The Conservatives Newest Defense For "In and Out": We Don't Get It

The Conservatives "In and Out" Advertising scandal has taken a few twists along the way. Of course probably the most eventful of these twists came with the RCMP's raid on the Conservatives HQ, with media (and Liberal staffers) in tow. The fact that the Conservatives have been so uncooperative with the authorities that it would have naturally lead to that conclusion. The Conservatives have shown just how badly they want this to go away as they have been filibustering the House Committee trying to investigate "In and Out", and had been doing so for the better part of a year. But, as I reported here back in June, the Committee has finally broken the filibuster and they will finally be moving forward with their investigation, and will be doing it over the summer. It will be interesting to see what the Conservatives will have to say in their own defense when those investigations start.

Well today the Ottawa Citizen is giving us a bit a glimpse into the flimsy defense that the Conservatives are going to throw against the wall and see if it sticks:

"Lawyers acting for the Conservative party in its dispute over financing of the 2006 election are arguing in court that Elections Canada changed the rules when it disallowed $1.2 million in candidate advertising expenses.

In past elections, an Elections Canada handbook distributed to candidates said their ads had to promote or oppose either a candidate or a political party, lawyers for the Conservatives claim in court documents .

But in March 2007, the handbook was changed to restrict ads to promoting or opposing a candidate, the Tories say. It was this newer standard that the election agency used when it refused to recognize the expenses they incurred in "regional media buys" that promoted the party, but carried only small taglines with the candidates' names, the Tories charge."

Okay, the more I read these terrible Conservative excuses the more I see just badly they either don't get it, or just how badly they want to appear to the World like the don't get it. This is the ultimate "red herring" being thrown out there, to add to the large piles of other red herrings that the Conservatives have thrown at Canadians. So what does Elections Canada have to say about the matter???:

"Elections Canada said the handbooks for candidate campaigns it produced were updated in 2007 to incorporate changes required by the Federal Accountability Act.

The agency has contended that the requirement that ads must directly promote candidates has been clear for many years and the handbook was not setting new rules. During cross-examinations in the case in May, Elections Canada's executive director of political financing,

Janice Vezina, said the question of whether the content of ads is national or local is a "red herring," and that the agency was more concerned with whether the expenses were legitimately incurred by the candidates and represented their fair market value. That is, the distinction turned more on the flow of money and the intent behind the ad.

Ms. Vezina allowed that in certain circumstances, a candidate could choose to promote his party leader in his ads and still be allowed to claim the ad as a campaign expense. The key point, she said, was whether the "end result" of the ads was the promotion of a candidate."

Conservatives, did you get that this time??? This is nothing new, it's not a new rule, and the language of it only change because of your new law, the law that you crowed about and wrapped yourself in. The whole point, as everyone else seems to get but yourself, is the manner that funds were transferred and if the ads themselves actually promoted the candidate. If you've seen those ads, you'd know that they do not promote a single Conservatives candidate other than Mr. Harper, and the tagline that's attached to the bottom of those ads is so tiny that you'd never know who the Conservative candidate was in the area. Of course, there are also issues with where the ads were run, which is another part of this story.

Now is this the last excuse the Conservatives will throw out there? I highly doubt it. I bet that they have a lot list ready to go when the people dismiss this one completely out of hand, or when they have maxed out it's effectiveness in fundraising. The Conservatives are interested in only one thing, and that's not facing the truth and the heat that will come with it. They want to "cut and run", as it were, a label that they throw at so many other people with reckless abandon. But if the TV show "COPS" has taught me anything, you can run away but eventually you'll get caught. And when you get caught with those TV cameras rolling, it never looks good.

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