Ottawa-Centre: Paul Dewar Gets His Flog Started

Well, it's been three days since the Government fell, and the NDP candidate for Ottawa Centre, Paul Dewar, has finally gotten his campaign blog started.

Well, actually, it's more a "flog" than a "blog." Here's a passage from his first entry:

With his orange tie complemented by the tiny "Paul Dewar!" buttons on lapels around the room, Paul brought forward the NDP candidates for the Ottawa region, and honoured the role of Ed Broadbent in showing the people of Ottawa Centre the power of electing NDP MPs to Parliament.

The capacity crowd erupted into applause and cheers as vibrant Celtic fiddles came over the loudspeakers, and Jack Layton entered the room, smiling, shaking hands, and looking ready to win.

Flanked by his Ottawa team, he laughingly told the audience that Paul Martin wanted to run this campaign on the Liberal’s record. "Bring it on!" Jack challenged. "We wrote a budget," one that got things done for the people of Canadians and the people of Ottawa-Centre, rather than just for the Liberal’s corporate friends.

It's pretty obvious that Paul Dewar didn't write this himself. The tagline at the bottom says, "Authorized by the Official Agent for Paul Dewar," and I can believe it. Purple prose, positives, and bad sentence construction: the marks of a staff volunteer. (If it turns out Dewar did write this, he's got bigger problems than I thought.)

I have to say, if Paul Dewar wants to reach out to the online community, he's going to have to develop a steep learning curve. He might do well to look at his rival Keith's site.

But if it's any consolation, Paul Dewar has definitely gotten a leg up on Liberal candidate Richard Mahoney. Would you believe that, three days after the launch of the election, Mahoney's website still hasn't been updated? Does this man want Ottawa-Centre, or not?