Very little has changed, popular vote wise, though the seat totals have (although not so much to affect the basic situation--three parties must band together to defeat Tories in a Commons vote but they still dominate the committees).
A new leadership race now means no effective opposition for another year, means the new Lib leader has to abstain as often as the old, means the party remains broke and divided. Do people really want to go through this all again just to feed Iggy and Rae's voracious ego?
And, Iggy, if there is a leadership race and you choose to run in it, I will hound you to the gates of Hell.
I think Stephane Dion could do more for the Liberal Party if he stepped down and helped rebuild it... assuming it isn't damaged beyond repair from infighting and internal divisions to heal itself.
ReplyDeleteI don't believe, either, that Canadians would warm to Ignatieff or Rae: the Liberals need a fresh face, a set of policies that resonates with mainstream Canadians and two or more years of aching recession to feed a "throw the bums out" mood against Tories.
Ok dude let me put this to you straight...i canvassed almost every night of this campaign...and the biggest impediment to the liberal party was one person..your super hero stephan dion...you guessed it, i had lifetime liberals sitting on their hands i had a woman state forcefully "dion does not do it for me or my family ..we lost seats in every region of teh country..if you want to go into a foxhole with dion ..go for it...i am sure you will have a lot of time to chat with him...the mistakes made by dion with elizabeth may, and hey what happened to the orchard guy ..the ugy who helped get dion elected...what happened...as someone close to me stated last night "dion is not a viable leader"
ReplyDeleteactually you may want to read the Globe and Mail editorial this morning..for some further insightful analysis...
ReplyDeletei had a woman state forcefully "dion does not do it for me or my family
ReplyDeleteWe have to get a leader with a bigger cock, obviously. Then he'll start "doing it" for certain people.
I think, with the rapid cretinisation, of Canada, the Liberals will just have to weather the storm until pandering to the low-IQ voter is no longer in fashion.
Personally, I suspect that the Liberals lost this election IN SPITE OF, not because of, Dion’s leadership. The fact is that the days when the Liberals were the default winner of an election are over, and they were running against a Conservative government with a solid record.
ReplyDeleteDion’s lack of weak flanks (such as Rae in Ontario and Ignatieff with progressives) kept the Liberals fromm being smashed into oblivion. Liberals would be fools to scapegoat Dion rather than take a serious look at the party itself.
Ben hicks..your comments are quite valid...now arguement from me...but a leader has to galvanize his base and inspire canadians - to many liberals sat this one out. We need renewal, a policy convention and mostly importantly a policy platform that does not call for raising taxes...are we nuts or just stupide for doing that...we got trounced in the swing ridings and northerno ontario, New brunswick..
ReplyDeleteIgnatieff will never be the answer. Liberals running from Ignatieff is what caused Dion to be elected leader in the first place. The answer to Liberal party problems can be expressed in one sentence. Make Justin Trudeau the leader.
ReplyDeleteI like the way you write BCL.
ReplyDeleteHarper is praying for the Libs to run another leadership race.
ReplyDeleteDon't do it.
The Ontario Libs were talking about ditching McGuinty when he lost to Harris...
Dion has made some progress in Quebec, I think. Ontario can be regained. The trick is proper policy, rebranding and better communication.
Send Dion for more language lessons and communication training.
The next election will likely be about keeping Harper from a majority and reducing his seat count. If Harper can be made to slide by a resurgent Lib Party, the CONs will start to eat themselves. The CONs are not a unified Party either. They are only suffering Harper's nudge towards the centre because they smell majority in the air. Take that away from them, and there will be war brewing in CON ranks.
I'm sorry, BCL, but I can't agree. I voted Liberal and will vote Liberal again, even if Dion remains as leader, but the party won't see any more money from me until there's a leadership race.
ReplyDeleteDion's flaws go beyond lack of charisma and communication skills. He's not a fighter, at least not the kind who can fight the Conservatives. He just reminds me too much of Joe Clark and, I suspect, his future will be much the same - as a respected minister in a future Liberal government.
I was just talking with some co-workers. As one of them said, "The only good thing about the outcome of the election is that now Dion will have to resign." If Dion can't get support from people who always vote Liberal, how can he get it from those who don't?
It really makes my stomach churn to read so many Libs making disparaging comments about the voting public. They infer that they're cretins or lazy or untrustworthy.
ReplyDeleteListen you clowns, those are the very same voters who brought Liberal governments to power in the past. They were just fine then, ther're just fine now.
They didn't lose the election for us, we did that ourselves, starting with Mr. Dion. You have to "win" an election, it's not some form of entitlement.
We "lost" that election and we lost it because we didn't deserve to win it. We didn't connect with the Canadian voting public. We failed to frame any election issues. We failed to stand up to Harper so many times when we should have that we looked feckless and untrustworthy.
Harper is no superman. He was vulnerable on his words and his deeds and he was vulnerable on all the other problems (scandals) of the Conservative party. Yet we barely laid a glove on him.
Don't blame the voters. Our loss was our doing.
A quick note before I get on the plane.
ReplyDeleteIt isn't so much that I support Dion as I am against the whole process the Libs use to choose a leader. It is expensive and drawn out, and will end in another monkey show known as a delegated convention.
It is also possible that Harper could call an election in the middle of the process.
As long as we have a minority situation I think you go with the devil you know.
I also think Dion got better as things went along, and may get better yet.
Oh, I agree with you there. The party can't afford another dog-and-pony show like the last convention. It made for great TV viewing for a few thousand political junkies but the whole process was a collosal waste of time and money.
ReplyDeleteI fully expect the party to find a way out of the plan they've boxed themselves into. Surely some kind of mail-in ballot can be used to rescind the decision for a delegated convention?
Harper could call an election during the process. The Martians could invade too. I think though, that there's a window of at least 18 months.
Harper knows too well that calling another election - especially another one for no reason other than his political fortunes - is just the sort of thing that voters like to punish. Curious that those who advocate Dion staying on inevitably reveal timidity as their motivation. Timidity is a cancer to the Liberal Party.
ReplyDeleteThe next leader should be Ignatieff. Why? Aside from being more intellectualy up to the job than Rae, he has guts, and isn't afraid of punching first, because he can take a punch back. For crist sakes: the only leaders who wholloped their way through the Campaign were Duceppe and Layton, and, not surprisingly, voters rewarded them.
ReplyDeleteIt is funny that the first anger Dion has shown the whole campaign towards the CTV reporter after the election. He needed to do that long ago. He complained, too late, that the media have failed to properly analyse the competing economic plans of the Liberals and Conservatives. Dion was wrong to shelve his GreenShift in the face of media and party questioning: it has wide support with economists and academia, while Harper's plan of a massive government regulation could have been borrowed from a dusty Beijing bookshelf. Dion ought to have continued to push his carbon tax, and to find backers for it who would magnify his voice, and to constantly chastise the media for not reporting on it properly.
He was not assertive enough. The next leader needs to talk down to the media, rather than plead with them. The next leader also can't allow his advisors tell him to shelve his policy half-way through.
He needed to attack Harper. Harper was handed the government with a silver spoon in his mouth heaped with jam. He's done not much more than evaporate the surplus to buy votes, rather than save the surplus, or invest it in areas where Canada is falling behind its peers: like in funding for science and higher education, where Canada lags far behind in per-capita spending compared to the US, and, with a new US admin coming in, makes the possibility of losing talent to the US a huge problem. Harper is also an isolationist: Dion should have reminded Canadians that as a successor to Kyoto, a binding treaty is going to negotiated in 2009 in Copenhagen limiting GHG, and that in the run up meetings, Harper has played an utterly condemnable role.
Dion should have really attacked him on these points, over and over. The next leader is now going to have to do it.
One last point: all the pundits on teevee think that this parliament should last two years, at least.
No. The next leader needs to dissolve parliament at the first opportunity. You cannot sit there in parliament mutely acceding to the destruction of the house the Liberal party built by an undereducated neo-con frat boy, and come off as having statesman-like credibility.
Get a leader who will give Harper hell, and quickly.
Let Harper own the economic crisis for a while. The Liberals don't have to do anything for the immediate future.
ReplyDeleteIt's not a game you can sit out, ti-guy, it's the future of the country. Harper has done this country harm, and, if not defeated, will do more that will take decades to recover from, if ever.
ReplyDeleteYou can't let this man negotiate on our behalf the most important environmental and industrial treaty since Nafta. You can't let this man ruin through malign neglect Canada's government research institutions.
Economic crisis and global warming aren't going anywhere, no matter who's in charge.
ReplyDeleteLet Harper handle it. He's the smartest man in the room, after all.
Tossing Dion right now would make the Party look panicky and weak and just reinforce that belief in non-Liberals.
ReplyDeleteTime to salvage the situation with Mr. Dion at the helm, pay off the debts and get ready to fight the next battle.
If that means another two years of hand sitting and not showing up for votes, so be it.
Money is the lifeblood of politics and Liberals don't got none.
Lanny, two years from now we'll be in an election campaign. If we wait that long for a new leader, Harper will call an election before he or she has had a chance to rebuild.
ReplyDeleteThe party is in stasis until Dion is gone. I don't think we can afford a year, let alone two.
I like Dion - but having said that, too many people can't understand him when he talks in English, and quite frankly he hasn't done a good job of throwing things back at Harper.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, but when you are dealing with clods like the HarperCon$, you need to hammer them day in, day out, 7 days a week. Find a message, stick to it, and keep pounding it out until the voters get it. Dion has not done that.
If Dion's not up to that job, then the Liberal party needs to rethink its leadership.
Dion's problem is that the Conservatives were able to define through ads when the Liberals couldn't afford to respond. The real problem is the freeloading members of the Liberal party who don't pay their way. Typical greedy freeloading liberals, looking to get someone else to pay for everything.
ReplyDeleteFigure put how to squeeze a couple of bucks from the membership and the problems are solved
OH.
ReplyDeleteTouch a nerve cheap-guy
"I think, with the rapid cretinisation, of Canada, the Liberals will just have to weather the storm until pandering to the low-IQ voter is no longer in fashion. - ti-guy
ReplyDeleteYup. That's the "Liberal" way. Blame those stupid voters when you can't win an election (much less muster a proper election campaign).
"Let Harper own the economic crisis for a while. The Liberals don't have to do anything for the immediate future. - ti-guy
Well, that's what Prime Ministers do, you know.
As for the Libs, they should start off small; have a bottle drive or something to raise funds for the party.
You needn't have bothered to get any dumber than this, Dainty:
ReplyDelete"Typical greedy freeloading liberals, looking to get someone else to pay for everything."
Did you fart, burp and scratch your arse after you wrote that?
Wait...Don't answer that. Paul S. will get turned on.
I'll admit it. I voted Liberal last night.
ReplyDeleteI knew our Conservative candidate would win and I felt sorry for the Liberal candidate.
That's what the Libs are down to nowadays . . . the pity vote.
Why can't you trolls write stuff like this?
ReplyDeleteGive me something to work with.