Stephen Taylor (left) is having a very good campaign.
He's not running for election; he's blogging about it.
And, so far, he's had at least three good 'gets', as we say in the mainstream media business, on his blog. Today, Taylor puts up a post in which he claims to have a preview of the negative advertising campaign the Liberals will unleash after Christmas that attack Conservative leader Stephen Harper and NDP leader Jack Layton.
Taylor lives in Kingston, Ont. where he is doing some graduate work in biochemistry at Queen's University. He's an unabashed supporter of Stephen Harper and the Conservatives and has been blogging for a while now about the virtues of that party and its leader at his own blog and at others. Now that we're in an election campaign, though, he — and many other bloggers, for that matter — have used their platform to challenge some of the assertions put forward by proponents of political views. He's one of the bloggers CTV has invited to be part of this election blog. In addition to his revelation today about the attack ads the Liberals will run, his other greatest hits from this campaign include:
- After the Prime Minister’s Director of Communications Scott Reid made his “beer and popcorn” remark, Taylor hit the Web and dug out Reid’s hospitality expenses. These expenses are “hiding” in plain sight but no other reporter or commentator thought to do this and, lo and behold, many of Reid’s expenses are from establishments in Ottawa that, erm, serve a lot of beer.
- After U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins jumped into the election debate by warning politicians not to use his country as a whipping post during the election campaign, Prime Minister Paul Martin set himself up as Captain Canada, leaping to defend our interests versus the U.S.. Taylor and Kate McMillan — who also blogs from the right side of the political spectrum — deconstructed the Liberal television advertising to make the claim that the Liberals had been planning to earn some political capital with a little U.S. bashing for some time.
This is the sort of reporting, of course, that —ahem — those of us who are paid as full-time political reporters ought to be doing. But, as one of the members of that class of reporters, I’m never to proud to single out good work when I see it no matter who’s doing it.