Stephen Taylor

Carol Jamieson appeared on CTV’s question period this afternoon with Conservative strategist Goldie Hyder.

Watch the video here

Goldie asks the main question: Why are we here?

Yes, it all seems like a manufactured crisis. We’ve got 200,000 members and a tiny minority (about 20) are calling for Stephen Harper’s head.

Carol Jamieson will be appearing on Goldhawk Live, a CPAC current affairs call-in television show to harp about Harper. The Trojan Tory will appear live at 8pm EST (5pm PST) on Sunday September 25th (this Sunday) and you can call in to express your opinions or questions by calling 1-877-296-2722.

For call-in shows, I offer the following tips:

• Call early in the show
• If it’s busy, redial. You will get through
• Write out your comments before hand and practice them a few times
• DO NOT use ad hominem (personal insults) in your argument. This only hurts your point.
• Keep your comment/question short to 20-30 seconds (you can even stretch up to about 45-60 seconds on CPAC). Do not go over. Do not ramble. Prepare your statement (see tip above)
• Mute your television once you are on hold. You’ll eliminate sound feedback and will be able to hear the show on the phone while you’re on hold.

Here are some talking points for supporters of Stephen Harper:

• You’ve organized against four Conservative leaders during your history with conservative parties. Not only have you organized against Stephen Harper, but you’ve organized against Stockwell Day, John Diefenbaker and even Joe Clark. Why should anyone take any weight with your current statements? They would seem to represent your personal style more than the current person that you’re attacking.
• It is disgraceful what was done with the Enza campaign. Enza’s former campaign manager sent a letter to conservative bloggers this past week and from the tone of his letter, he sounded like he believed that his team and Enza had a shot to make real change. However, it seems that you (Ms. Jamieson) just wanted to make an angry statement against Stockwell Day by using someone as fodder for political purposes. People with gender identity issues often do not have the easiest lives. While you used Enza as a stick to beat Day and the CA, you didn’t seem to have the intention of following through with the campaign and you only used Enza to make a point. I doubt that this paralleled Enza’s political aspirations. Could you comment on this?
• A grassroots political party such as the Conservative Party discourages groupthink while encouraging dissenting opinions on various issues including leadership. This is an honest strength that the party has over the Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc. However, do you not think that dropping a bomb in Stephen Harper’s lap only one month before a potential election call is not an exercise in strengthening of the party through the grassroots but rather an opportunistic attack driven by your own agenda?
• This is a question for Goldhawk. Recently, Carol Jamieson seems to have gotten a lot of exposure on CTV, the Globe and Mail and now on your show. Do you think that the media should provide equal time for each and every member that supports Stephen Harper?
• This is a question for Goldhawk. Do you believe that CTV, the Globe and Mail and your show should dedicate multiple news cycles to the dissent that exists in the Liberal party?

Here are some talking points for those that do not support Stephen Harper:

• Hi Goldhawk, hi Carol. I’m a member/voter that supports the Liberal Party / NDP. I just wanted to say that I didn’t know who Carol Jamieson was before this week but I got to say her opinion should be taken as valid. I’m just glad that there is someone speaking out against the Conservative Party that supports my own political bias. I mean, if Stephen Harper himself came out against Stephen Harper last week, I would have even supported his opinion.
• Carol, I’m selling memberships for the Liberal Party of Canada. Did you already buy one or do you fear that declaring your real party colours will get you less attention in the media?

UPDATE 9/22: Click here (If you haven’t already, read the original post below)

Carol Jamieson submitted what one might call a press release to Pierre Bourque’s news blog in memo format which was addressed to Conservative party members.

No surprise, this “conservative” wants Stephen Harper to resign and must want the Tories to lose the next election.

But while this woman is labelled as a “party organizer” by the Gloria Galloway of the Globe and Mail, Carol Jamieson has organized against a variety of Conservative leaders.

Let’s start with Stephen Harper:

• Organized against him with Belinda Stronach leadership bid
• Organized against him at Montreal policy convention in which Harper received 84% support. (She passed out buttons with the clever 1999 catchphrase “Vote Harper off the island”)
• Organizing against him with Gloria Galloway and four inconsequential Quebeckers with just over a month before Gomery releases his “name names” report.

Now, let’s look at past leaders,
Stockwell Day:
Organized against Stockwell Day with the Enza Anderson campaign

Would you believe that she even organized against Joe Clark (whom she served in the PMO during his 9 month stint as Prime Minister)?
She sure did

A letter circulated by two dozen Progressive Conservatives urges leader Joe Clark to resign, according to a published report. The Globe and Mail said Friday the letter advises Clark to resign before next month’s performance review in order to avoid embarrassment. It goes on to acknowledge Clark’s contributions to the party during the last federal election, but says it’s time to make way for a new leader. According to the Globe, two of the Tories circulating the letter are Kevin Gallagher and Carol Jamieson. Both helped Clark with his last leadership campaign.

She even organized against John Diefenbaker:
“I’ve been in key rolls in many leadership campaigns from replacing John Diefenbaker to electing…” — Carol Jamieson (from comments on my blog)

UPDATE: National Councillor and Blogging Tory Vitor Marciano has more

… the Greater Toronto Area President’s Council is an informal organization, with no official party recognition whatsoever. To the best of my knowledge, it hasn’t met since April. That might be because

1. regardless of its name – its leadership are not EDA Presidents and
2. the EDA Presidents are busy doing very important things like getting ready for an election which will happen some time between now and mid April.

Being a Vice-Chair of an informal organization that doesn’t meet much, doesn’t make someone indispensible; it doesn’t give someone a mandate.

UPDATE: CPC Candidate (and former PC cabinet minister) Garth Turner also responds.

[Carol Jamieson] wants Harper to resign. If he does not, she asks, “How does that help us convince Mr. And Mrs. Average Canadian that we hear their concerns…?”

Maybe I’m too simple, but it seems to me that once you pick a leader, you support that leader. It also strikes me the leader is but one aspect of a political party and what we all should be doing within that party. The political process is a deeper and bigger than one man, regardless of what the media tells you. Leaders come and leaders go, while the people remain.

How do we convince Mr. And Mrs. Average Canadian? You talk to them, Carol.

UPDATE: Angry in the Great White North has a letter from Enza Anderson’s former campaign manager:

You may be interested to know that it was the very same Carol Jamieson who contacted the infamous Enza SUPERMODEL Anderson a few years back to offer her support, on behalf she said of Joe Clarke [sic], to assist Enza in running for the leadership of the (then) Canadian Alliance Party.

How do I know this…? – well, I was Enza’s campaign manager!

Jamieson told us that they wanted to embarrass the CA by running an unorthodox candidate such as Enza.

Carol promised she could easily deliver the $25,000 fee to enter the race, as well as the 300 or so nomination names of CA members across Canada.

We had a falling out with Carol, but well before that it was evident Carol could not deliver.

Methinks Carol is a very angry lady who likes to destroy rather than build. [emphasis added]

UPDATE: Right Ho! (everyone’s favourite anonymous MSM blogger) adds his own thoughts:

My thoughts? I’ve met Carol Jamieson on a few occasions. Nothing that she has done has surprised me, because she has always been a rabble-rouser of sorts. She’s not unique, of course, since every political party has their fair share of them. But most people in the old PC Party (before Brian Mulroney left) knew what she was all about, especially those of us who were truly on the right side of the political spectrum.

That being said, she’s really done it this time. It’s one thing to express your opinion, which conservatives fully believe in. It’s quite another thing to call for a lynch mob against a party leader. She got away with it in the past, but it’s a whole new ball game with a whole new set of rules. Loyalty to the party and the leader must be emphasized.

UPDATE: I just received a copy of letter originally from Jenni Byrne, Deputy Director of Political Operations, addressed to party staffers.

By now you’ve all seen today’s CTV Newsnet attack piece on Stephen.

The CTV Ottawa Bureau rushed to air this morning with a series of factually inaccurate stories.

– They started today by claiming an Ontario MP had called for the Leader to resign immediately.
This turned out to be Carol Jamieson, who is not an MP and has never been an MP.

– They claimed leading voices in the Party in Toronto were calling for Stephen to resign.

– They claimed the Party’s National Council was meeting this afternoon to revoke Jamieson’s
membership. This was not true.

All these stories come from the same network that rushed to report about a few layoffs in the
Leader’s Office two weeks ago, and a few days later that Lucien Bouchard had died. There’s
obviously no fact-checking process at CTV these days.

The fact is there are always dissidents in every party. Paul Martin has had his own problems
this week with internal criticisms from former candidates in Quebec (strangely, not a lead story
at CTV).

I appreciate all the candidates who called today to tell us how well they are doing at the doors,
how much money they are raising, and how much Canadians want a change of government.
Keep up the solid work.

UPDATE 9/22:Blogging Tory Adam Daifallah points me towards Joan Tintor, a former PC’er with who worked on the GTA President’s Council with Carol Jamieson:

She first offers the following context:

Note: the author is a conservative who has never belonged to the Reform party or the Canadian Alliance, and came to support merger only after the PCs were reduced to 12 seats in the 2000 election.

and here are some excerpts from her letter:

I volunteered to be the interim secretary of the GTA Presidents’ council when Brett Snider founded it last year. When I was asked — repeatedly — to stand for the position of permanent secretary, one of the reasons I declined was the involvement of Carol Jamieson, who in recent years has been slowly destroying her enviable reputation as a political organizer, replacing it with a reputation as a political wing nut. My decision was vindicated when she reportedly appeared at the party’s March policy convention, flogging buttons attacking Stephen Harper. Now she has come out publicly calling for Harper’s resignation.

…

Tony Clement was his usual astute self when he observed that Belinda sucks all the oxygen out of a room. Sadly, little of that oxygen seems to reach her brain stem. I suspect that the main reason Harper hired none of Belinda’s acolytes is because accommodating their pay demands would first require the firing of multitudes. (I wonder whether Carol thinks that now that Harper has fired multitudes, he should still hire Belinda’s people.)

Then Carol undercuts all she has just written, with her view that “the new Conservative Party of Canada had no chance of convincing the Canadian electorate that it was any different than the Canadian Alliance once it picked Stephen Harper as its first leader.” So Carol never supported Harper from the get-go and everything that has happened since has served to confirm that view. So where’s the news here?

I did not support Stephen Harper for leader, but I am frustrated and mystified at why so many in the media and even in our own party are so quick to conclude that he is to blame for the opportunism, venality and incompetence of others. Harper does not strike me as a man who has been plotting and scheming his entire adult life to live at 24 Sussex (unlike the current occupant), but who has reluctantly stepped forward on occasions when he looked around and saw the alternatives were no better qualified or staffed than he. I suspect that the antics of the Carol Jamiesons of the party do little to alter that view.

What is going on here? And will CTV catch onto this? What have we come to expect concerning accuracy and impartiality in the media in this country?

To me, this represents the same level of media bias that brought down Dan Rather. This is analogous in so many ways (biased news organization that depends on suspect evidence to attempt to convert the viewer to their biased view regarding the candidate running for the country’s top office).

UPDATE: Globe and Mail prints compounded hearsay:

Not only does the G&M give credit to Jamieson’s assertion that she brought Belinda Stronach into the Conservative Party,

Ms. Jamieson, who helped recruit Belinda Stronach into the party’s leadership race which Mr. Harper won

the national newspaper also prints hearsay based upon hearsay:

[Jamieson] said she’d heard that Mr. Harper ran roughshod over his MPs, telling them at a British Columbia meeting that they were not an advisory board.

First, when will the Globe and Mail, and CTV realize that Jamieson is neither a “party organizer” (see thorough debunking at the beginning of this post), nor is she “senior” in any way that would imply clout.

Second, claiming that you “heard something” and then quote it as a source is called “hearsay”. Quoting a source that “heard something” is compounded hearsay. It’s amazing what passes as journalism these days.

These aren’t even opinion pieces, they are presented as “news” in the Globe and Mail and on CTV.