{"id":29577,"date":"2015-01-06T07:40:16","date_gmt":"2015-01-06T12:40:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=29577"},"modified":"2015-01-06T07:40:16","modified_gmt":"2015-01-06T12:40:16","slug":"when-stephen-met-kathleen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/01\/06\/when-stephen-met-kathleen\/","title":{"rendered":"When Stephen met Kathleen"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/politics\/ottawa\/why-harper-met-wynne\/\" target=\"_blank\">Paul Wells<\/a> explains why, despite all the blather from Harper &#8220;supporters&#8221;, the PM finally got around to meeting with the premier of Ontario. It has to do with a number &#8230; a very large number:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The \u201creadout\u201d is a term of art, one I\u2019ve actually only learned in the past couple of years, for a summary of a conversation between two political leaders. It\u2019s usually perfunctory, often designed to obscure as much as it reveals. The readout supplied by the Ontario premier\u2019s office after Kathleen Wynne\u2019s meeting with Stephen Harper is <em>athletically<\/em> happy-happy. Deleting the details actually clarifies the tone. I\u2019m not making this excerpt up. Everyone make friends!:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>\u201cToday\u2019s meeting with the Prime Minister is a positive step forward\u2026 The Prime Minister and I agreed\u2026 Today, the Prime Minister and I had a good discussion\u2026 we agreed that, going forward, our governments will work together \u2026 I am pleased that Prime Minister Harper and I agreed today to continue working together\u2026 agreed to deepen our collaboration\u2026 I am confident that today\u2019s meeting can mark the beginning of such a partnership. The Prime Minister and I agreed to continue\u2026\u201d\u200e\u200e<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But what\u2019s striking is that though the PMO sent out no readout that I\u2019ve received, it did publish a photo of the blessed event. And it\u2019s also a <a href=\"http:\/\/pm.gc.ca\/eng\/news\/2015\/01\/05\/prime-minister-stephen-harper-meets-kathleen-wynne-premier-ontario\" target=\"_blank\">flattering pic<\/a> of both of them. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Okay, so what is the big number of significance here?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>One scrap of data for you: in the 2011 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.elections.ca\/scripts\/ovr2011\/default.html\" target=\"_blank\">federal<\/a> election, there were 951,156 more Ontario voters who voted for the Harper Conservatives than there were Ontario voters who voted for the Hudak Conservatives in the 2014 <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ontario_general_election,_2014#cite_ref-7\" target=\"_blank\">Ontario<\/a> election.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s not quite a million Ontario voters who didn\u2019t vote for Hudak, but whom Harper needs to vote for him if he\u2019s to hold his majority. That\u2019s what political moderation looks like. Harper needs the votes of a hell of a lot of Ontarians who basically have no problem with Kathleen Wynne. Realizing that, and acting on it, is an election-year instinct. It\u2019s the same instinct that made him campaign with old Bill Davis in 2006 after excoriating the former Red Tory premier in print. It\u2019s the instinct that has his PMO send out photos of Harper with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/strombo\/content\/images\/chretien-harper-closer-817.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">Jean Chr\u00e9tien<\/a> and Harper with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pm.gc.ca\/sites\/pm\/files\/media\/assets\/photos\/20110204_PM_Obama_OvalOffice.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">Barack Obama<\/a> every time the PM nears those men. His base can\u2019t stand Chr\u00e9tien, Obama or Wynne. He needs more than his base. On Monday, he came back from vacation and sucked it up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Paul Wells explains why, despite all the blather from Harper &#8220;supporters&#8221;, the PM finally got around to meeting with the premier of Ontario. It has to do with a number &#8230; a very large number: The \u201creadout\u201d is a term of art, one I\u2019ve actually only learned in the past couple of years, for a [&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":[6,53],"tags":[188,957,87,258],"class_list":["post-29577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-politics","tag-electionwatch","tag-kathleenwynne","tag-ontario","tag-stephenharper"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7H3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29577","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=29577"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29578,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29577\/revisions\/29578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}