Liberals attempt to bribe their way to a riding win!

[CaptainCrunch]

hmm, one is trying to smuggle liquor and a car across the border. Another one is trying to fix an election and pervert democracy.

Am I the only one that see's a huge difference here, and after the Belinda gate, and the other one where the Liberal's tried to pay off another conservative to cross the floor, I kinda wonder how common this practice is?

Sure makes the Liberal's look entirely more scummy on a level much higher then the drug runner.

Bad timing for the Liberal's it could cost them a lot of seats.

[Jagger]

I really and truly do not understand how the Liberals can try and spin this that is the same thing as the Conservative candidate. Like others have said it's not even close to the same thing. Pitiful...

[RougeUnderoos]

Originally Posted by Jagger

I really and truly do not understand how the Liberals can try and spin this that is the same thing as the Conservative candidate. Like others have said it's not even close to the same thing. Pitiful...

I don't know if the Liberals are trying to spin it into the same thing or not. Maybe they are. I'm not a Liberal. All I know is that a Liberal dummy and a Conservative dummy got nailed doing something dumb and both sides punted their own dummy.

It seems that this has come down to a meaningless "which guy was dumber" contest. I say it's a draw.

[RougeUnderoos]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

hmm, one is trying to smuggle liquor and a car across the border. Another one is trying to fix an election and pervert democracy.

You are an upstanding, honest fellow, so please answer this question honestly: if you vote for a guy and he gets elected and then you find out 2 weeks later that he is in court on smuggling charges and is facing possible jail time, do you think he has tried to pervert democracy?

[Winsor_Pilates]

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

You are an upstanding, honest fellow, so please answer this question honestly: if you vote for a guy and he gets elected and then you find out 2 weeks later that he is in court on smuggling charges and is facing possible jail time, do you think he has tried to pervert democracy?

Not if he's Conservative

[HOZ]

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

You are an upstanding, honest fellow, so please answer this question honestly: if you vote for a guy and he gets elected and then you find out 2 weeks later that he is in court on smuggling charges and is facing possible jail time, do you think he has tried to pervert democracy?

No he broke the law. And in his case he should pay a hefty fine.


The other was removing the constituents' right to free unmanipulated election.

The two cases are night and day.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

You are an upstanding, honest fellow, so please answer this question honestly: if you vote for a guy and he gets elected and then you find out 2 weeks later that he is in court on smuggling charges and is facing possible jail time, do you think he has tried to pervert democracy?

Not unless the Conservative was using all of that booze to get the voters drunk and then when they're drunk driving them to a voting station and making them vote conservative.

Did the conservative break the law, absolutely, and I think criminals under investigation, or who have been convicted of a felony should not be allowed to hold seats in parliment.

I think there is a huge fundemental difference between the two however, and what I feel disturbing is the indication that the Liberal candidate was not that he was trying to fix one election, but two as he was going to try to fix a civic election.

in a nut shell. The conservative's crime was apolitical, the Liberal's was very political, and very third world pseudo-democratic.

[MarchHare]

Was either crime endorsed or condoned in any way by the federal Liberal or Conservative party? No, and upon learning about the crimes, both parties expelled their candidates. Trying to paint this as some kind of Liberal scandal is pointless. Both crimes were the isolated actions of one individual at the local level. Both parties took the proper corrective action. There is no scandal here for either the Liberals or the Conservatives.

[Flame On]

I'm not surprised with Con supporters here like Captain C and Hoz who borderline dismiss the CRIME of smuggling. Listening to them it sounds like he should only get slapped with a fine alla turning left illegally:

And in his case he should pay a hefty fine.

What if all the tax evading Cigarette runners and booze runners that are stealing from tax payers pockets, were to be dismissed so lightly.
You're right one was apolitical, but that sounds like any crime might be forgiven if it was apolitical. I tend to think it's pretty serious. I mean lets say he got through and it came to light later, it would have put our borders and custom agents in a pretty bad light with our twitchy southern buddies as it would certainly achieve lots of press.

Sure makes the Liberal's look entirely more scummy on a level much higher then the drug runner.

What ever. Who are you voting for again, who have you always voted for? I've never voted liberal by the way.
It's more like night and dusk than night and day.
Christ what are we arguing?

[CaptainCrunch]

woah woah woah, I'm not dismissing anything or marginalizing anything, your making a pretty large leap here. But you have to admit that the crime of smuggling is a lot more common place then trying to fix an election.

Will the conservative go through the courts, absolutely, will he get punished absolutely, but probably under the current Canadian justice system he will get a fine.

The Liberal candidate was trying to subvert the Canadian electorial system by offering to fix the results of another civic election, thats a huge thing and not all that commonplace. The reason why I think its going to kill the Liberals and should kill the Liberals is because of thier track record of manipulating the system before (Stronach being offered a cabinet position to cross, the attempted bribary of the other conservative MP at the same time). Like I mentioned before, if the Conservative was using the booze that he smuggled in to effect the results of his riding then it would be somewhat equivalent.

But these two things are vastly different. One is a fairly common crime, the other is an attack on democracy.

Its great that Martin has booted this guy, but I really think its too late to help the Liberal's, and I think a cynical voter base is going to

A) Figure that the only reason why Martin booted this guy instead of shoveling it into the background is because Harper booted his candidate the day before

B) Say that one corrupt Liberal is all corrupt Liberals, especially since this scandal came in the west where Liberal seats are impossible to come by and thats why this is going to be looked at as a Liberal scandal.

And while I do believe that the Liberal crime is far far worse because of the allegations of the Liberal's being able to fix a civic election (And understand that this was the concept that the Liberal was selling to the NDP candidate). Smuggling liquor is usually going to be punished by an applicable fine since its not high up on a serious crime issue.

[ernie]

another instance of trying to influence the election?

A Sherbrooke Liberal candidate's campaign was itself accused of dirty tricks this weekend by a local paper whose reporter posed as a student and was offered a cash payment on election day for their help.

Could of course just be a reporter looking to make a name for him/herself.

in this article
http://www.ottawasun.com/News/Electi...95867-sun.html