Two Columns

This comparison is posted without comment for your edification.

"Mitt Romney can teach Stephen Harper much about sleazy politics"

At its worst, it was an organized multi-year campaign to rig the U.S. election, with charges of Republican-organized voter suppression, intimidation and fraud.
The tactics included fake robocalls telling voters of changes in poll locations, stiff new voter ID laws, closing advance polls early or holding them on a single day, strict voter registration lists, questionable purging of voter lists and voting-day polling station intimidation.
It’s a lineup that must make Harper and his attack-dog Conservative campaign managers salivate.
For decades, Harper has been a keen student of U.S. elections, especially when it comes to what his counterparts in the Republican party were plotting.
And throughout his political career, Harper has adopted many of the tactics first employed by Republicans, from robocalls and year-round attack ads to calls for tighter voting rules.
Until the 2011 federal election, most of these crude efforts to disenfranchise voters in Canada were often hidden or overlooked. But they were in plain sight in 2011.

"Republicans need to look to Canada to see how conservatives can win"

Compare this with the Canadian election of 2011. The Conservative coalition in one respect mirrored its Republican counterpart: It was rooted in white male voters in the conservative heartland – in Canada’s case, the Prairies, plus the rural parts of British Columbia and Ontario.
But the Conservatives also did well among immigrant voters. In fact, middle-class immigrant voters who dominate the suburban ridings surrounding Toronto and, to a lesser extent, Vancouver were key to the Conservative victory.
Of course, the Tories only took 40 per cent of the vote in the last election, so one conclusion the Republicans might draw is that they should encourage a third party that would split progressive support.

The first is by Bob Hepburn in the Toronto Star. The latter is by the stupid hack John Ibbitson of the Globe & Mail.