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Big Blue Machine
DCHP-2 (Nov 2012)
1n. — Politics, informal, predominantly Ontario
nickname for Ontario's Progressive Conservative Party under William Davis (1971-85).
Type: 4. Culturally Significant — This term is said to have been coined by Johnathan Manthorpe in the early 1970s (see the 2010 quotation) due to the party's power and conservative political position. The nickname originally referred to William Davis's core campaign team throughout four consecutive election terms. It appears to have been generalized to refer to the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party as a whole (see the 2002 quotation). Its cultural significance is made evident by cultural adaptations of the term and the coinage of "Baby Blue Machine" in reference to a subsequent party.
See also COD-2, s.v. "Big Blue Machine", which is marked "Cdn".
See also COD-2, s.v. "Big Blue Machine", which is marked "Cdn".
The term has other senses in the US (as a nickname for various sports teams), but this sense is specific to Ontario.
Quotations
1971
But even while running against Bill Davis's Big Blue Machine, as he delights in calling it, Mr. [Stephen] Lewis also has an eye out for next time and the time after - and, in Prescott and Russell, there is a first-rate candidate in Yvon Monpetit.
1978
Previously, Mr. Weed held key posts in the provincial Conservative Party and the office of Premier William Davis as part of a small group of organizers and advisers nicknamed the Big Blue Machine.
1985
Grossman also attacked Timbrell for his steady criticisms of the Big Blue Machine, a group of strategists who backed former premier Bill Davis and now support Grossman.
1990
[...] rebuilding the crumbled remnants of what was once one of Canada's most powerful political dynasties, known during the years of former premier William Davis as the Big Blue Machine.
2010
The Big Blue Machine, so named in a book by Johnathan Manthorpe on the Davis team in the 1970s, went national with those two federal majorities in the 1980s.
2010
Premier William Davis' campaign team in the Ontario of the 1970s was nicknamed the Big Blue Machine. It was made up of some of the smartest guys in the political and advertising worlds. And despite some ups and downs, the reality is, those folks won four elections, in 1971, 1975, 1977, and 1981.
2n. — Politics, informal
a nickname for the Conservative Party.
Type: 3. Semantic Change — Although the term was first coined in relation to the Ontario PC Party under William Davis (see meaning 1), Big Blue Machine has generalized, first to refer to the now dissolved Progressive Conservative Party, and then to the Conservative Party that succeeded it. By the late 1980s, the term was being used to refer to the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney (see the 1988 quotation), and more currently, to the Harper government (see the second 2015 quotation).
In some readings, the term suggests the strategists behind election campaigns, and not necessarily the party itself (see the 1994 and the first 2015 quotations).
In some readings, the term suggests the strategists behind election campaigns, and not necessarily the party itself (see the 1994 and the first 2015 quotations).
Quotations
1988
The latest round of polls, released today, should also give the Big Blue Machine a boost. They show Mulroney in a virtual dead heat with Liberal leader John Turner as the two campaigns head for the final laps.
1994
The Big Blue Machine is what people used to call the political organization that kept getting the PCs re-elected for 42 years. But the wheels fell off in 1985 when the Liberals were elected.
1996
John Howard White , 71, one of the pistons that drove Ontario's Big Blue Machine in the 1960s and 1970s.
1996
It scares me, though, that these were the very qualities that "the big blue machine'", better known as the Tory party, "packaged and marketed in an election'' not so long ago, along with the much experienced Harris.
2009
Another fact that should frighten Alberta's Big Blue Machine: More than 8,000 Alliance party members voted in Saturday's contest between Ms. Smith and Calgary chiropractor Mark Dyrholm.
2015
Harper's Big Blue Machine has taken some hits but it delivered in the Thanksgiving weekend's advance polls.
2015
It's been an entire generation since the original Big Blue Machine behind some of the greatest Progress Conservative electoral victories rusted out and collapsed. That machine was the hybrid created by Dalton Camp and Norman Atkins in the 1950s when their Toronto advertising agency became the de facto PC campaign war room when an election was called.
Sure, there was the big blue machine of the Alberta PCs -- or at least there was, until the machinery behind 12 consecutive election victories and a hold on power that lasted for 44 consecutive years collapsed, fractured and atrophied at the feet of the gob-smacked New Democrats last May.
References
- COD-2
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