CIVITATENSIS

The prevalent wisdom is that governments don’t do well in by-elections because by-elections afford voters the opportunity to vote against the government and send a message without endangering its stability.

It is also prevalent wisdom that voters vote against the government in times of economic hardship.

So what exactly would current wisdom say about a government that picks up 2 out of 4 by-elections during a recession?

That is the question for which Michael Ignatieff in particular will also need to find an answer.

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.

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.

In what amounts to be practice for ousting the Conservative government of Stephen Harper come January, the Liberals are poised to install Michael Ignatieff as their new “interim” leader next Wednesday, after Stephan Dion finally steps down today.

While the Liberals constitution allows for the appointment of interim leaders, Michael Ignatieff is also running formally to replace their briefly rehabilitated but disgraced leader Stephane Dion. In effect, Ignatieff becomes the de facto Grit leader, which tramples the chances of the other two leadership hopefuls, including one Bob Rae.

Bob Rae, the Grit most animated to topple Stephen Harper is effectively being ousted himself. The leadership race will still be on, of course, but in reality the party will have robbed Rae of his chances to 1) get his hat trick toppling governments in Canada, and 2) become the leader of the battered Liberal Party.

In essence, a coalition of Liberals other than Bob Rae supporters is colluding behind close doors to take Bob Rae’s democratic chances away and to give the prize to Michael Ignatieff.

What goes around…

Jacques Parizeau, the former Parti Québécois premier of Quebec, said that a coalition government would be weaker than the incumbent, a prospect he said was "eminently satisfying."

"The fact that the Bloc got Stéphane Dion to sign a political accord in which it is explicitly written that he undertakes to act in partnership with Canadians and the Québécois should bring a smile to the face of many sovereigntists," Mr. Parizeau wrote.

The key thing about playing chicken is to know when the others are just playing chicken. If you are just playing along but your opponent is desperate, you’ve lost before the start.

That’s what the threat to strip the opposition parties of their government subsidy did; it made desperate. For at least two of them, it placed them on the brink of collapse, or a longer period in the political wilderness than they are willing to spend.

Talk about a coalition has been floating around, at least since last October, before the federal election.  The Toronto Star has been most interested in promoting the view of a coalition. Some of these folks even have a FaceBook page where luminaries like Judy Rebick are posting with glee at the prospect of bumping the Tories from power.

There is a whole list of reasons why a coalition would not work and fall flat not long after it got off the ground, if it got off the ground. That may have been the calculation of the Harper Tories when they announced that parties would no longer receive public money.

But to the opposition Liberals and the Bloc, it is a matter of survival. Wounded beasts are dangerous. Wounding a beast that was already committed to devouring you, doubly so.

Harper should not have blinked even so. Yeah, Bob Rae did it to poor Frank Miller, but the Ontario Tories had been in office for decades. There was appetetite for change, and people accepted the opposition hijacking the government. That’s not the case here.

Harper blinked, and that will cost him his ability to run the government for whatever long he hangs on, if he hangs on. He will be under constant threat from opposition to bring him down now now that he has backed down. He has lost the crucial strategic and psychological advantage. His blood is now in water infested with political piranhas.

Harper may have to spend months just to regain some political ground, if he can regain at all the upper hand. He may well be headed from Canada’s longest and very succesful minority government to the most paralysed, perhaps a worthy rival to Joe Clark’s nothing-done minority. Harper lost his nerve. He blinked.

The man responsible for deeply dividing the Natural Governing Party is the man they now want to call to glue it back together.

…some Liberals have approached Mr. Chretien to convene a meeting between Liberal Leader Stephane Dion and the two leading leadership candidates, Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae. Those Liberals want Mr. Chretien to broker a deal that would see a leader other than Mr. Dion who could lead the Liberals in a general election campaign should it come to that.

Representatives of both the Ignatieff and Rae campaigns quickly dismissed the suggestion that Mr. Chretien would or should convene such a meeting. One campaign official scoffed at the notion, calling it “preposterous.” Still, the very fact that some Liberals are thinking along those lines underscores the peril facing Mr. Harper Monday.

Is there no end to the troubles of these children?

Notice the last sentence in the quote. Reporters can’t think past their noses and deadlines. Harper is making the Grits relive their days of internal strife, but Akin thinks that Harper is in trouble? The very fact that the Grits are thinking about their divider and destroyer to come fix what he broke is really an indication that the Grits have not seen the end of their troubles.

If the coronate Iggy, the civil war goes on. If they coronate Rae, the civil war goes on. But they don’t want Dion. Who’s in trouble?

The opposition parties are getting all worked up and say they’ll take the government down in Ottawa on account that Tories want to cut off all parties from a state subsidy. I’d like to see an election in January, in which opposition parties whine about no longer being entitled to tax payers’ money at a time when tax payers are scrambling in line ups at Toys R Us to find a present for their little children. That’ll go well.

Then January and the bills show up at the door. How sympathetic will Canadians be that more than one hundred million will be spent in an election so that the opposition parties can keep their 20 million? All the while, they’re having to cope with job losses and credit card bills in the Xmas hang over.

They’ll form a coalition, the opposition folks say! Led by whom? Jack?!!  That will go well for Bob Rae! Duceppe?? Je ne pense pas, but it would be highly amusing.  Dion then? Yes, let’s have Stephane lead the coalition and be the PM. His election slogan could be something like…. Grits don’t want him no more, but you do!

Nicaragua may be headed for civil war for the first time this century. If we count conservatively (how else would I count anything?), they had three big ones last century, each worse than the first.

The Sandinistas under Daniel Ortega have just stolen the Nicaraguan municipal elections held November 9th (Doesn’t that sound like a reprise of 1984?) backed by Hugo Chavez and Vladimir Putin. There is mounting evidence of blatant and massive fraud. There is mounting evidence that Nicaraguans don’t want to roll over on this one. Ortega’s traditional domestic allies have abandoned him. For example, the man with whom Ortega stole the 1984 elections, Sergio Ramirez, broke off from Ortega years ago and founded his own party. Ramirez’ party has now been banned.

There is a new Cold War afoot in Latin America.  Chavez and his Latin American acolytes appear to be Cold War warriors from the Left.  They see the advancing American empire under every bed in the region. All of it at a time that the Empire has been so occupied in the Middle East that it has had trouble remembering where Latin America is. Nobody said that it had to be connected to reality, but the rhetoric does have resonance with their followers.

Looking at the 20th century civil wars in Nicaragua, the next one will be worse than the previous ones. Vladimir Putin is already supplying weapons to Daniel Ortega. The Nicaraguan opposition?: parties, NGOs and individuals are slowly and systematically being intimidated, beaten, persecuted and some journalists even assassinated. The Sandinista strategy prepares the ground for Ortega’s next move. The removal of the constitutional obstacle to his continuation in power.

The armed opposition will begin, if it has not already, like all the others did before. Quietly, a fed up group of individuals at the social and political margins of the country will pick up weapons and head for the hills.  The boiling point may already have been reached as more and more people become aware or suspect the Sandinista long plan, when they realize that Ortega and his wife have no intentions of relinquishing power at the end of their term in two years. Little by little, the urban elites will catch up to the rebels and join.

The rest just follows a well-established logic.

Though nearly two thirds of voters rejected citoyen Dion’s Green vision cum social engineering project, he launched the most disrespectful interpretation of an electoral vote since Jacques Parizeau’s comments on the heals of the 1995 referendum.

The good Liberals were defeated, Dion said, because the evil Conservatives were awash with money and were able to distort (lie about) his message of deliverance before the impending global environmental collapse. Twice, he mentioned their “money” not ever asking himself (this was clearly not the place to engage in meditations anyway) why the Tories and even the NDP had more money to spend than his party did.

But the crux of disrespect is to the electorate, especially to those that parked their vote elsequere.  Dion’s argument implies that voters have been dupped by a devellish advertising campaigm. He further implies that Canadian voters are too stupid to make up their own mind, too stupid to accept him as a leader and too dumb to make the difference between Grits and Tories on their own. The condescencion toward the voter is a clear indication that Dion has learned nothing. Even the worst defeat in his party’s history has not compelled him to re-examine his messianic complex and his bullheadedness about always being right.

Finally, refusing still to acknowledge that he took the party to his left, his blame on someone else’s money fits well with the New Left sociological view that he learned in France –another source for his messianic complex. Dion implies that the moneyed classes are dirty and the poor (whom he leads) are the pure. The poor (Liberals) are the good guys and the rich (Conservatives and New Democrats) are the bad guys. His messianic complex is once again validated in that formula.  And yet, his conclusion is that the Liberals need money. Citoyen Dion has clearly not understood the nature of party financing under the rules that his former boss bequeathed Paul Martin, the Liberal party and the rest of the country.

It is voters who are the major source of money now, the same people who Dion just finished insulting in his effort to exonerate himself and avoid responsibility for his pigheaded inflexibility.

Dion is not the man that will take the party out of its financial mess. What will Dion do now to retire his personal and the party’s debt in the next seven months that he was not able to do in the last two years? Just like in the money markets, it is also true in politics: winners attract money!

It has been a long time since I have paid attention to much that Jeffrey Simpson writes, but some of his observations regarding the recent federal election results in Quebec deserve some attention. Simpson seems completely unaware that he is now sharing political space once occupied decades ago by the Reform Party and the redneck Westerners he so often mocks.

They [francophones in Quebec] apparently welcome a party that wants no part of governing Canada while continuing to demand more and more from it.

[...]

Since 1993, the largest number of francophone Quebeckers [they call themselves "québécois" but Simpson seems confused about what to call them. Haitians are Quebec francophones, for example, but they are not "québécois."] apparently has wanted no part of federal parties, and therefore of the government or governance of Canada. Canada is no longer a country they wish to participate in governing, but one from which they wish to withdraw cash, like an automated teller machine.

They want to influence decisions in Ottawa without taking any responsibility for those decisions. They want neither to separate from Canada, nor to govern it. They want, through the Bloc Québécois, a variation of an old and enduring ambition: to be part of Canada, but only sort of, and on their terms, which means some sort of associate status, égal à égal, separate but not fully separate, sovereignty but with association, autonomous but still tied, somewhat in but somewhat out, or, in the metaphor of the brilliant Quebec journalist Jean Paré, parishioners in a church called Canada they seldom attend except for important occasions like Christmas, Easter and maybe marriages. They want to take but not to give. And they always prefer leaders, when given a choice, from [francophone?] Quebec.

It is historical fact, reinforced again this week, that [francophone?] Quebeckers have always voted for a party led by a [francophone?] Quebecker when confronted with a choice between such a party and one led by someone from outside the province.

What an epiphany! Preston Manning was saying things of this sort for more than a decade, since the late 1980s. But it was people like Mr. Simpson and his journalist friends in Toronto and Montreal who repeatedly accused Manning of racism and anti-Quebec intolerance just for saying them.

Nice to see that the Glob columnist has come around, even if it only has taken him two decades to see past his own mental block.

Alleluia for Simpson!

What’s next? Will he now join Stockwell Day’s Church, whose beliefs he so vehemently smeared with the same petulant conviction that he once smeared Preston?

He won’t quit, he said. He is no quitter, he said. He said that Harper is the quitter, but not Stephane. So in light of having led the natural governing party to his worst ever showing, citoyen Dion didn’t quit on election night the way that other quitter that preceded him (wasshisname? Martin!!) did.

Paul Martin was Mr. Dithers, but he was decisive about one thing. He knew when to call it quits. He knew that the knives would be out and that he might either die by a thousand cuts and take the party down with him or end up face down on a curb in the streets of Montreal if he stayed. The choice was crystal for him.

Citoyen Dion is not the most decisive fellow around either. But he knows less than Paul Martin. He doesn’t know that he has to go. Instead of quitting on election night, he took it out on the poor CTV crew standing on the side of the path that he needed to walk among all three supporters present for his concession speech. Instead of quitting, he said that he’d be at the helm of a rump “plus agueri,”  more determined. Lord help the poor Grits. Wasn’t the loss humiliating enough?

Since Dion doesn’t know any better, there will be plenty of folks in the Liberal Party who will call to offer him special advise about what to do. Many will have different reasons, various analyses and scenarios, but they will all offer the same conclusion: Go! Pour l’amour de Dieu, allez vous en.

Citoyen Dion needs to be prudent in taking his time. Joe Morselli may be dead but t he Grits may still have people inMontreal who can look after Mr. Dion in ways that only they can.

The NDP is clearly one of the most, if not the most, anti-American party in Canada. If it were up to them, Canada should move to a different neighborhood and become one of the “stans” so that it could be closer to the Taliban. Dippers are never short of bile against our American neighbors.

But…, when a third rate so-called American movie-maker, who has a record of interfering in Canadian elections, comes to tag along with a campaigning Canadian politician, it is the NDP that welcomes him, incumbent Tony Martin. Michael Moore is hero among idiots, which is why I am surprised that Carolyn Parrish was not escorting him during his latest visit. Moore went on to make a series of insulting and disparaging remarks in public about a candidate opposing Dipper Tony Martin.

Moore, of course, is no idiot. He has made quite an enterprising career out of spinning lies and misinformation that he passes for documentaries. But the number of people who worship him, his courage and his ability to tell the truth, who gladly pay to consumme the garbage he produces is rather large, both in Canada and elsewhere.

Americans, of course, are always welcome in this country. But when foreign people come to interfere with our electoral and political process, regardless of where they are from, they are in violation of Canadian law. Will Elections Canada do anything about it? Not likely.

The French debate is quick coming to an end. Let me share some of my first impressions.

Gilles Duceppe: Hard to distinguish passion and anger in this man. To me, he seems angry most of the time. The nature of his position is that he has to whine because his party is not in any position to get anything done. Nonetheless, he has gone after Harper with some success. I lost count of how many times he said oil companies and Harper in the same sentence. Harper didn’t react much. Duceppe ignored Layton and Dion for the most part. He knows who his opponent is.

Stephane Dion: He looks better than I have seen in years. Measured, articulate, I am going to say even coherent, pressing at the  right points. He had Harper for lunch on the segment on leadership. He’s still professorial and somewhat whimpy, but he will get attention from viewers, especially among those who were expecting less dorsal strenght.

Jack Layton: In English, Layton sounds like a used-car salesman; in French he sounds more like a pimp from a bad porn movie. Jack has not really helped himself with voters in Quebec. He needed to shine more but he didn’t. His peacenik stuff will likely gain him support in Quebec, however.

Elizabeth May: Irrelevant is the first word that comes to mind. Her French is abominable. It’s not that she makes mistakes. Even Dion makes some mistakes (plus mal) but she is painfully incomprehensible a great deal of the time. She is capable of leaving the entire province of Quebec with a headache just trying to figure out what she is saying, let alone what she means.

Stephen Harper: Holding back far too much. His French is competent but he is clearly holding back. I have heard them do better. It’s fine to look prime ministerial, but he lacks animation, which the French language demands. He doesn’t have to get angry; he is the prime minister and needs to be cool and dignified, but he needs to show more life. A little too passive when the Dion and Duceppe came after him. His advisors and handlers need to unleash; give room to his quick mind and his wit.

A winner (in the Quebec context) would have to be Dion tonight insofar as he has clearly gone beyond expectations. He will augment some of his support in Quebec; Dion is followed by Duceppe who held to his regular rhetoric and effective line (that does so well in Quebec). Harper will not win much support, in my view, with this performance. He may not have lost any, but I don’t think it is a positive performance. We’ll see what the polls say.

The economic troubles in the US and economic worries about a similar meltdown hapenning in Canada is highlighting Stephen Harper’s record on the economy and in Economics. In plain English, as economic issues become prominent, the prime minister will have an advantage over all of his opponents. This is doubly so with citoyen Stephane Dion in light of the Liberal strategy.

The Liberals know that the economic focus advantages the prime minister and they have been trying to paint Harper as an economic neophyte. Harper may be many thing but naive about economics is not one of them. The prime minister does have an advance degree in the discipline, which is one of the things that the Liberals are probably baiting him to say. They’d love to see Stephen pull his academic credentials so that they can say that Harper is just as nerdy as Dion but with one less graduate degree. And may be Stephen is as nerdy as Stephane, but unfortunately for Dion it does not come across the national screens that way.

But back to the economy and how Paul Martin fits here. Ten advanced degrees cannot make up for common sense and the ability to communicate. As Norman Spector reminds us about Dion: “everything he knows about economics, he learned studying sociology. In France.”

Dion could not possibly match Harper on Economics so the Grits have dragged, as we’ve seen, Paul Martin to pinch hit for him. But even if Paul Martin had ten PhDs in economics, the most that Grits will succeed in doing is further making a whimp out of their citoyen leader –and may be that is the Ignatieff strategy at work here.

In their desperation, and with economic management likely to be the ballot question on Oct. 14, Liberals are talking up the idea of constituting a panel of party luminaries to advise Stephane Dion. Among the names being mentioned is that of former prime minister, and finance minister, Paul Martin.

The downside — as with the current strategy of highlighting Michael Ignatieff, Bob Rae and other members of the Liberal team — is that Mr. Dion will be [further] diminished by the comparison.

The more Canadians would see of the economic advisory panel, the more his [citoyen Dion's] inadequacies on economic matters would be revealed.

No amount of experts can save Dion at this point. Some among the Grit luminaries has to know that. Either the Grit brass does not have a clear handle on the problem that Dion represents in the public’s perception, or they have understood it all too well.

If the latter, Paul Martin may have been called to help the party but not in the way that I originally thought. He’s back to help Iggy bury Stephane. Martin is the cleaner!! Let’s remember that Paul Martin is the party’s resident expert on regicide.

UPDATE:
Michael Moore came to Paul Martin’s rescue in the last federal election. Do I see a pattern here?

Paul Martin thrust himself into the 2008 election yesterday by launching a withering [or was it dithering?] attack on the Conservative government’s handling of the current economic crisis.

None of what Martin says is going to make much of a difference or turn the support for Liberals around. In fact, Martin’s appearances seem more a consolation to true Grit believers. If you make them remember past glories, everything will be well. They might even forget what an awful campaign the Big Red Machine has put on.

The gloom among Liberals before Mr. Martin and Mr. Ignatieff arrived at the breakfast speech was so pervasive that this reporter almost felt the urge to put a consoling arm around one or two and tell them: “And this too shall pass”.

“It’s too late this time,” said one who appreciates the full extent of the Liberals’ woes. “We’ve moved to the left of the NDP. This party is broken.”

Indeed, they are. Michael Ignatieff is just a rookie MP who has accomplished nothing as an MP and Paul Martin’s reign as prime minister hardly represents past Liberal glory. Where does one go from there?

Saying climate change may result in his two sons never seeing polar bears in the wild, a star NDP candidate from British Columbia called Thursday for the shutdown of Alberta's tarsands [Newflash: if a kid actually got to see a polar bear in the wild, he'd probably end up being the bear's meal]. "We have to do something to address the climate change crisis, we need to do so now," said Michael Byers, the New Democrat hopeful in the key battleground riding of Vancouver Centre [Oh, yes, the Crisis!].

"We need to go after the big polluters, we need to shut the [Alberta] tarsands down."

Byers is not advocating that oil production be shut down anywhere else in the country –in Atlantic Canada, for example. His reference to the tar sands is a not so hidden code calling for the destruction of Alberta’s economy.

Liberals figure they can tax the Alberta economy into destruction. The Dippers are after the same goal, but they want to take a shortcut. That’s NDP efficiency.

Liberals are resurrecting a muted Paul Martin and his “economic legacy” to throw against Stephen Harper. It is likely an attempt at slowing down the erosion of voter confidence in Liberal economic abilities.

“Paul Martin’s record as finance minister is something that everybody in this country, Liberals in particular, should be really proud of,” said [James] Maloney.

Jean Chretien has a very different version of how the deficit was slayed, by whom and whose idea it was, of course. But Michael Ignatieff is not mentioning Chretien. Nor is Professor Ignatieff reminding us that Paul Martin was a cabinet minister and Montreal MP when AdScam figures circulated paper bags filled with money for their friends right in front of him but Martin never noticed.

Typically, Liberals have used former PMs to battle in election campaigns, but they don’t usually bring out the most recently defeated one against the very guy who defeated him. The Grits replaced Martin, presumably for someone who could beat Harper. Bringing Paul Martin to the scene, even if only as a mime, is more a reminder to voters and to Stephane that he “didn’t get it done.”

Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe wants to reduce Quebec’s dependence on oil by half within 10 years.

Mr. Duceppe has been saying since the beginning of the [election] campaign that oil impoverishes Quebec while making Alberta rich [Apparently we are the only people in the world --let alone the country-- who sell oil!!!].

“It’s a real drain on the province’s economy,” Mr. Duceppe said Saturday during a news conference in Montreal.

Once again, Quebec separatists are promoting greater animosity toward Alberta and Albertans in order to get votes. Oil makes Alberta rich on the backs of Quebeckers, don’t you know.

Duceppe is welcome to buy his oil exclusively from Hugo Chavez if he wants. But let’s be fair: if wants nothing Albertan, he should also petition the feds to stop sending Alberta’s money to Quebec?

Heather Mallick is far too quick with the gratuitous insult. Those who find Palin appealing are white trash, and those who do not are nice Dems or enlightened Canadians.

Supposedly, Mallick has received tons of hate mail for the column. I bit self-important, perhaps. I don’t see what the fuss is about. Alas, to me her ‘white trash’ appelation and all the rest say something real about Mallick more than they do about Palin.

It’s not as if Americans are going to get their electoral cues from someone writing for Mothercorp, whose name they’ve never heard.

What an interesting election campaign we’ve had so far.

A leader in an opposition party is imploding, but the bulk of the press is dancing around it largely pretending that it is not happening. This is a story that mixes mice running, a cat hiding, and ships sinking.

The media have played up various “gaffes” by the Conservatives - tasteless jokes, pooping puffins and the like. To pump up the drama, they need to create the illusion of a horse race. But what we have here is a train wreck. It’s the wreck of the Liberal Party as we know it.

“He is totally unprepared for the job of national leader of the Liberal Party,” says one veteran observer. He talks like a professor, sometimes unintelligibly. He has no sense of audience. He knows nothing about putting a campaign together, and he doesn’t like to take advice. Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff, his two chief lieutenants, complain that he has never made an effort to make friends with them. “Nobody I know has any real relationship with the guy,” says the observer.

Under normal circumstances, the party in power would be bouncing all over the moribund opponent. Cats get most animated after they caught the mouse and they want to play with the captured rodent for a little. But the ruling party can’t. They are afraid of a repeat from the last election in which, the pundits have interpreted, the early perception that the Conservatives might win a majority made electors pull away from supporting them. So, we are left with a ruling party that wants to take advantage of the Liberal implosion but can’t be seen to be taking advantage of it; we have a party that wants to climb in the polls and solidify its position for a majority on election day, but they don’t want to do it too visibly and certainly not too quickly.

It has become a game of cat and mouse. The mouse is chasing the cat in this game. The mouse is already tired, and the fulminating feline feigns fatigue and slows down for the rodent.

Secondary players, the rest of them, are buoyed with enthusiasm as Liberals supporters jump off ship faster than they can find life jackets. They’re in the water waiting for a rescue ship, though they have not decided which rescue ship they will hold on to. Enough of them, however, are latching on to the NDP and the Green, perhaps until they get to shore on election day. Under normal circumstances, this would be good for these secondary players. But unless there is a total collapse of the Liberal party, a collapse of Kim Campbell proportions, they will not benefit significantly from the main mouse’s misfortunes. There is no danger, that is, that either the NDP or the Greens, to say nothing of the Bloc (another ship that’s taking water) can form a government.

So, unless all of the Liberal ship jumpers go to the Greens and NDP permanently –a scenario that would also require the complete collapse of the Conservative vessel, the pay off for these secondary parties will be small.

In the meantime, we will continue quietly to skirt the near collapse of the Red Machine, and the Blue Machine will continue to hide / downplay its own gains for the sake of not giving the media the impression that they are a Paul Martin-style juggernaut. To keep mixing the images, the cat does not want to show that his role in the game is that of cat. The only one who gets to pretend out in the open that he will be prime minister (surely a mouse posing as a cat) on October 14 is Jack Layton. He gets to have all the fun! Go, Jack Go!!

For years Quebeckers have so ignored Jack Layton that he now looks new and fresh to them. That’s just a little bit funny. Good for them, I guess. Jack’s fortunes seem to be on the rise in the province the more they see of him.

Stephane Dion, on the other hand, has the opposite trouble. The more voters learn about him over the country, the less they like him. It doesn’t matter who is standing next to him.

But for all of Layton’s popularity in La Belle Province, he may not win much in Quebec, except to funnel away from Liberals and left-leaning Bloc supporters getting a few more Tories elected. Go, Jack Go!!

As we head into week three of this federal election campaign, the media are convinced that goofy gaffes disguised as scandals are what the voters want to hear most about.

If this election turns out to be as boring as the media are claiming, it will be largely their doing. Things in Quebec are heating up and the Bloc may be on the rocks, the Greens are picking up steam and have the potential to influence the outcome in some ridings where the tally might be tight, the dollar tally for campaign promises is skyrocketing, Citoyen Dion’s wimpy image has become unshakable. Exaggerated demands for the political hanging of one government minister with a questionable sense of humour are repeated ad nauseaum. LSD and pot, LSD and pot: Jack Layton should have done more of both while driving drunk. Dion backtracks on the promised Green paradise only to skate right back to where he was at the start. Tomorrow, Dion is likely to attempt a repackaging of the Green Shaft right here in Alberta.

All these are exciting. Yet, it seems that the media are determined to bore us to death with the disjointed and trivial; kill us by a thousand gaffes they want. There is never a shortage of gaffes and when gaffes are all you look for, that’s all you’ll find.

Most Albertans are convinced that Stephan Dion wants to rip them off with his Green Shift, or the Green Shaft as it is better known in this end of the country.

Liberal politicians like David McGuinty (there is a name that Albertans truly trust)

argue that the tax could help Alberta solve many of its environmental and image problems related to the oilsands, while still treating Albertans in a fair manner.

Did you read that correctly? Liberals are going to help Alberta!

As they relieve us of our money, they will help Alberta to solve its environmental problems. That would be largely the problem about which CBC, the Red Star, David Suzuki and Jack Layton have convinced the simple minded elsewhere: oil companies are turning Alberta into a wasteland (twice the size of New Brunswick!!!). We have gone from a province in which these same dumb people believed that we paved our streets with gold to one whose natural settings have now been devastated. The reality is even if Alberta’s environment looked like the surface of the moon, the last person Albertans would trust to fix any thing for them would be a liberal, let alone an Ontario liberal. Most Albertans are aware of what Ontario and Quebec fixers can do.

The second is that they will help with our image. That may as well be an open threat. The same people who bad mouth our province now claim that they want to help with our image. The translation in simple: give us your wealth and we will stop bad mouthing you. That’s their version of help. These are the same people who have been unable to dispel the image of their own leader as an incompetent university egghead! And they want to help us with our image? In truth, not even Alberta Liberals would want to receive public relations advise from Stephane Dion’s “dream team.”

Last but not least, they claim that Liberals are going to treat Albertans fearly. Out here, we can all trust that it will be the opposite. Thanks, but no thanks. It was not all that long ago that Ken Boschcoff made clear who their plan was aimed at and said precisely what the Liberals mean to do with the Green Shaft:

Ontario Liberal MP Ken Boschcoff has plainly stated that the Green Shift is a way to transfer money out of Alberta into the rest of Canada, with roughly $9 billion of the $15.3 billion collected each year returned to Canadians with annual incomes of less than $40,000.

Boschcoff called it “the most aggressive anti-poverty program in 40 years. The shift will transfer wealth from rich to poor, from the oil patch to the rest of the country, and from the coffers of big business to the pockets of low-income Canadians.”

The McGuinties, Dions, Ignatieffs and Raes have momentarily confused us with Ontario voters.

You know it’s bad when even the Glob rebukes the mercurial Danny Williams:

Mr. Williams’s shenanigans have represented the very worst in federal-provincial bickering, and have taken it to levels that would have made Ralph Klein wince. Mr. Williams, himself a provincial Conservative, has registered his own "ABC" ("Anything But Conservative") political party. He has staged a press conference in which a man in a puffin costume emerged holding an "ABC" sign. He has said that "a majority government for Stephen Harper would be one of the most negative political events in Canadian history." Mr. Williams is not only embarrassing himself; he is also doing a disservice to Newfoundland and Labrador, deliberately soiling relations with the party likeliest to hold government after the election even as he attempts to exact revenge for perceived equalization slights in the past.