Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Leadership 2012 Roundup

No, I won't claim to have entirely comprehensive coverage of the NDP's leadership race. But I do try to catch the developments that strike me as significant for each candidate and the race as a whole...so let's take a look at what's new over the past few days.

To start off with, the Laurier–Sainte-Marie debate on Sunday received one major media story as well as being live-tweeted by Alice and Justin among others. The main storylines look to have been another strong performance by Nathan Cullen and a call by Thomas Mulcair to emphasize asymmetric federalism - but I'll reserve judgment until I have a chance to watch the debate for myself, particularly since the in-debate commentary included conflicting takes on a couple of key points.

Meanwhile...

- Niki Ashton made a push for peace, highlighting the Harper Cons' attacks on Islam in particular being ill-advised. But more broadly, the use of military force may actually make for an issue to watch if the leadership contenders are pressed as to when they'd see fit to use Canada's armed forces to meet foreign policy goals.

- Paul Dewar expanded on the "Next 70" theme introduced last week while earning a supportive column from Peter Thurley.

- Mulcair became the first candidate to receive the full-on Sun Media treatment - though we can expect that there's plenty more where that came from. (And for the record, here's my take from last time the citizenship question came up.)

- Peggy Nash answered questions from CBC viewers, including one on what the NDP can do for western Canada.

- And finally, Romeo Saganash's Ontario tour featured both a new blog post on how the Cons value corporate profits over taking care of people, and some positive press from the Star.

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