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"Eves Blew It" Major Opportunity to Capture Social Conservative Votes Lost

Liberal and NDP Leaders Explicitly Confirm Support for Homosexual 'Marriage'

TORONTO, September 24, 2003 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Ontario Premier Ernie Eves
passed up a golden opportunity to re-capture social conservative votes during the major Ontario Leaders debate Tuesday night and as a result will lose the election according to pro-life political analysts who spoke to LifeSiteNews.com. While Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty and NDP Leader Howard Hampton endorsed homosexual 'marriage', Eves evaded the question.

Paul Tuns, The Interim newspaper editor and long-time political analyst, told LifeSite, "Eves needed to do more than come up with a draw against McGuinty and the best way he could have signalled to Ontario that four more years of PC rule would be different from McGuinty and the Liberals would have been to reach out to social conservatives by promising to oppose same sex 'marriage'. He took a soft position against same-sex 'marriage' during the summer but during the campaign we have heard little about it."

A Tory strategist who wished to remain anonymous told LifeSite, "Eves blew it, he has let slip the best opportunity to capture social conservative votes." The strategist concluded, "I'm pretty sure he's sunk now."

Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty said, "I've made it very clear. I support same-sex marriage." McGuinty added, "It's important to know where you stand, as a matter of principle."

NDP Leader Howard Hampton said, "I've supported same-sex rights, same-sex marriages since my time in the Legislature. If people want to assume the obligations that go with marriage, the responsibilities, financial or otherwise, I believe we should help them do that."

In the end, though, the right strategy was probably too much of a reversal for Eves to make with any credibility. The Tory leadership seriously alienated its natural social conservative base some time ago.

The PCs under both Mike Harris and Ernie Eves have consistently refused to make any meaningful concessions to social conservatives and made appointments and legal decisions and undemocratically rammed through legislative changes that were highly offensive to those supporters. The moral and family issues were known to frighten Harris, Eves and and their inner circles more than anything else. They were severe with caucus members who did not follow the party paranoia on those issues.

Social conservatives are therefore having a difficult time determining who they can support on Oct. 2. Many will vote for the candidate only, no matter what party, based firstly on the candidate's views on life and family issues.

The pro-life organization Campaign Life Coalition (CLC) is finding that there are promising candidates in all the parties that social conservatives should support. As well, CLC hopes that current circumstances will motivate more Ontarians to finally vote for a Family Coalition candidate, if there is one in their riding. Among other benefits, this could send a strong political message to the establishment parties.

Lastly and unfortunately, says CLC, there is a real danger that many conservative-minded voters will just stay home because of their disgust with the main parties. The organization strongly discourages that approach.

Call CLC for the latest candidate evaluations at:
416-204-9749 or 1-800-730-5358

Also, LifeSite will publish an election page with candidate evaluations within a few days. Check http://www.lifesite.net/

See the Toronto Star coverage:
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_T...

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