Future Progressive (Conservative) tense

There is a bit of a strange headline today on Peter Walsh's story for The Telegram (not online) concerning Danny Williams' fisheries platform announcement yesterday:

Williams to keep heat on feds over fishery

Walsh reports:

Williams stepped onto well-trodden political ground by saying he will fight for more power in the federal-provincial balance over fisheries management.

Well-trodden, to be sure. Williams promised exactly the same thing in his 2003 platform, too, if anyone — Peter Walsh is as good an anyone as anyone — would go back and check. In fact, the 2007 and 2003 campaign promises are, other than the insertion of the phrase "in its second term" after "A Progressive Conservative government", word-for-word identical.

But in order to "keep heat on" something, the necessary semantic implication is that heat has already been placed on that something, and that it is still being placed on that something.

The Tory leader may just have subtly conceded that, up until now, he has done nothing on that front. While many of his lapstrake fisheries planks talk about how he will "continue" to do this, that, or the other thing, the joint management - ugh - "piece" is something he is merely going to "pursue".

In other words, the dog hasn't caught the car yet. And the dog hasn't tried to catch the car yet. And the dog wouldn't know what to do with the car even if he caught it. And the dog knows that he wouldn't know.

Which is why, when the car slowed down for the dog in January 2006, the dog stopped trying to catch it.