217],"class_list":["post-15668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-liberty","category-media","category-politics","tag-laissez-faire","tag-leadership","tag-liberalparty","tag-libertarianism","tag-nannystate","tag-newspapers","tag-parliament","tag-rights"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-44I","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15668"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20280,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15668\/revisions\/20280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}