If You Haven't Written Off Martha Hall Findlay For LPoC Leader

...now is the time:

It’s time for the Liberal Party of Canada to stop ignoring Alberta. That was the message leadership candidate Martha Hall Findlay brought to Fort McMurray during a Friday tour of the oilsands, where she reaffirmed her support of the oilsands, as well as the Northern Gateway, Keystone XL and west-to-east pipelines.

She trashes the old NEP, endorses the new, Alberta-centric one.  If chosen LPoC leader, she wouldn't get a single vote in B.C.

Campaign Buttons For LPoC Leadership Contenders

I'm thinking I might give the old political consultant business a try, figuring that if LaForet can pull it off how hard can it be?  So I've had several buttons made up as a kind of "proof of concept", and if these are successful, more will follow.  The two buttons are shown below, accompanied by some notes as to the thinking that went into them, and a few ideas for future projects:

Button #1:

And Button #2:

So, one closely guarded trade secret among us consultant types is that excitement can be added to pretty much any political talking point just by using exclamation marks.  Note the three exclamation marks  I have employed in the very exciting button #1.  The same principle can be imagined in extremis by means of the following example: say we are running a candidate for some office who is young and charismatic.  We might create a pin for this candidate with lettering that read simply:

JUSTIN!

But--and this is where the real excitement would get added--every letter of the text, including the exclamation point...would be composed of tiny little exclamation points!  As though to say that this guy is made of excitement...is so full of the stuff that he might just go off any second.

Obviously, attempting such an approach with Marc Garneau would strain credulity.  These are only tin buttons we're talking about, not some kind of magical ring.  And indeed, my Button #2 dials back the number of exclamation points to evoke a quieter, more contemplative mood.  A thinking man's button, as it were.

In any case, if these two items sell big, I have plans for several additional Garneau campaign pins ready to implement.  For example:

Marc Garneau: He Is THE OTHER ONE

...and:

Garneau: He'll Put His Finger On It, Not Stick His Foot In It

...but I'm afraid this latter message is a bit long and might have to be stretched across two buttons, which would drive up my production costs.

Furthermore, my so far unnamed consulting business (and, by the way, if anyone wants to help with that, let 'er rip in the comments) won't just be about buttons.  I will also be offering more traditional political advise, ranging from don't insult Alberta because they're a bunch of vindictive pricks all the way to when speechifying in a restaurant/banquet-hall setting, do NOT quench your thirst from from the finger bowl.  (Technically, you can--its just a bit soapy, is all--but people find it gauche.)

My advice may not be the absolute best you can find out there, but it will be cheap and the portions, as it were, will be ample.

So I'm just going to sit back and let my buttons go viral.  You may place orders in the comments.

Justin Scores A Point

...in my book anyway:

On the issue now dominating B.C. politics, Mr. Trudeau said he did not support the proposed $6-billion Northern Gateway project to pipe Alberta oil-sands bitumen to the B.C. coast for shipment to Asia.

By the way, WK says: 

A narrative is forming: Trudeau’s young and vital, but not serious.

Garneau’s the other side of that: older, calmer, wiser.

True enough.  It's even a narrative that I personally have at least half-embraced at times.  But then even front-running candidates have to prove themselves.  Of the two, Garneau  has the larger challenge.  And both of them have until April 2013 to fill out their personas.  This is a good start on Justin's part.

The New Liberal Leader Must Oppose Northern Gateway

At least if they want me to vote for them. But also because its a solid political decision in advance of 2015.  The number of pro-pipeline votes to be had in B.C. is small and getting smaller.  Alberta is and will remain a wasteland regardless.  And the NDP's anti stance doesn't seem to have hurt them in Saskatoba, according to most recent polls.  Furthermore, it is of a piece with the LPoC's casting itself as the party of national unity.  The Quebec separatist movement right now is a side-show.  The real threat to a unified Canada comes when a federal government beholden to the Calgary oil-patch tries to force Northern Gateway on British Columbia.  D'you know that B.C. is one of the most economically diversified of all the provinces?  They extract stuff from the ground, sure, but they also paint and dance and pick stocks and  make computers and take little kids from Japan out in the ocean in inflatables where they can have their first experience of swimming with a dolphin.  They also have a plethora of port cities to send their exports overseas from and take in shirts made in Romania and all that crap China sells us.  If any province could afford to give Confederation the middle finger and get away clean its BC.  And I will just note that the rhetoric in the B.C. media has only just heated up to where I was three months ago.  They're now freely invoking the NEP, but casting Alberta and Harper in the role of Trudeau, and the whole "over my dead body" meme has spread from Rafe Mair to the general population.  So when I say that, if Northern Gateway is approved next year, there will be serious talk of B.C. getting the hell out, you would do well to believe me.  Northern Gateway could destroy this country and, as Liberals, we should all be against this result just on general principles. 

Get Bob Rae A Sinecure!

BOOYAH!  Bob Rae has chosen NOT to run for LPoC leadership, which is the best thing for the party and therefore, by definition, for the nation.  If Stephen Harper won't give him a Senate seat or an ambassadorship, I suggest that CBC offer him a spot.  In particular, stick him on Hockey Night in Canada as Don Cherry's replacement in a revamped Coaches (Statesman's??) Corner.  I've watched Bob's political career, and  he's won more fights than Don ever did.  And the guy's got couth, which Don never had.

Meanwhile, Justin's got the hair but Marc makes me hot with his intelligence.  Although if Lizzie May steps in then all bets are off.  You can vote for her on Bourque.

What Would Happen If...

A GP/LPoC merger actually makes sense and is doable, relatively speaking.  And if E. May ran for leader of either a merged entity or the LPoC itself I would be willing to use all my skills and abilities to crush...CRUSH...anyone in her path.  Seriously. This is the  best bit of empty political speculation all week.

From here.

The Bob And Sheila Show

Steve and Jeff  are upset with Shelia Copps remarks yesterday re democracy in the LPoC and the possible permanent leadership aspirations of currently interim leader Bob Rae.  They get hives at the very thought of Rae as permanent head, I suppose; I get hives, on the other hand, at how the rules were specifically designed to exclude him from running for the post, which basically amounts to the party exploiting their best Pol and then casting him aside when convenient.  The notion that it isn't a rule which prevents Bob Rae from competing, but a promise he made, strikes me as mere semantics.  He was told to promise, or he wouldn't get the job.  Whether Sheila is suggesting that she will unwrite a rule, or release Bob from his promise, is not a matter of substance.

Not that I would easily support Bob.  He's just too damned old; the LPoC has to find someone that can commit past 2015 should they not form government next election.  And I suspect some of the animus against Rae, and perhaps Ms. Copps, stems from an inchoate longing for generational change rather than anything in particular that was said yesterday.  But Teenage Jesus hasn't shown up as yet, and in a year or so the party will have to choose from among what has been offered.  If its Bob vs. crap, why should the LPoC force itself to default to crap?

And as for Sheila's celebrity status "sucking all the air from the room" and so forth, if not for her speech the story of the day yesterday would have Mike Crawley and Ron Hartling fighting over who lost Ontario. How would that have been better?

Dalton McGuinty For LPoC Leader?

Steve V has a interesting--if perhaps premature--post up today suggesting that Dalton McGuinty should be thinking about about who will succeed him as leader of the Ontario Liberal Party.  And of course, at his place and elsewhere, a few have suggested that Dalton might want to consider a move into Federal politics-- into, specifically, the race for leader of the national Liberals.  I too hope he considers such a move.  A few possible issues:

1) His French appears to be passable--better than Hudak and Horwath's--but still not great.  On the other hand, given the LPoC's stated time-frame for choosing another leader, he has plenty of time to bone up.

2) He's in his mid-50s, so could probably stick around for a 2nd federal election if the first one didn't pan out.  And of course my long-standing belief is that, if your leader's 1st campaign isn't an absolute disaster, your party owes him a 2nd crack.  You can't keep dumping your front-man. 

3) One thing Steve notes correctly is that McGuinty did not perform well in Ontario's rural areas (which mirrors the federal parties performance nationally).  The LPoC needs to either absolutely clean up in the cities or reach out to the countryside, and this is the one area where Dalton has come up (in this last election at least) short. 

So, maybe, one strike against.

The People Are Coming

...according to B.C. Liberal Leadership Candidate George Abbott's spectacularly ill-chosen campaign slogan, which reminds me of that guy who ran for leader of the Duma years ago, who promised that, if elected, everyone in Russia would have an orgasm. No word on how Mr. Abbott intends to deliver on his promises, but his campaign will almost certainly involve one of those province-wide bus-tours, so maybe he can go door-to-door.