Posted on 12/03/2006 12:35:51 PM PST by GMMAC
Dion's party crashers
Unlikely win a victory for new guard -- and possibly Harper
Ottawa Sun
Sunday, December 3, 2006
By Greg Weston
MONTREAL -- And the winner is? Stephen Harper. The prime minister should be laughing all the way to the polls after the federal Liberals crowned Stephane Dion their new leader in a wildly unpredictable upset here yesterday.
In choosing the professorial Quebec MP to lead the Grits into the next election, the Liberal party has taken a turn for the bland, if not towards an electoral abyss.
While all of the four frontrunners in the race have considerable political handicaps, Dion's lack of charisma, his broken English and relatively low public profile outside his native Quebec will combine to make him a hard sell in parts of the Maritimes and from Ontario west.
Even in Quebec, Dion's hardline and often strident handling of the unity file has made him a highly polarizing figure and a favourite target of the separatists, a choice for Liberal leader that one Montreal columnist calls "a wet-dream for the Bloc Quebecois."
For a pragmatic party that values power over all else, the road back into office is anything but clear with Dion at the wheel.
A recent SES Research poll for Sun Media suggested that among Canadians who voted Liberal in the last election, Dion's leadership of the party will turn off as many electors as it will attract.
Among Canadians who supported the other parties -- voters the Grits need to poach in order to beat Harper's Conservatives -- the SES poll showed Dion is a liability across the board.
Even Greens express no affinity for the former environment minister, with 27% of those polled saying they would be less likely to support the Liberals with Dion as leader, compared to only 6% who would be more inclined to vote Grit.
But perhaps the most devastating effect of Dion's victory yesterday was the wide and bloody schism it has created in an already fractured party.
The split was palpable even as Dion's winning fourth-ballot support was announced in the packed convention hall, the roaring enthusiasm of his supporters clearly not shared by the thousands of Liberals who sat on their hands, and quietly began leaving before the victory speech.
Lesser of evils?
With the next election likely only months away, there won't be much time for healing among those who would lead the Grits into battle -- namely, the 5,000-odd Liberal organizers, candidates, MPs and other party stalwarts at the convention, almost 82% of whom arrived here backing candidates other than Dion as their first choice for leader.
So, what the heck were they thinking?
Some no doubt concluded Dion was the lesser of evils among the other frontrunners -- Michael Ignatieff, the accident-prone academic; Gerard Kennedy, the former Ontario minister with no Quebec appeal; and Bob Rae, the former NDP premier who rode the country's largest provincial economy into the tank in the 1990s.
But there was something much more powerful at work amid all the hoopla on the floor of the convention, something not seen in decades of leadership races. The Liberal grassroots staged a full-scale revolt, seizing control of the party from the establishment that has forever passed the Grit machine from one group of old-guard insiders to another, every time the leadership changed.
This time, two of the frontrunners were poised to make it happen again -- Rae's senior organization looked like a Jean Chretien reunion; Ignatieff was backed by dozens of MPs, senators and a small army of Grit backroomers.
By comparison, Dion's campaign looked like a coalition of outsiders.
But no one went after delegates with a platform of "reform and renewal" more than Kennedy, promising to put control of Gritdom back in the hands of the long-abused rank-and-file, the door-knockers, stamp-lickers, little Libs and others cherished in elections and quickly forgotten.
New blood
As Kennedy said in his keynote speech on the eve of the voting, what the Liberal party needs more than a new leader is a new party.
They should be careful what they wish for. In a deal sealed in the early hours of yesterday morning, Kennedy suddenly threw his support behind Dion after the second ballot, carrying the vast majority of his delegates with him.
The move vaulted Dion ahead of Rae on the third ballot, and ultimately sealed Ignatieff's defeat in the final vote.
While Dion and Kennedy may have successfully rid the palace of the old guard, there is only one problem. The vanquished happen to include virtually all of the party's experienced election organizers. Oops.
Harper cabinet minister John Baird dropped by the convention, and crowed that the Conservatives are "thrilled the Liberals have a new leader."
No kidding.
If that's the case, then their biggest enemy is complacency.
The Bloc is a regional, as in Quebec ONLY party. It is NOT a concern for anyone outside that pathetic 23% (and declining) of Canada's population.
True, but my thinking was that what the Bloc is good at is stirring up trouble for the ruling party to deal with. But I suppose that Harper's popularity would go up if he had a run-in with the BQ's.
If the BQ were stupid enough to pick a fight with Harper, he would be unstoppable. Being the gentleman he (and most conservatives) is (are), he'll allow the socialist twits to start the fight, and by all that's good and right, we'll WIN again.
The politics of emotion have run their course.
The politics of reason are once again on the rise.
Let's not let destructive and anti-intelligent factors force their misguided and pseudo-intellectual ideals upon our great nations any longer.
Wow! Thanks for that update. Harper is amazing.
PING!
Chantal Hebert makes an astute analysis, doesn't she? Only in the last sentence does she collapse into lefty dreaming.
I always enjoy watching her and Andrew Coyne discuss politics on CBC. Did you catch that moment Friday night when Mansbridge intro'd a shot of them on the Convention floor by saying,"Andrew's the one on the left." To be frank, she looked more like a man than did Andrew. He's going to have to butch it up a little more, I guess - wear a motorcycle jacket and grow a beard, perhaps.
Just kidding!
I found this link on Kate McMillans site, small dead animals.
http://thetyee.ca/Views/2006/11/30/Liberals/
Apparently Dion credits his win to his Vancouver organizer.
The Libranos in lala land is a story that is somewhat neglected.
The Tyee article is a good read. I am waiting for the "Spiderman" trial. (and waiting and waiting and waiting).
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
Agreed & even more remarkable in light of Edmonton & Calgary, Canada's 4th & 5th most populous urban areas, being within Alberta's provincial boundaries. And, on top of that, when both those cities are home to major universities!
I have the same feeling. Dion was selected to pursue a similar strategy as that used by Pierre Trudeau: To get the seperatists beating their War Drums, create a "militant" Franch Movement ( oxymoron?), blow up a few mailboxes in Laval, and then scare the hell out of Canadians once again, so that the only policy seemingly possible is the placation and appeasement of a recalcitant Quebec. In other words, a try for 40 more years of liberal socialist moonbat French based rule of the entire country.
Can "Le Petit Professeur " pull it off? Well all we have to do is wait and watch the Parti Quebecois ramp up , and watch for a renewed FLQ presence dans La Belle Provence. That will be the sign that the Liberals will be up to their old tricks, and the question then is: Will Stephen Harper lay the boots to them? Will conservatives be saying:
"if you want to leave, you will have to bleed in a Civil War you cannot possibley win. No conventions, no amiable political parting of the ways, but only through blood and steel, the only way for Quebec to secceed. Will Stepen be able to call Dions bluff? I think if English Canada supports him, along with a sizable portion of Quebec francophone conservatives, Stephen will win the day, and win the country.
I do not discount Dion. He is a viper in professorial clothing, a former communist and Parti Quebecois member, a former professor at the Universite de Moncton, a pit of totalitarian vipers whose socialist ideals include the partition of New Brunswick for the existence of Le Republique de Madewaska.
Dion will be a serious threat to the unity of the nation, which he will attempt to barter for the Prime Ministership of Canada, and 40 more years of a "Quiet Revolution." If that happens Canada will never be able to realize its true potential economically or socially. That must not be allowed to happen.
This Quebecker wants to keep the Albertan in 24 Sussex Drive. No way am I voting for Dion.
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