Tom Mulcair is Canada's next Prime Minister

"He" doesnt handle the attack ads. He does speak to them, but that is part of the team- yet formed- handling them.

TP,

Well said.

It's a total team effort. Our job is to help him make the correct decisions. The NDP will not win without us covering Tom's back.

Woo! Hoo!

Read this and imagine what it would be like to read articles like this on a daily basis in the mainstream press.

Thomas Mulcair: An NDP leader who passes the Ralph Klein beer test and Tory fear test

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/djclimenhaga/2012/03/thomas-mulcair-ndp-...

Apparently it took the Conservative Party slime machine less than five minutes yesterday evening to start going after just-elected New Democratic Party Leader Thomas Mulcair in an ugly email blast.

The first Conservative email attacking Mulcair started going out while he was still on the stage in Toronto celebrating his victorious ascent to the leadership of Canada's Official Opposition.

Even the Conservative Globe and Mail characterized the attack as "vicious," quoting Conservative Party spokesman Fred DeLorey telling credulous Tory supporters that the new NDP leader is "an opportunist whose high tax agenda, blind ambition and divisive personality would put Canadian families and their jobs at risk."

Given the former Reform Party's propensity for fear-mongering and reactive negativity, it's mildly surprising that it took them that long -- assuming, of course, that it was just happenstance or mischievous children and not one of the Conservatives' army of robocallers and monkey-wrenchers who mucked up the NDP’s voting system earlier in the day.

Whatever. Get used to it. The misnamed Conservatives are the Tea Party of Canada whose shady and vicious scorched earth campaign techniques are inspired and taught by their Republican cronies south of the Medicine Line.

The speed and nasty tone of tonight's Conservative email is proof that, whatever his pluses and minuses seemed as a potential leader, the NDP chose a replacement for Jack Layton who has already earned our unlikable prime minister's fear. Well, Stephen Harper should be afraid. By the time this is over, I predict, we'll all be calling the Conservatives the Robocall Party of Canada!

We can also expect the Conservative media (which nowadays is pretty well all of it) to be quick off the mark in assailing Mulcair, although its tone is likely to be marginally more polite (except at Sun Media, of course). It will try to sow discord within NDP ranks now that the party's members have made a choice after a long and exhausting campaign.

he needs to stay cool, and not let himself be more widely branded a hothead, as he has fed that image to some degree and it could be wilfully turned against him

stay calm, esp. in Parliament; people are smart enough to see who is taunting whom

NDP opts for a power broker over a protest leader

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/john-ibbitson/ndp-opts-for-...

But the majority of the roughly half of the 130,000 NDP members who cast ballots had other ideas. They want to hold on to the party’s astonishing gains in Quebec; they want Prairie voters who have abandoned the party – and who do not see the oil sands as an unmitigated evil – to return to the party.

Most important, they want middle class voters in Ontario – worried about their jobs, but worried also about grand new social experiments – to be able to vote NDP next time out with some confidence that a New Democratic prime minister won’t tax their employer out of business, while sending the deficit in entirely the wrong direction.

All this, Mr. Mulcair promises to do. It will be not easy, and there are other, more immediate challenges.

The party’s current administration was, it goes without saying, passionately loyal to the late Jack Layton, and they would much have preferred to see Mr. Topp, one of their own, in charge.

They and many others will be disinclined to support this new leader. Replacing those who must be replaced with people Mr. Mulcair can trust, without at the same time deepening rifts within the party, will be no easy task.

And then there is the party across the aisle. The Conservatives will have spent months preparing for Mr. Mulcair. They will seek to brand him as a rogue politician with a wild temper and closet socialist tendencies who must not be allowed anywhere near power.

Within minutes of Mr. Mulcair taking the stage, the Conservative Party launched a vicious attack by e-mail. "Thomas Mulcair is an opportunist whose high tax agenda, blind ambition, and divisive personality would put Canadian families and their jobs at risk," said party spokesman Fred DeLorey.

The NDP says it will not permit the Tories to do their leader what they have so effectively done to the Liberals, time and time again. We’ll see.

Finally, there is the question of Mr. Mulcair himself. He can be ill-humoured; he is a hard man to warm to; fierce loyalty is not the first emotion he inspires; his relationship with the press is one of mutual hostility

These are difficult personal obstacles for a leader to overcome. Some would call them insurmountable, were it not for the fact that the current Prime Minister is the same sort of fellow.

Kinsella has absolutely no use for Bob Rae  

NDP strategy has them sunning themselves at the top

http://www.torontosun.com/2012/03/23/ndp-strategy-has-them-sunning-thems...

Here’s the thing about the NDP.

They suddenly lost their charismatic, talented leader in the summer. They had an interim leader who used to be a card-carrying separatist.

They had a leadership race that was duller than dishwater. They have a caucus bursting at the seams with children, none of whom were expected to get their deposit back, let alone elected. They haven’t said or done anything of significance inside or outside the House of Commons since

May 2011. In fact, they have had a year that has been remarkably unremarkable.

But here’s the thing: As of this week, the pollsters at Environics tell us, they are tied for first place with the governing Conservative party. And their extraordinary victory in last May’s general election, which every pollster and pundit (including this one) regarded as temporary, an anomaly?

Well, it’s increasingly looking like it wasn’t temporary at all.

Liberal Bob Rae — the interim leader who isn’t either — is seen by the commentariat as a capable, quotable, experienced politician. Against a lightweight like interim NDP boss Nycole Turmel, they prognosticated a few months back, Rae would vault into second place and the Liberal party would shortly resume its traditional role as government, or government-in-waiting.

But that didn’t happen, did it? Turmel — as unexceptional a politician as you will ever encounter, albeit with a nice smile — kept her party in second place in the polls, whilst Rae remained mired in third. Simultaneously, a parade of Dipper leadership aspirants had dreary debates and disagreed about little. Heeding the lessons of the Liberal party’s decade-long leadership fratricide, the New Democrats deliberately kept their internal affairs as boring as possible. It worked.

The Conservatives, meanwhile, have done just as badly. They hover at or near single digits in the NDP’s Quebec stronghold, and they haven’t yet laid a glove on Turmel or any of the NDP leadership candidates. They’ll turn their guns on the new Dipper leader starting this weekend, naturally.

But, when nobody was looking, the Cons plummeted 10 points in Environics’ stunning poll — and they are now tied, as noted, with the New Democratic Party.

Stephen Harper, Conservatives regularly remind us, is the uber-strategist.

The guy who a succession of Liberal leaders have been unable to dislodge. The guy who the Press Gallery grudgingly regard as a magician.

But against the meek-as-a-church-mouse interim leader — against the inexpert youngsters in the New Democrat caucus, and against the leadership contestants nobody could pick out in a police lineup — Harper, the supposed magician strategist, has dropped like a proverbial stone.

What I'm hoping to see regards response to attack adds is humour. Not simple rebuttals but rebuttals with humour that highlights how ridiculous these attacks can be.

Humour sticks in in the minds of people and can turn meanness in others into a liability.

I think Warren is often a comedian.

Mulcair's win is bad news for sovereignists

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Opinion+Mulcair+news+sovereignists/6355...

But he has far more appeal than any of the other leadership candidates, all of whom remained virtually unknown in Quebec at the end of a campaign that attracted little interest in this province. As far as Quebec voters are concerned, he was the only candidate in the race.

So initially, at least, his leadership will allow the NDP to present a strong federalist alternative to the sovereignist Bloc Québécois.

It will enable the NDP to challenge the Bloc for the support of Quebecers dissatisfied with the Harper government.

And it will give the NDP its best chance to recover support it has lost to the Bloc since Layton’s death last August, and to salvage seats that it won in its historic breakthrough last year.

Less than 10 per cent of the NDP members eligible to vote in the leadership election were from Quebec. So Mulcair, the Quebec candidate, was elected mainly by rank-and-file New Democrats from English Canada.

By electing Mulcair, the only candidate based in this province and the one most fluent in French, they told French Quebec that they do not take their party’s gains here last year for granted.

And they have deprived the sovereignists of the opportunity to interpret a defeat of Mulcair at the hands of an English-Canadian, and possibly one whose French is less than fluent, as a rejection of Quebec.

Their only possible consolation prize was handed to them by Brian Topp, Mulcair’s bitter rival. Topp refused to concede defeat even when it was all but assured after the third round.

Instead, with little hope of winning, Topp spitefully stayed on the ballot to give party members an opportunity to cast an anybody-but-Mulcair protest vote against its next leader.

So the sovereignists might attempt to spin the 43 per cent for Topp against Mulcair on the final, two-candidate ballot as a vote against a Quebecer and, therefore, against Quebec.

But such an argument would contain several flaws. One is that Topp himself is a native of Quebec who is almost as fluent in French as Mulcair. Another is that the NDP’s nationalist-friendly policies on Quebec and language went unquestioned by any of its leadership candidates.

And a third, and the one that matters most, is that it was Quebec’s candidate who won.

I agree with the 1st commentator. What a condescending piece of crap from the Tornto Star but to be expected. They have not yet clued into the fact that if Canadians want want to remove the unpleasantness of Stephen Harper as prime minister, it is only the Mulcair-led NDP that are going to do it.

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/article/1151596--ndp-makes-the-right-bet-...

clambake wrote:

Live media scrum on CBC news right now. Mulcair mentioned re-writing the language in the preamble to the consitution

Well, it was Topp's idea first.

I think he may be wearing some beads in this photo:

Oh, sorry - did you say bea[b]r[/b]ded?

Nobody thought a moustache had much appeal either. Back in 2005, I told a friend who worked for Jack that he should shave it. She said "really? I like it! It reminds me of my friendly uncle or grandfather!"

I think the beard will go over surprisingly well.

Good photo of me: (except I don't have a cane - yet)

As soon as possible, Tom has to announce that he's looking towards the 2015 election, and needs at least 70 more candidates who can win seats to step forward and be counted.

Once that group is in place, and anyone of the sitting M.P.s who won't be re-offering have let that be known, then Canadians will quickly see that the government-in-waiting is very serious about getting elected next time.

Let the Freedom '15 Campaign begin!

In case you haven't noticed, Mulcair is now the leader of the Official Opposition, so what the hell does it matter???

Only anonymous Conservative sources. Mulcair denies it.

djelimon wrote:

 

What I'm hoping to see regards response to attack adds is humour. Not simple rebuttals but rebuttals with humour that highlights how ridiculous these attacks can be.

Humour sticks in in the minds of people and can turn meanness in others into a liability.

 

This is definitely the approach to take. Make their attacks look ridiculous, such as the spendthrift claim given their massive, debt expanding investments in jets and prisons etc. Draw parallels to the ludicrous views of their brethren in the tea party etc.

takeitslowly wrote:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/03/01/john-ivison-mulcair-asked-for-conservative-cabinet-post-before-joining-ndp-tory-insider/

 

I dont ever read the National Post. I got this link through a facebook posting. Has it been confirmed or proven to be false that Muclair considered joinning the Harper government in exchange for a cabinet post?

It's monkey poo (flung on salary, I might add). Whatever is happening within the NDP, it is monkey poo.

Sorry to hear Brad Lavigne is leaving, as I thought he did a great job - what's he going to do now?

I will miss him.

mulcair, in his rad-can interview yesterday said that the current front bench would stay on for the budget fight, that there'd be some small changes around easter, and that his new front bench would introduced in the fall.

eta: in the cp article, he clarifies that mcgrath will stay on until june to help with her successor's transition into the chief of staff position.  also, he'll keep turmel's front bench until easter, when he'll make changes to re-integrate the defeated leadership candidates into prominent critic and caucus positions.

laine lowe wrote:

NorthReport wrote:

Who will be Tom's pit bull, in the role he use to play for Jack?

 

Ed Broadbent

Nice thought, but what's a pit bull without teeth?

http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/Politics/1244504890/ID=2215164313

a nice little note near the end there when he says that when the battle begins in the fall sitting, he'll have his best members in there, with a focus on those strong on research (!), as was his specialty in quebec opposition.  man, that press conference was great, he's a force, very charismatic.

Lavigne is gone, huh?  Did he give any reasons?