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"Stick a fork in the Liberals, they're done" by one of most prominent Liberals in Canada
March 19, 2012 - 11:41pm
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I could not agree more.
Bob Rae is doing it to one political party now, was almost able to do it to two political parties, what no leader should ever do, to any political party.
When I say almost, the "almost" part, is about the NDP.
Timing is everything in politics, and Kinsella could not have picked a more devastating time for the Rae Liberals to release this column.
Stick fork in Grits, they’re done
http://www.torontosun.com/2012/03/19/stick-fork-in-grits-theyre-done
But the Raelians ask a fair question: Why isn’t Stephen Harper’s evil empire attacking the NDP, too?
Because they don’t have a leader yet, that’s why. In a few days, they will.
Darth Harper and his imperial guard will point their death star at the Dippers and fire away. It won’t be pretty.
Fine, say the Raelians. But why go after the third-place party? It doesn’t make any political sense, they’ll say.
Perhaps. It does, however, if you accept that wars are always easier to fight on one front, not two. It does if you accept that Stephen Harper is in the final phase of doing what he always coveted most: He wants to be remembered by history as the guy who wiped out the Liberal Party of Canada.
Bob Rae is going to help Harper do precisely that. His arrogance and hubris are so immense, he cannot accept — not even for a moment — that his appalling record in Ontario will destroy what little credibility the Liberal Party has left. It’ll slip beneath the waves of history, for good.
Without an arrangement with the NDP, and with Bob Rae as leader, the Liberals are heading towards gritterdamerung. The end times.
The ads that started Tuesday, therefore, aren’t original or even a surprise. They will, however, do what they are intended to do. Kill off the Liberal Party of Canada.
http://www.torontosun.com/2012/03/19/stick-fork-in-grits-theyre-done
Raelians? Oh! I get it now.
I doubt that Stephen Harper will be able to kill off the Liberals by himself, but right now, I think it much less likely that Bob Rae will stay on as Liberal leader.
I think that a small Liberal party (some calling it a "boutique" Liberal Party, might actually be advantageous to the NDP's electoral possibilities, both under PR and FPTP electoral systems.
I doubt that Harper's ads will "kill off" the Liberals - as they also attack the NDP. I think it is just a "two for one" opportunity.
Surely the Conservatives will be shifting attention to the NDP after a leader is chosen on Saturday.
It is true though that Rae probably blundered by making himself so prominent in the by-election advertising as it makes it look like it is also a Bob Rae defeat in Toronto Danforth (rather than just preservation of the status quo by the NDP).
Kinsella likes to be provocative. I still don't think we can say anything for sure until 2015. Any polling situation at present will be *very* soft, and will break quickly with pressure.
I think Kinsella's reasoning is sound. When you annoint someone as leader as opposed to having a fair and real leadership race your leader does not have a following. It's pretty rough, maybe impossible, in the tough times, to be without support.
Rae's not really going to be able to make much of a case for getting the permanent LPC leadership after tonight's result. He didn't even get the party back to its 2008 level of support.
well, we'll have to wait a few months and give rae more time. i think it may happen that there simply aren't enough people with the bucks to make crediblel runs at the leadership of the lpc - there may be some who'll want it, but rae could well seem indomitable. if noone of quality decides to run, i don't see how he goes anywhere, which is probably good for us.
I think Kinsella's argument cuts both ways when it comes to Rae. Maybe Rae's current interim leadership might make it unfair for him to run for leader. But if he's forced out and not allowed to run, it might smell of more insider politics, and his replacement would have the same stigma.
It's too soon to make any predictions. As New Democrats, we shouldn't just be waiting on the sidelines. We should be conversing with people and getting our message out. Talking about our new leader, whoever we pick, would be a good starting point.
SD:
I think you can count on three things:
No one is going to take this win for granted
The NDP will be out talking to people and spreading the message
Whoever is our leader, the NDP isn't going to allow the Tories to frame who they are
I hope so. I'm worried enough about this that I'm ready to take it into my own hands. Even if I only influence 12 people...
SD:
Give it time and give it a chance. The NDP is already talking about an ad camgaign introducing the leader on TV. I can tell you from having spoke to Tom Mulcair, he understands this as near as I can tell from my encounter at a town hall, and I would guess the other candidates do as well.
I don't take anything Kinsella says at face value. Everything he writes is in service of his vision for the Liberal revival and his own election. (I don't think he's taken back his vow to run in Beaches-East York.) Still, I do like his use of "Raelian" and I hope it sticks.
Yeah, what Kinsella is really trying to do is three things: (1) challenge Liberals to prove the party isn't done, (2) point out how much he hates Bob Rae, (3) challenge Liberals to demand Bob Rae step down and/or not run.
FWIW, at least last heard, Rae is one of the few Liberal luminaries that Kinsella doesnt have it out for.
His thing is that he thinks there is no strategy that makes any sense besides merger with the NDP. I think he is realistic about the chances of that, and he's going to piss on it all from outside the tent as long as that is true. He's with Chretien 100%, but finished with "being constructive". And realistically: the old man has all sorts of capital and gets nowhere in the party, so why should Kinsella bother? Not to mention his holding his tongue was always relative.
Is Kinsella grandiose enough to see himself as the potential leader-saviour of the LPC?
Nah, I think Warren is a pretty smart guy. I think he's a Liberal loyalist and will do anything to restore them to greatness, including angering the rank-and-file. I don't think he necessarily wants to do the heavy lifting or get all the credit. He's more involved at the Ontario level these days anyway.
Any theory as to his preferred LPC leader might be?
Chretien's too old(and would never want to lead a third-place party). PET's too dead. Lil' Justin's too Lil' Justin.
Who does that leave?
Elizabeth May! To the rescue!
You can do it Elizabeth!!!
I think they mention a few token Quebec MPs, Prince Justin, and David McGuinty. I honestly think they could do a lot worse than Bob Rae, unless they want to stop pretending and make a play for the center-right.
The not yet run Liberal leadership race is just so much a lose-lose situation.
There was a recent fundraising report which showed that the Liberals had taken in slightly more money than the NDP (the Conservatives took in far more than either). Given that the NDP have been in the middle of a leadership race, I was surprised by that report. So, I think it's a bit premature to write off the Liberals.
The Liberals are wounded and not dead.
Even under Rae they are not dead.
They are there with enough history to make a comeback if the NDP falters. That's why this NDP leadership is so important. A bad choice this week and the situation changes radically.
One reason I support Mulcair is I think he leaves no opening for the Liberals and keeps the NDP at least as the second party with a reasonable chance at winning. Some of the others could rapidly put the NDP back to third place.
It the Liberals are smart they will pick Trudeau, but they are just greedy, not smart, so they will let Rae get his way and Rae will, as Kinsella suggests, destroy the party once and for all. Go Bob Go!
Since when does anyone listen to anything Kinsella says?
This article is about one thing and one thing only: Kinsella is not a Rae supporter. I don't know who he supports but at a certain level it is "anybody but Rae."
Look back a few months and you will find a Kinsella column about Rae purging the ranks of Liberal staffers and such, to make sure they were his loyalists.
This is just the latest instalment in a Kinsella "political thriller" series. Goal? Demonstrate his dislike for Bob Rae.
Go Bob Go!!!
Attack ads may force Rae's hand
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/Attack+force+hand/6333665/story.html
I agree completely, and the relative health of the Liberals in Britain show that often such parties do not fade gently away, but persist, and in a FPTP electoral system can be major factors in the results....
Nobody is writing off the Liberals. Does that need to come up EVERY time somebody says something about their troubles?
Again, this leadership race is a lose-lose for them on many dimensions.
The Liberals did not have a good fundraising quarter. Thats spin. They had a treading water quarter- as they are heading into the really rough waters of drastically reduced revenues, with the same old bloated, expensive non-performing administrative structure they cannot agree on how to reduce. [Which the lose-lose leadership race will further impact.]
There is no comparing to the NDP. The parties have different fundraising patterns. And the NDP, as always, produced a substantial operating surplus on the quarter, while the Liberals barely managed to tread water as they head into waters where at best [only] that is not possible.
That's just what I thought. We can expect to see plenty more of the same as the race gears up. Rae won't kill the Liberals but Kinsella might.
I'll say it again. I don't think anyone is writing off the Liberals. The NDP will have to work, and needs to get things "right" on many fronts. We aren't the Libs; no one here thinks the NDP is "Canada's only "natural" governing party".