CIVITATENSIS

The Dalai Lama is on Canadian soil (in Calgary), and Count Michael Ignatieff, the Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, is “at an event celebrating the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China,”  according to his own tweet this afternoon.

How DO Tibet supporters in the Liberal party feel about that?

I caught Michael Ignatieff saying on CTV that he “will give Quebeckers a choice.” He and Bob Rae already have done that, however: It’s Martin Cauchon (and the Chretienites) or Denis Coderre (and the Martinites). It’s Deja-vu.

Ignatieff also said that there is no need for a Quebec Lieutenant. Reportedly, he will run Quebec out of his Ontario riding office.  Gotta  hand it to the man. He has the power of conviction that any zealot would envy:  When he believes that led balloons will fly, he believes that led balloons will fly.

The contest continues: It’s still Cauchon 1, Coderre 3

Michael Ignatieff found out today that cutting people off at the knees, especially when they are your provincial lieutenant, is never a good thing.  But doubly so in Quebec, where Ignatieff’s decision to displace a woman candidate from the riding of Outremont in order to benefit Coderre’s political rival, Martin Cauchon, left Denis Coderre weak, and open to separatists accusations of spineless lackey.

This morning Denis Coderre quit his position as Quebec federal Liberal chieftain, giving a blow to Michael Ignatieff’s chances of bouncing in Quebec in the near future. In addition, the new lieutenant, whoever the Grits choose, will have to answer as to whether he can make local decisions on his own, or whether he will be a slave to Ignatieff’s indecisive will,  even when the leader’s decisions work against women in Quebec.

Should Ignatieff choose Martin Cauchon for the job Coderre has left vacant (one cannot put this eventuality past Ignatieff), we will no doubt soon assist to yet another round of the Liberal civil war in Quebec. Ignatieff has all the skills, what is more, to see the feud spread across the country. That’s not just wishful thinking on my part. That scenario, given that Bob Rae is already trying to get involved, is well within the political gifts of the national Liberal leader.

One might say that Ignatieff does not understand the political culture of Quebec. But this has little to do with how looooooooooong he has been out of the country. To displace a woman candidate so as to parachute a powerful male politician into a riding is only different from the Duplessis years in that there were no women candidates in the Duplessis years.

I predicted here that this was going to take the form a feud, but that’s easy to do because it already was a feud.  Count Ignatieff is a fool for getting in the middle of it.  Where is the Liberal messiah of Unity?

The contest continues: Cauchon 1, Coderre 3 (This was a three-pointer)

What happens when you make a video full of political platitudes and offer nothing of substance?

Ask Michael Ignatieff. In the Grit PR offensive with ads in English and in French,  Count Ignatieff talks about how much better the world will be when he fulfills his natural destiny to rule over Canadians.  The ads, with a few trees for background, were supposed to push him up in the polls but they have done the opposite.

And since there is not much that can be called substance in these ads, people (in the media) have begun asking and speculating where the “forest” behind the Liberal leader is actually located. Perhaps a reflection of the ads’ script, some figure it’s an electronic fake, though the Grit strategists claim it is real. Notice how they say that? The forest is real, but that does not address whether its reality was behind their leader when he was in front of the camera.

Whether the forest exists and the Count was in fact there, whatever message the ads were supposed to generate, they were not designed to send people wondering whether their leader is a fake.

I am beginning to wonder if the Dion Syndrome is not contagious.

Martin Cauchon’s return to politics in Quebec broadsided a female Liberal candidate and plucked a few feathers off of Denis Coderre’s political headship for the Quebec Liberal party.

While Ignatieff got caught in the middle of the titanic egos of the two male Quebec politicians who have leadership ambitions, it was Nathalie Prohon that got pushed to the side to the lesser riding of Jeanne-Le-Ber instead of Outremont.  It’s the new expression of Liberal friendliness toward women in politics.

Coderre’s Facebook status yesterday called for sending Cauchon to the riding of Jeanne-Le-Ber and keeping prestigious Outremont for Prohon (”Sur ma recommandation et celle de notre equipe du Quebec. Michael Ignatieff a offert la circonscription de Jeanne-LeBer a Martin Cauchon. A suivre”).

But Denis Coderre lost the battle to sideline his rival. Coderre has not updated his status since yesterday, no doubt still perplex. As Quebec party chieftain, he expected to prevail but Ignatieff decided otherwise.

The contest has only begun: Cauchon 1, Coderre 0.

Polls are polls and all that, but this recent one cannot be heartening to Professor Ignatieff.  His support seems to be heading south for the winter.

The more Iggy tries, the more the price recedes away from him, even in Toronto. And to think that just three weeks ago, Alberta Senator Grant Mitchell was  announcing to CBC reporters a bonanza of seats for federal Liberals in Alberta.

What is remarkable, and a few others polls have been picking up on this since early September (2009), is how the Liberal descent  coincides with the new Liberal ads offensive.  You’d think the ads were working. Apparently they are, but for the other team.

Is this the Dion effect? Stephane had a similar problem: the more he was visible, the more his support softened. Remember how he used to be the best thing that the Tories had in their arsenal. The Grits have given PM Harper a similar gift, again.

Chantale Hebert has seized on what’s going on chez Iggy

In what increasingly looks like a case of Dion redux, Michael Ignatieff was poised to head down the same slippery election slope as his predecessor had the 40th Parliament died a swift death today.

Since the Liberal leader has gone on the election warpath, he and his strategists have largely recreated the dynamics that led to their party’s demise last year. Over the past three weeks, Ignatieff has won skirmishes against the other opposition leaders, but lost the pre-election war to the Conservatives.

Read on here.  You know it’s bad when even the Red Star tends to see Ignatieff as a Dion deux.

They said they’d split the vote and get a Liberal elected. That was the line that the Alberta ruling Tories circulated among the muses in the media, who immediately got to work repeating it. It excited the typical left-wing media that a “rural and right-wing” party was going to be responsible for sending another Liberal to Edmonton, but not just another Liberal: a Liberal from Calgary! Both right parties loose.

It seemed more than wishful thinking than reality, considering that polls in the riding revealed quite a different reality. They progressively showed the erosion of the Stelmach Tory vote while the Liberal second place in the last general election was not getting much traction.

On by-Election night, the results were clear: Wildrose more than quadrupled its vote from the previous contest in the general election of  March 2008.  The government’s numbers plummeted to half of what they were before, and the Liberals–those whose crowning had been announced so many times earlier– in fact lost votes and dropped one percentage point.  In less than 18 months, Ed Stelmach has gotten himself into serious trouble.

Considering that the NDP showed poorly and that there was no Green Party in the running, the Liberal loss of votes is a bit disastrous. It serves to underscore the magnitude of Wildrose’s victory. Hinman was after all supposed to be the country-bumpkin who could not possibly stand even in the shadow of two “solid” urbane candidates.

By-elections are about discontent, so it stood to reason that the Tories would loose. All things being equal, one would have expected the Tory vote, all 25% that disappeared from supporting the Tory candidate, to spread somewhat unevenly across other parties. Most assumed that the lion’s share would go to the Liberal candidate.  Those don’t seem like reasonable assumptions to us now, but they were not totally unreasonable then.

Why then, is the crucial question, the Tory vote did not spread? It is not that they all stayed home, for the participation rate shows a much different picture. People came out to vote and 25% voted Tory. Some of their missing half  may have stayed home, but the majority of them came out and voted for the Wildrose Alliance.

To their credit, Hinman’s team ran an excellent campaign. Even my NDP friends think that their slogan and organisation were fantastic. The “Send Ed a Message” motto was brilliant. But as persuasive as they were, it is difficult to account for the large swing just based on the brilliant campaigning.

Something else may be afoot. We may have seen in Calgary-Glenmore the initial ripples of an upcoming wave. The numbers in Calgary-Glenmore show a tale of change, an appetite for change now traveling in one direction. It is not enough to have a mood for change when it is diffused and all over the electoral map.  But once that mood finds a vehicle to express it, change becomes immanent.

If what we saw in Calgary-Glenmore on Monday night is indeed a first set of electoral ripples of discontent, we’ll see more  in the soon-coming leadership selection of the Wildrose-Alliance next month. We have been waiting for the wave, to steal a well known expression from the title of a book.  It may be coming.

In this post, we hoped that Jack Layton would tell Canadians where he stood regarding Michael Ignatieff’s announcement that the Liberal are going to  oppose the government on everything.

It is our view that the Grit announcement had no other immediate goal but to crank up the heat on Jack Layton a little. Liberals wanted Jack to come out and say that they were going to help the Conservatives remain in power in order to hang on to their own seats a little longer. But Jack has not blinked, at least not in public, and is now accusing the Liberals of bluffing, because he knows they are. They know that most of the Liberal caucus does not want an election right now, and that they are worried about a voter backlash.

Election this Fall?! Not really.  Jack Layton is really not as dumb as he looks. He’s too busy trying to make it look like it’s Harper who wants one.

As the Wildrose leadership race goes on, conservative Albertans begin to take notice.

With the Calgary-Glenmore by-election right on the horizon for Monday, many are keeping their predictions to themselves. Except for most Liberals in Alberta, who are predicting a victory right doen the middle between the Tories and the Wildrose. Grant Mitchel is even claiming “realistic” gains for Ignitieff’s Liberals in Alberta at an election not-yet called.

But the heat is truly on the Conservatives. Not just because it’s the incumbent party and the party in government, but because they have spent tons of money and resources making sure that this by-election is not the embarrasment that their defeat at Calgary-Elbow was for them, losing Ralph Klein’s former seat.

The challenge will be for the Tories not just to win but to win decisively. One would expect it to be so after all they have invested in the riding to make sure that Glenmore does not slap Stelmach in the face.  Given that, a victory for the Tories short of demolishing the Liberals and the Wildrose will be a sign that the Tories continue to be in trouble.  Anything short of a crushing victory will be a warning for Ed Stelmach that Albertans –Calgarians, especially–are not impressed with the his fiscal and energy policies.

A single seat does not matter to Stelmach’s Conservatives, and by-elections are notorious for turning against governments. The Liberals could win, indeed. But another Liberal in the Calgary area will endear Stelmach to Calgarians even less, making them see Wildrose as a better and better alternative down the line.

One can agree or disagree with David Warren, but it’s hard to walk away from his writing disappointed.  Here is a taste of his last piece on political correctness:

It is crucially important to fight back: to denounce those who try to silence us; to subject their intellectual fashion cults to public ridicule; to show solidarity with those who are being muffled and victimized; to give them encouragement, and prevent their isolation; to defy openly the edicts of the politically correct; to retaliate against every attempt to encroach upon academic freedom. (”Forgive, but retaliate,” was Prof. George’s formula, by analogy to Reagan’s old Cold-War detente formula: “Trust, but verify.”)

A good place to start would be with those orientation programs. They need to be exposed for what they are, and challenged in forensic detail. Professors of goodwill, regardless of their own political views, should go out of their way to uphold the honour of their profession, by assuring incoming students that the university is not a closed leftwing camp; that social and political indoctrination is not a natural expression of academic ideals, but a subversion and perversion of them.

See here for the whole thing.

The Grit strategy of declaring to the four winds that they are going to oppose the Conservative government undescores what most people know: the Liberals have been cooperating with the Conservatives, propping the government, some might say.

In the meantime, the NDP does the opposite and says no to everything, knowing that Stephen Harper is no Paul Martin.

The result has been an opportunity for the NDP to capitalise on Grit responsibility. The NDP will continue to say, as they did in the last election campaign, that they are the only national  alternative to the Conservatives from the Left. Layton will again paint Grits as being too close to the Tories in the hope of further eroding the left Liberal flank. Frankly, they have a better chance of doing that now that the Liberals are headed by a man pretended to be American and who once supported torture than when they were headed by one who wanted to paint even the Liberal flag Green.

To beat the Tories, the Liberals need growth and they need growth on the Left and on the Right. They can pounce on the Tories to swell their right, perhaps, but the NDP will pound them on the Left, and negate the effect. All of which is likely to result in something very similar to the present parliament, even though Stephane Dion is gone, if they are not careful.

Which brings us back to the strategy of declaring that they, as opposition, are going to oppose. We’ll leave for another day how the Tories are going to handle that one. The Grit announcement  is not about the Tories. It’s about the NDP. They want to be able to minimise the NDP charge that they are “collaborators” of the Harper regime, a charge that is damning in lefty circles. But the strategy is also about putting Jack on the spot.  If Jack opposed blankly as the NDP have been doing and as the Grits promise  to do, the government will fall sooner rather than later. The Grits can then blame the NDP for an election that no one wants and they can have more solid ground to woe the left flankers.  They hope to have an election and avoid the perception that they precipitated it.

Jack Layton is the target, and he knows it.  Many of his seats are on the line and it is the Grits who most covet them and have better chance of getting them.  Beside the government, who has the most to loose in an election with a stronger Liberal showing? This is why Jack is not coming out of his cage until he figures out what to do and how to respond.  If the Grits are serious, he will have to find ways to prop the Tories.

The Bloc won’t do it because they are toxic to the Tories and every one else. They Bloc won’t do it because they have painted Harper as the devil for Quebeckers. They won’t do because they are scarred of Harper and of strengthening Harper in Quebec.

It’s all on Jacko’s back. He’s gonna have to play ball with Harper to preserve his nice collection of seats, for now. Either that, or he goes back to the coalition idea. He’ll have to keep two things in mind, though. Iggy is no Stephane, and  coalescing didn’t work out all that well for him 8 months ago.

It’s really Jack’s move now.

Simpson says that Ignatieff was a fine intellectual when he was a public intellectual. Not sure what that means, but it’s true that he was not granular. As a public intellectual he was successful because he has a flair for language and excellent capacity for self-promotion. What he didn’t have was depth, though he seemed to have faked it well enough to have equally shallow souls believe that he was “fine.”

Intellectuals who move into politics must begin to make compromises with the truth, to move around its edges, to forget the core of what it means to try to live in truth and to settle instead for a world of rationalizations.

Even that, as well as it sounds, leaves lots out. Ignatieff once thought of himself as too sophisticated to be pegged and defined by silly nationality like Canada’s. Canada? What’s that?  He called himself an American instead, when he was not. Truth? He called himself a Briton when he was not. Truth? He’d call himself anything just be liked.

Now he calls himself Canadian. So he’s fine, again.

Who knew?

More sad news for Ed Stelmach’s record:

An Alberta economist says the province is about to change from being an engine driving the Canadian economy to an anchor slowing recovery.

The weakness is being assigned to the energy sector, which Ed Stelmach slapped with a new royalty scheme sending energy exploration and exploitation running for Saskatchewan.

Ignatieff promises to oppose all that the Tories will present in the House, so Harper will put a bill to formalise the homeowners’ renovation tax credit promised in the last budget right in front his nose when the House resumes in a couple of weeks.

Will the Grits vote against it? and get caught triggering an election stopping measures to dole out money to voters.  The same money, one might add,  they helped convince voters they really needed.

Michael Ignatieff cannot possibly be that stupid!

Yet, if he votes in its favour of the bill he will be ridiculed for not following through on what he so vehemently announced he was going to do. My guess is that he already preparing a) the justification he will give for going back on his word (he’s Liberal a politician after all), and b) himself against the scorn and laughter and ridicule that some will heap on him.

Either way, as Don Martin says, it will be a head-smashing-in Liberal jump. For those who don’t get the reference, visit here.

Looks like the Liberal ads are trying to transform Iggy into a bit of a Stephen Harper. There is already talk that the new ads are Iggy’s ‘sweater vest moment.’

“We need a new way of thinking,” Ignatieff said in the ad, titled Worldview.

“A government that thinks big — that has a global perspective, invests in Canadians, gets their ideas to market and reaches out to India and China to build the economy of tomorrow.

“I know Canada can take on the world and win.”

There is that tough and confident tone that Canadians have become accostumed to hearing from the Prime Minister.  It stands to reason that Ignatieff does not want to imitate Stephane Dion or Paul Martin.

But when Liberals talk about taking on any one, they usually mean the United States and Americans. They “hate those bastards” Parrish once reminded us. Libs are nice to every one else, but I wonder.  They love Obama, so they can’t possibly mean taking on them this time. The plan is to seem particularly nice to the Chinese and Indians. There may be lots of votes at stake in what could prove to be a close election.

[Nelson] Wiseman said the main aim of the English ad appeared to be luring new Canadians back to the Liberals from the Conservatives, who made substantial gains among that demographic during the last election.

“What I found interesting was the contradiction between the phrase ‘taking on the world’ and the phrase ‘reaching out to India and China,’ ” said Wiseman, who said he thinks there’s a “60% chance” Canadians will be sent to the ballot boxes this fall.

“I think the India and China are intentionally placed there, not because people care about reaching out to India and China, unless they’re Chinese Canadians or Indo-Canadians, and I think the Liberals want [to make sure] more of that base of new Canadians doesn’t slide away to the Conservatives as it started to do in the last election.

“[India and China] are by far the largest sources of immigration to Canada in the past 10 years. That struck me.”

The battle is on, and it’s mostly Central Canada that will decide Ignatieff’s fate.