Ignatieff gaffe watch
Let's have a thread chronicling stupid things that Iggy does. Here is today's juicy tidbit:
"Michael Ignatieff, in an article on The Epoch Times website, on why he did not try to form a coalition government:
I could be sitting here as your prime minister, but I turned it down because I didn’t think it was right for someone who believes in the national unity of my country to make a deal with people who want to split the country up.
This is just an extraordinary statement. One, it validates everything the Conservatives have said about the coalition: that it did, indeed, put the Liberals in bed with the separatists. And two, as a Conservative spokesman took about a millisecond to point out, if he was so opposed to doing a deal with “people who want to split the country up,” why did he sign that letter to the Governor General, expressing his support for the coalition and urging her to put it in charge of the country? If it was right then, why is not right now? And if it is not right, why is it not? After all, weren’t we told over and over at the time that the Bloc were not “enemies of Canada“, but the duly elected representatives of the people of Quebec?
Ignatieff’s instincts on the coalition were, and are, sound. He may even sincerely believe what he is saying. But he didn’t act on those beliefs when it counted. And the Conservatives are going to make him wear it. Especially after this."
This is more ironic than anything, but today Ignatieff called Liberal Senators' passing of the budget bill evidence that "no Liberal will ever stand between a Canadian who stands in need of Employment Insurance and the benefits they need."
Of course, as the authors of changes to EI eligibility in the mid-1990s, Liberals made it harder for many thousands of unemployed Canadians to get the benefits they needed from a programme they'd paid into.
I suppose, in Ignatieff's defence, someone might argue that he didn't know about those past Liberal efforts to prevent unemployed workers from receiving the insurance benefits they'd paid for--after all, he wasn't in the country at the time--but I still somehow doubt his and his party's committment to the cause of unemployed workers.
The Dominion
Well, there are a few Liberals maintaining a similar watch, as I've discovered:
http://1anxiousliberal.wordpress.com/2009/03/13/candidate-quits-liberal-party/
http://hellupsidedown.blogspot.com/2009/03/liberals-get-tangled-in-their-own-leash.html
“I have come to the conclusion that partisanship is an inclusive, destructive force, and the party’s perception that the average person is too stupid and too undeserving to understand what they are really doing has pushed my patience to the limit. I am quite frankly embarrassed to be associated with them, and under the new leadership team I see things sliding backwards instead of progressing.”
From OOs links, regarding Rebecca Finch quiting the Liberals.
//edit to add: this post was wasn't about a gaffe per se. but still kinda fits with the thread.
/// double edit: actually this maybe be a gaffe, because the letter was a private letter to the riding association, but someone leaked it to the media, in an apparent attempt to smear the ex-Lib. But really, how is that going to work for them positively, anyway?
I swear, the Liberals seem to love shooting themselves in the foot. Chretien was at least smart enough to make sure his people all shut up and did their jobs.
Having signed his name to the coalition with a pen borrowed from Peter McKay, Ignatieff has started drawing his red lines with a marker borrowed from Stephane Dion:
OTTAWA — The Harper government won approval Tuesday to quickly start pumping $3-billion into Canada's sputtering economy after Liberals backed off their demand for details on how the money will be spent.
Provision for the special stimulus fund was included in a spending bill, which passed the House of Commons by a vote of 210-82 with the support of Conservative and Liberal MPs.
Only three weeks ago, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff insisted he would never support the fund without some advance idea of how it would be spent. He was adamant despite Prime Minister Stephen Harper's warning that the fund constituted a confidence matter and that opposition parties would “find themselves in an election” if they blocked it.
“I am not writing a blank cheque on $3-billion. No Canadian would respect me if I did,” Mr. Ignatieff said at the time.
Yet Liberals supported the fund Tuesday even though the government had not provided any of the details they'd demanded.
Globe Link.
I mentioned this in another thread, but it got run over by thread drift.
How about the Liberals' adoption of a domain name -- onprobation.ca -- that could easily lead someone to a hardcore porn site (if they accidentally type .com after hearing about the site)? Does that count as a gaffe?
It would be a gaffe on the part of the person typing the wrong URL.
It would be that too, but surely the Liberals have someone at HQ who is smart enough to think about the potential for user error (I mean, there is a reason why Google owns the rights to gooogle.com).
And, it's not as though there's no historical precedent for this in Canadian politics: remember belinda.ca vs. belinda.com?
Then again, the Liberals don't know how to focus a video camera, so what would you expect?
This is what you see if you visit www.thegreenshift.ca today
Green Shift™ and the Green Shift trademark are the property of Green Shift Inc.In the summer of 2008 the Liberal Party of Canada used our trademark to brand their carbon tax program.
This resulted in a lawsuit and an out of court settlement.
To separate details pertaining to the events surrounding this matter from our official website, and to not have it clutter our mission, we have, for the time being, transferred some of the details about this here.
If you are looking for the real Green Shift™, please visit: www.GreenShift.caThis tells us the kind of things we'd see if the People's Front of Judea and the Judean People's Front had websites.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________ Our Demands Most Moderate are/ We Only Want The World! -James Connolly
Ignatieff flip-flops on asbestos:
Last weekend, on a tour of Vancouver Island, Ignatieff was asked about his position on asbestos, and he said he favoured banning exports.
"I'm probably walking right off the cliff into some unexpected public policy bog of which I'm unaware, but if asbestos is bad for Parliamentarians in the Parliament of Canada, it just has to be bad for everybody else," he said. "Our export of this dangerous product overseas has got to stop."
But in a scrum with reporters in Ottawa on Wednesday, Ignatieff was asked about his statement and he didn't mention a ban.
"We have had 60 years of experience with this product. What I said in answer to a question is that we have an obligation to international agreements to the countries that we export to, to make them aware of the risks. That is all I said."
Kathleen Ruff, senior adviser on human rights for the Ottawa-based think-tank Rideau Institute, said Ignatieff's denial is untrue.
"I knew he would be under pressure to retract what he said but that's an out-and-out lie," said Ruff.
The pattern continues.
"A lot of Canadians have a lot of respect for Mr. Mulroney's strengths, and you have to show some respect. It's simple. And I believe that Mr. Harper is lacking respect towards Mr. Mulroney," Mr. Ignatieff told reporters in Calgary.
I think this qualifies as a gaffe since most Canadains still think of Brian Mulroney as "Lyin' Brian." Any respect would be in pretty short supply.
I heard an excerpt from his speech in Calgary, where he tried to please both environmentalists and the Oil patch simultaneously.
It made me laugh out loud.
"I knew he would be under pressure to retract what he said but that's an out-and-out lie," said Ruff.
That has to be the first time that a Liberal leader has been caught lying. I bet this will be all over the mainstream media and the Toronto Star especially will run a big front page expose
I hope that Iggy gets blasted from behind his cloak of deceit to standing behind a microphone, in front of a LIVE audience of Canadians, in a series of open debates with George Galloway... help me light the fuse!
LINDA!
Taxes all around! er, No New Taxes!
Both ways again. He's like that Batman villain. The evil Dr. Both Ways or whatever.
We all know that Mr Ignatieff, unlike his hapless predecessor, is a slick guy. He will tell you whatever it takes to get elected, and I expect he will win the next election, especially if he can hold off Harper's machinations (every bill a confidence vote, and omnibus bills including unpopular policies along with those he wouldn't dare vote against, such as we saw with pay equity cut vs. "expanded" EI in latest budget).
Say what you like about Stephane Dion-- he might have been a bumbler, but he believed in the Green Shift (and I expect we will all be paying carbon tax in the not too distant future). Say what you like about Stephen Harper and his neo-con policies, but he is committed to those policies and doesn't pretend anything else. What does Iggy stand for? That's right, whatever will get him elected. I expect there will lots of gaffes, especially those of the climbing on and off the bandwagon variety, in the next few months-- and it won't hurt him a bit.
"Tax cuts are on the table. They're off the table. There may never have been a table, though my years at Harvard led me to believe that there was. In any case, I have written many books about the table, which was invented by a Canadian ancestor of mine."
Yesterday in London:
"There's not an anti-capitalist bone in my body."
I must say I'm pleased with the way Layton found an opening to respond to Ignatieff's tax comments and position them as old-school compared with a more forward-looking approach that invests in education and research:
Ignatieff clarifies tax-hike remark (Globe and Mail)
I think this gaffe is going to have some legs, as it has given some good positioning opportunities to Iggy's opponents. Up to this point, it's been hard to run against the all-things-to-all-people man, but that worm may be starting, ever so slowly, to turn now.
"There's not an anti-capitalist bone in my body."
Can't seem to get that strikethrough function to work... Guess for what word...