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| NOW magazine's "fiscally conservative" alternative to Rob Ford |
Those four words are all anyone really needs to know about David Soknacki, a former Scarboough City Councilor who was the budget chief for the former mayor who hiked taxes and spending in Toronto to astronomical levels.
The media is billing Soknacki, who has no known policies or ideas, as a "fiscal conservative. " How exactly do we know about Soknacki's "conservative" bona fides? Is it from his record? No.
The only evidence we have is that The Toronto Star and the hard-socialist weekly tabloid NOW magazine and some other media that detest the genuinely fiscal conservative Rob Ford tell us so.
The first time I heard of Soknacki was when I was speaking with a writer from The Toronto Star-owned BlogTO, who was extolling him as a sensible "fiscal conservative" alternative to Ford. That writer is both very left-leaning and despises Ford, which are traits that invariably go together in Toronto.
In fact, I haven't met anyone outside the media who had even heard of David Soknacki prior to a month ago. For all we know, he could be Sarah Thomson in drag. After all, has anyone seen Thomson and Soknacki in the same place at the same time?
The way that an unknown whose only accomplishment was to help Miller drive city spending through the roof is being lauded by media outlets that either hate fiscal conservativism, or hate Rob Ford, or both is particularly revealing.
Rob Ford's support is holding firm and a sanctimonious, self-obsessed Toronto media is already anxious that the man who they think has embarrassed Toronto could win a second term.
John Tory, as is his fashion, has been vacillating and hinting, without committing to entering the 2014 mayoral race, but odds are, like in the last election, he won't enter as long as Ford is running. Tory is intelligent and decent, but is a poor campaigner who has no real support base. He has never held elected public office other than a brief stint as an MPP prior to his leading the Ontario Progressive Conservatives to a devastating loss in the 2007 election, in which Tory also lost his seat.
With the prospect of Ford carrying the vote from Torontonians who still cringe at the thought of David Miller-era spending, taxes and total subservience to public service unions, the anxious media needed a faux-conservative sock puppet to bleed away those voters from Ford.
"Sock Puppet" Soknacki fit their bill. The clue is when The Toronto Star is friendly to what they tern a "right-leaning" candidate, it's a lot like when the Grand Ayatollah of Iran endorses a US presidential candidate. With friends like that, we should all be worried.
