Cage Match: Twilly

I realise that I'm a bit behind on the times as it were but unfortunately I was away for the last few days at an important conference on the mainland dealing with the outrageous prices of extra dry gin martinis, and as you can imagine, such important deliberations kept me from being able to weigh in on some of the recent events transpiring back on the home front.

It would appear that the first head-to-head of the 2007 election between Danny "Goliath" Williams and Gerry "Job, the righteous Biblical figure God felt the need to repeatedly punish for ambiguous reasons" Reid took place last Thursday.

Now to be fair, it is understandable that the Premier would want to attend a folk festival that involved not only fun but also fish; truly, no sane man can resist such a double-whammy of a siren song. Unfortunately for Mr. Williams this cornucopia of good times happened to be occurring in his opponent's home riding, and it would appear that Mr. Reid also apparently could not contain his enthusiasm for local folk festivals. Despite a lack of neuroticism on Reid's part, the setup seems to be very Seinfeld-esque, and likely even had [G]erry clenching his fist and uttering "Newman!""Williams!" to his steering wheel.

In typical Dan-the-Man style, the Premier was fairly brazen about his intentions in visiting the festival the same time as Reid; the PCs are apparently putting in a special effort to unseat the Opposition leader in the upcoming election. One would assume that simply by running a candidate against him in the area it would provide a good race, but Williams seems very intent on making it personal. As in, crazy ex-girlfriend personal. One would figure two politicians with an axe to grind would at least make an effort to be condescending and out-smug one another with faux smiles and snarky well-wishes, but the visual of the two of them taking the stage without so much as a handshake seems to prop up the "trouble in Paradise" situation. Apparently this is what happens when politicians let the next day "get weird".

Cathartic breakup analogies aside, though, this snapshot of the campaign-to-be would suggest interesting implications for the race to October 9th. I'm going to go ahead and make a point of coining the phrase vendetta politics in describing electioneering which seems to take the political conflict beyond the professional and into personal-rivalry territory.

I mean, yes, obviously the Leader of Government and the Leader of the Opposition will not be best friends who go on hikes together only to be faced with some kind of random adversity which they triumph over and subsequently come out learning more about themselves and each other (with plenty of laughs along the way!), but it does seem to move the election campaign out of the "no hard feelings, this is politics" realm into the "I will crush your dreams" area, and I can't help but feel that sets an ominous precendent.

There have been rumours circulating on message boards and Open Line that the PCs are aiming to/will sweep every seat or otherwise leave Yvonne Jones to fend for herself against a 47-seat Williams Government, and Danny's insistence in personally stepping on Reid's turf would seem to reinforce this vague feeling that the PCs are aiming to go beyond just winning government and moreso trying to actually eliminate the Opposition from the face of God's green earth.

I don't know about anyone else, but for me at least this isn't doing much to lend credence to every PC candidate coming on Open Line and assuring us that everyone in the House contributes to the decisions government makes and it isn't just Danny calling all the shots in authoritarian fashion. Although, I suppose, one-party government does cut out all that time-wasting "democratic accountability" stuff. Who needs that anyways? There are roads that need paving, dammit.

Although, now that I think about it, I can't shake an image of Danny standing up at a town hall meeting, snatching back a contract for roadwork from the local townsfolk and barking, "No soup for you!"