News Roundup

The coverage for Martin's health plan seems to be worse today than it was yesterday. Canada.com's article has nothing but criticism. The National Post's article gives next to no positive coverage. The Globe and Mail's article is completely negative as well. Ditto the Edmonton Journal's coverage. And CBC's article first up last night has been updated to become more negative. And now the Bloc has joined in too.

No support for Martin anywhere but the Liberal Party web site.

Andrew Coyne's column today gives a reason why no one is buying the Martin health plan:

Certainly health care is an important issue, maybe even the most important. But it's not a decisive issue. What the voters mean is that health care is important to them. But they don't believe that any party has the solution to the ills that afflict the system. And therein lies the problem for the Liberals. Their strategy depends on framing the election as a simple choice: health care or tax cuts. But it isn't as simple as that, both in substantive terms and in terms of voters' perceptions. If you asked people to make the pairwise comparisons above, my guess is they would rank the various possibilities in the following order of likelihood: 1. Mr. Harper will cut taxes. 2. Mr. Martin will raise them. 3. Mr. Martin will fix the health care system. 4. Mr. Harper will destroy it.

In other words, four years from now, the health care system is unlikely to look a whole lot different, whether Mr. Harper is Prime Minister of Mr. Martin. On the other hand, there's a fairly high probability that taxes will be lower under Mr. Harper -- lower than they are today, and lower than they would be under Mr. Martin.

Lastly, the Globe and Mail's experts discuss the framing of this election thusfar.

And now, I'll promise I'll stop posting. Until tonight when I rant about health care.