Ganley to stand as candidate in the North West constituency for European Elections

PopeBuckfastXVI

Happy Monday wrote: »

I was right on Kosovo - the EU would never have agreed on a plan of action to save Muslims - NATO in particular the US did.

Perhaps we should ask ourselves, what would Libertas do?

Namely Philippe de Villiers, leader of Libertas France
source

Villiers is internationally notable for his criticism of Islam in France. He has stated that "I am the only politician who tells the French the truth about the Islamization of France" and that "I do not think Islam is compatible with the French republic". Villiers advocates an end to all mosque construction, banning all Islamist organizations suspected of links to terrorism, and expelling extremist individuals from France.[10][11][12][13]

Villiers published Les mosquées de Roissy: nouvelles révélations sur l'islamisation en France (The Mosques of Roissy: New Revelations about Islamization in France) in 2006. He alleged that, using internal documents from whistleblowers, the Muslim Brotherhood infiltrated security personnel at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. The book led to seventy-two employees having their clearances revoked. As well, makeshift Muslim prayer rooms were closed.[14][15]

Villiers' views on Islam and Muslim immigrants have caused Der Spiegel, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, and The San Francisco Chronicle to label him "far right".[11][12][13][15]
source

Mr Benevolent

Don't forget the proposed Libertas allegiance with the far right neo-Nazi party in Austria.

Remember Jorge Heider? Yup, that's the one.

snubbleste

Ganley canvassed my area last night in Galway city, the very first euro candidate to do so. If this is the level he's at - knocking door to door talking to people on their doorsteps in this huge constituency, then he's got every chance of getting a seat. My mum was a bit starstruck!

kevteljeur

As I've said elsewhere here, Libertas and Ganley are a Good Thing, if only for the fact that they pose a serious and focussed threat to the establishment. The incumbents will need to justify themselves that bit more, to differentiate themselves, and to give people something new to vote for. That's the big sell for Libertas; a blank canvas. No baggage.

Each of the existing parties has baggage or is close to a single-issue sale. Even the Green Party (which I support to a degree, but recent events equate to negative baggage since they've been in government) struggles to get past being a single-issue party. Libertas can be up for whatever issues they want, and they know it. I don't support them and never will, but I appreciate the fact that they'll focus the existing players and make them work harder for their votes, and maybe even think about why people should vote for them and what they stand for.

I really hope that the Right Wing sell doesn't get too much traction here in Ireland. I guess we're about to find out which way the nation is swinging.


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djpbarry

kevteljeur wrote: »

As I've said elsewhere here, Libertas and Ganley are a Good Thing, if only for the fact that they pose a serious and focussed threat to the establishment. The incumbents will need to justify themselves that bit more, to differentiate themselves, and to give people something new to vote for.

Of course, the flip-side of that is, Ganley makes Bertie look like Jesus Christ.

Scofflaw

snubbleste wrote: »

Ganley canvassed my area last night in Galway city, the very first euro candidate to do so. If this is the level he's at - knocking door to door talking to people on their doorsteps in this huge constituency, then he's got every chance of getting a seat. My mum was a bit starstruck!

That is how you win the seats, after all. People are people people, if you'll pardon the expression.

cordially,
Scofflaw

PopeBuckfastXVI

snubbleste wrote: »

Ganley canvassed my area last night in Galway city, the very first euro candidate to do so. If this is the level he's at - knocking door to door talking to people on their doorsteps in this huge constituency, then he's got every chance of getting a seat. My mum was a bit starstruck!

I saw Marion Harkin canvassing in Rahoon on Monday night.

is_that_so

snubbleste wrote: »

Ganley canvassed my area last night in Galway city, the very first euro candidate to do so. If this is the level he's at - knocking door to door talking to people on their doorsteps in this huge constituency, then he's got every chance of getting a seat. My mum was a bit starstruck!

Because of the vast size of the constituency, candidates will find it hard to get to every part of it. He appears to be popular in Galway and will need all the first preferences he can get. Just because you haven't seen the other candidates doesn't mean they are not doing the same in areas where they will clearly get a lot of first preferences. Every door canvassing is far easier in the locals or GE.

cornbb

Ganley is debating with a number of his co-candidates on the Matt Cooper show right now. The man is unbelievable. He's not waffling, he's lying through his teeth. He is repeating the tactics that seemed to work for him during the Lisbon campaign: using inflammatory imagery and populist, wholly inaccurate depictions of the EU. The amount of doublespeak he is using is unreal.

I still haven't figured out if he's just a foolish billionaire with money to blow on a political adventure who actually believes the stuff he is saying, or if he is well aware of his lies and has serious plans to wield power and do sinister things.

PopeBuckfastXVI

cornbb wrote: »

Ganley is debating with a number of his co-candidates on the Matt Cooper show right now. The man is unbelievable. He's not waffling, he's lying through his teeth. He is repeating the tactics that seemed to work for him during the Lisbon campaign: using inflammatory imagery and populist, wholly inaccurate depictions of the EU. The amount of doublespeak he is using is unreal.

Did anyone take him to task on it?

cornbb

PopeBuckfastXVI wrote: »

Did anyone take him to task on it?

Yes, everyone is having a go at ganley. They're making a pretty good job of calling him on his BS but I'm sure some of it is bound to stick unfortunately. He is rocking the boat for sure, but it's just because he is out to shock.

kevteljeur

cornbb wrote: »

Yes, everyone is having a go at ganley. They're making a pretty good job of calling him on his BS but I'm sure some of it is bound to stick unfortunately. He is rocking the boat for sure, but it's just because he is out to shock.

My concern is (and I believe that at some level, though not necessarily a conscious, rational one, it's a belief shared by Ganley's fellow candidates) that he is a very smart, well-resourced outsider who has studied his 'target market' very carefully and objectively, studied his opponents, and is doing what it takes to get elected. It's a slick, textbook operation. Enough of what he says will stick alright.

As I've said before elsewhere here, I believe that the Lisbon Treaty Referendum was simply a trojan with which Ganley made his opening play. It certainly got everyone's attention. Now he plays for the EU elections, and after that the general election. It strikes me as a good strategy, and by opening the campaign just as the economy started to wobble, his ideas got the traction they needed. Each step has taken him and Libertas up a level. If it continues, and the economy continues to plummet, where will he be in 3 year's time? No matter which of the main 4 parties are in power, they'll be in some way responsible, and Ganley will be looking to take votes from Sinn Fein by mirroring their sell, but on the Right.

And he may get attacked every time he appears on the media, but he's using it as a form of judo; they pile on, attack him relentlessly, and he emerges even stronger, with a bigger audience, and his opponents look like scared medieval villagers (I'm overstating a little here, but essentially that is what I'm seeing).


I'm not saying I support him or agree with the methods used, but I believe that this is what's being done, and we need a better alternative than what is being thrown against him at the moment (I'm probably preaching to the choir here).


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oscarBravo

kevteljeur wrote: »

I'm not saying I support him or agree with the methods used, but I believe that this is what's being done, and we need a better alternative than what is being thrown against him at the moment (I'm probably preaching to the choir here).

As always, I'm brought back around to the problem with democracy: the demos. A convincing snake-oil salesman brings people around to his point of view. What can be done to counter this? Selling an alternative brand of snake-oil is intellectually dishonest, and will rightly be off-putting to the informed consumer. Selling anything other than snake-oil isn't going down well with those who seem to enjoy buying snake-oil and complaining later about its lack of efficacy.

I don't have any answers

is_that_so

Listening to Ganley on News at 1. He sounds impressive until you actually listen to him. A worn record but a pure salesman. Quite disturbing what he can spit out in the name of "democracy". Also a lot or pure pettiness; "How much did you pay for a flight to Brussels?". He also seems to generate a serious amount of animosity. Lots of buzz words in there and he will pick up some votes as there are a considerable number of "thinking" people who form their own jaundiced view of politics in the same way. That said the potential votes don't seem to be anywhere enough.

Ecobluff

Ganley and Libertas: Have the key questions ever been answered? Who is he /are they ? where is all the money coming from? and what are their real objectives? I find it very worrying that no one has been able to get the bottom of this enigma. Ganley says he wants to create jobs, build a stronger europe, more democratic, get rid of bureaucracy etc, yet his actions such as campaigning against the Lisbon treaty drive it in the other direction.
The dark conspiracy theories start to sound plausible – I hope I’m wrong! But I dont get why all the money is being put on this foray for Ganley. Someone is going to want a bang for all the bucks
What is more troubling is the total ineptness of the incumbent shower to deal with them.Because the credibility rating is low its just so easy for Ganley to scoff at their counter-arguments eventhough they are valid. Ganley is also a total master at exploiting every chink in their armour - and some of those chinks are wide such as Dick Roche! The way the country and Europe is now presents a prime target for mass manipulation. Look what happened in Europe in the 30’s..

P. Breathnach

Ecobluff wrote: »

... Look what happened in Europe in the 30’s..

You are, I take it, referring to the economic war between Ireland and Britain, when farmers couldn't even give calves away. Or were you thinking of Franco's usurpation of power in Spain?

[You know that you are not supposed to refer to political events in Germany.]

kevteljeur

oscarBravo wrote: »

As always, I'm brought back around to the problem with democracy: the demos. A convincing snake-oil salesman brings people around to his point of view. What can be done to counter this? Selling an alternative brand of snake-oil is intellectually dishonest, and will rightly be off-putting to the informed consumer. Selling anything other than snake-oil isn't going down well with those who seem to enjoy buying snake-oil and complaining later about its lack of efficacy.

I don't have any answers

Well, the problem with democracy is that the common man gets to choose, and collectively we're not all that clever. In spite of all the has happened in the last ten years, Bertie is still golden, and he'd be elected as Taoiseach tomorrow for no good reason other than his ability to spin.

But I agree with you, what we need is something more than snake-oil. I think the animosity that Ganley brings out in other candidates is because they can see that anyone can play that game; you don't need to be a career politician to sell snake-oil, and maybe even someone can do a better job of selling it...


So: if we had to pick a man or woman to run against Ganley, from Ireland, anyone at all, who would we pick? Serious suggestions please, a Virtual Candidate.

Mine would be Gay Byrne, he has the charisma.


@Ecobluff: I still think the conspiracy theories are reading too much into it. It's all spin, for a man who is ruthlessly using these elections, and dissatisfaction with the EU to build a political machine that'll get him into the Dail. Mark my words. He couldn't care less about the EU or neo-con conspiracies.



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Hitman Actual

is_that_so wrote: »

Listening to Ganley on News at 1. He sounds impressive until you actually listen to him. A worn record but a pure salesman. Quite disturbing what he can spit out in the name of "democracy". Also a lot or pure pettiness; "How much did you pay for a flight to Brussels?". He also seems to generate a serious amount of animosity. Lots of buzz words in there and he will pick up some votes as there are a considerable number of "thinking" people who form their own jaundiced view of politics in the same way. That said the potential votes don't seem to be anywhere enough.

I agree, and the only way I can see him getting in is by mobilising a massive, statistically unusual, first preference vote in the Galway area. However, I think there's too much apathy by people towards the euro elections for this to happen.

I noticed on Radio 1 today that Ganley claimed they had 600 candidates running now. This has to be a lie: two weeks ago it was 300, last week it was 500, and now it's 600. The flaw in his claim is that the closing date for registering candidates was a couple of weeks ago, yet he still claims to be gaining new candidates. He's a consummate liar.

Also today, he said that if he didn't get elected, he wouldn't lead the Libertas No campaign for Lisbon 2, but would be available to be employed by No groups.

Ecobluff

kevteljeur wrote: »

@Ecobluff: I still think the conspiracy theories are reading too much into it. It's all spin, for a man who is ruthlessly using these elections, and dissatisfaction with the EU to build a political machine that'll get him into the Dail. Mark my words. He couldn't care less about the EU or neo-con conspiracies.



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Its hard to know what he cares about! Why the Dail? His agenda seems to extend far beyond Ireland given that Libertas are funding candidates across europe.

Lockstep

I was in McDonalds in Galway today and there were around 20 people (mostly young (15-18) women with a few kids and older women) who were all wearing Libertas hats and shirts.

Later on I was walking down the street when I noticed around 30 people (age ranging from 5-70) wearing the same shirts and hats. In the middle I saw Ganley himself. An elderly man gave me a leaflet when I passed by and told me how great Ganley would be. WHen I asked him what he would do the response was "A lot more than the shower we have in at the moment", when I asked him to be more specific he put his hand on my shoulder and led me over to Ganley himself (looking extremely unapproachable in the epicentre of all his team).

My immediate impression of Ganley was that he's extremely intelligent, shrewd and ruthless. Handshake was firm without warmth, eyes were blue and soul-less etc.

I asked him the following (his responses are paraphrased, I found him difficult to keep up with)
1) What will you do for the North-West
Answer was mainly about fishing, lowering taxes
2) Can you be more specific about jobs?
Answer was a lot to do with e-gaming, he mentioned his friends in California doing something along these lines
3) What's the story with Libertas and immigration?
Here I need to be extremely careful as I had a lot trouble understanding exactly what he was saying. From what I gather, the immigration comment was apparantly throwaway by someone who was in an interview but halfway through, recieved a text message telling them that their mother was dying/very ill so they came out with something which was misrepresented. Basically he claims the blue card system would enable free travel to stop France and Germany from keeping people out.
4) Where will you sit in the European Parliment (PES, EPP etc)
He answered by claiming Libertas would have enough seats so they could form their own group in the Parliment.

Then one of his acolytes came over to introduce him to someone else.

He gave me a book outlining Libertas policy, I'll give it a read later.

PopeBuckfastXVI

kickoutthejams wrote: »

1) What will you do for the North-West
Answer was mainly about fishing, lowering taxes

Saw him talking about taxes being too high in one of the Libertas videos.

F*ckin brussels messing with our tax system...

:rolleyes:

greengreen

As the only major candidate in Galway area Ganley is going to get a huge first pref. vote and maybe even enough to get a seat. His canpaign seems to have moved into overdrive.

sink

greengreen wrote: »

As the only major candidate in Galway area Ganley is going to get a huge first pref. vote and maybe even enough to get a seat. His canpaign seems to have moved into overdrive.

Last poll I saw he had only 8% first pref. He needs double that to stand a decent chance of being elected. At his current numbers he'll be knocked out first count.

cornbb

greengreen wrote: »

As the only major candidate in Galway area Ganley is going to get a huge first pref. vote and maybe even enough to get a seat. His canpaign seems to have moved into overdrive.

Yeah right, and maybe Libertas will win 200-300 seats in the EP as he claimed on the radio the other day :rolleyes: He'll be getting my last preference anyway.

P. Breathnach

sink wrote: »

Last poll I saw he had only 8% first pref. He needs double that to stand a decent chance of being elected. At his current numbers he'll be knocked out first count.

He said on radio yesterday that Libertas's private polls were showing much better figures, and that he would head the poll or come second.

oscarBravo

I'd be afraid to write him off. He comes across as plausible if you don't actually, y'know, listen to what he's saying. Unfortunately we as an electorate are not famed for our skills of listening and judgement - we elected Dana, ffs.

Hitman Actual

I'm not very good at 'election maths', so maybe some of you more experienced politics guys can flesh out his chances a bit better? Here's some basic stats on the electorate, taken from Elections Ireland.org, using the 2004 turnout figures:

• The North-West electorate will grow by about 11% from ~689,000 to ~780,000 with the inclusion of Longford/Westmeath. Turnout in 2004 was ~63%.
• The quota in 2004 was 105,000, so I assume this grows to about 115,000 with the larger electorate? (Is is safe to assume this?)
• Taking the Galway area in isolation- Galway City had an electorate of ~45,000, with a turnout of 53% in 2004. Galway County Council (the five county districts including Tuam, Loughrea, etc) had an electorate of ~124,000, with a turnout of 62%. So Galway total was about 169,000.

So taking the Galway area of 169,000, a 60% turnout would be ~100,000. I think it's fair to assume that a lot of pro-Lisbon voters won't vote for Ganley. That could be a sizeable chunk of votes gone for him straight away. Of the rest, plenty of people will still vote along their general party lines, or for independents like Marian Harkin, who has been quite impressive so far, I feel. And outside Galway, I think a lot of people will still vote along their usual party lines (or stick with established/well known politicians even if they switch their vote from Fianna Fail/Greens)- I can't see him getting huge support outside Galway.

Also, transfers are going to be Ganleys biggest problem. He definitely polarises opinion- he'll either get a first preference vote from people, or, in most other cases, nothing. The last TNS/MRBI showed this, where his 9% first preference vote was accompanied by a 3% transfer rate.

Personally, I'm still quite apprehensive that he would get in, but my head says he won't.

Steviemak

Hitman Actual wrote: »

Personally, I'm still quite apprehensive that he would get in, but my head says he won't.

Sum's up my feelings as well.

thebman

P. Breathnach wrote: »

He said on radio yesterday that Libertas's private polls were showing much better figures, and that he would head the poll or come second.

Lol, maybe so private they were conducted in Libertas HQ with no non-Libertas members allowed to participate :P

I don't take them seriously and I'd be inclined to have a low opinion of anyone silly enough to give them any high preference.

I like to listen to him talk as it is good comedy.

Steviemak

thebman wrote: »

I like to listen to him talk as it is good comedy.

I don't like to listen to him talk because I know there are people out there who are actually being taken in by his lies.

It would be funny if he wasn't so dangerous.