Greg Weston - Toronto Sun
Recently at the Mosport raceway near Toronto, a great honkin’ Dodge stock car with a cool blue Conservative party logo on the hood took Canadian taxpayers for a little ride.
In an apparent attempt to woo the speedway crowd, Stephen Harper’s party of fiscal prudence is paying an undisclosed amount to sponsor the privately owned race car in some NASCAR events, a first for any political organization in this country.
Conservatives say they are merely reaching out to their own. To quote a newspaper interview with Doug Finley, the guy likely to be running the Conservatives’ next election campaign, NASCAR fans are “our kind of people.”
“They’re hard-working families. They’re taxpayers who play by the rules. And those are the people we’re targeting.”
Truth be known, many of the Conservative party’s “kind of people” are also going to the races in the hope of watching that big Tory logo become part of a twisted wreckage of steel and rubber.
Um. Canadian Taxpayers are paying for this.
Hello.
A Dodge on the NASCAR Canada circuit with shiny party logos is going to convince me to vote Conservative.
via: Jordon Cooper
Published 1 year, 3 months ago
Search
Subscribe 
You are currently browsing the Bene Diction Blogs On weblog archives.
Related Entries
- Scientology joins the NASCAR circuit
- Conservative Party on the record
- The election I've stopped paying attention to
- When a politican blogs
- Canada's War on Drugs and attack ads
- CMIS wants you
- Oh oh Canada
- Garth Turner blog getting hit
- Conservative expert says Cadman/Zytaruk tape not altered
- Conservative Party of Canada Ad Campaign
For blog design, Wordpress or MovableType coding or blog consulting, see cre8d design.
I’m not an expert on Canadian political finance, but from what I’ve read, the parties both raise money from donors like in the US, with bans on corporate donations and limits on individual donations, coupled with a $1.75/last-elections-vote-total per year subsidy from the federal coffers.
So, part of the money is from donors, and part of it from your tax money (not mine, since I’m south of the border). That just an alternative form of advertising, a bit tackier than a TV ad, but look at the free media the Tories got from a sticker on Bourque’s car.
The interesting part of the story to me was that Canadian Drudge Pierre Bourque, a legit race-car driver as well as a top-notch news aggregator, was the recipient of the ad. Some interesting conflict of interest issues come to mind.