Liberal MP defection pool

Awww, unionist that is just baiting. ;)

Pat Martin?

Peter Stoffer?

Ya, I read that this am too.

Perhaps Coderre is going to walk?

Look at the Grit female MPs after this editorial by Michael Valpy in today's G&M:

Women and Ignatieff: Where did it go wrong?

The Liberal Leader's appeal was taken for granted when he entered politics. But now his party is struggling to reconnect with women who say they find him stuffy, inauthentic and untrustworthy(...)

Sorry to be a spoil sport.

But I bet there is nothing to this other than Conservatives keeping the negative news pot boiling under the Libs.

Perhaps st8 to the Cons, who will make him their QC leader?

Now that he is out of that job. :D

Okay are we going to put money up?

I say Coderre, is a walker. ;)

My money is on Scott Brison.

He was always a better fit with the Conservatives anyway.
Picking him up would signal that the Conservative war on gays is over, and make a real appeal for gay Conservatives.

They would probably have to give him a cabinet position to make it happen though.

Uncle John wrote:

How many MPs who cross the floor get re-elected?

Garth Turner seemed to be an exception to the rule, mainly because he overcomes the party affiliation hurdle. For whatever reason constituents see Garth's candidacy as more important than the parties. I guess one could say the same for Scotty Brison. However these are both cases where the candidate crossed the floor to the Liberals.

FYI, Garth Turner was defeated after he switched to the Liberals! and Wajid Khan was defeated after he switched to the Tories. The only case i can think of where someone switched and then won was Belinda Stronach. Emerson quit rather than face certain defeat.

Or Bob Rae could decamp to the Conservatives, thereby achieving the even rarer 3 party 'hat trick'.

What about Tonks?

Tonks would be a great choice -- for the NDP!  It would be Vancouver Kingsway redux! It would be almost impossible for Tonks (or anyone) to win York South Weston as a Con, so Tonks would probably want a Senate seat or some big fat goodie after he loses or abandons his seat a few months from now.

Volpe?

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

I find this hard to believe-- sounds like Con BS to me.

When they actually have a Liberal fish on the line do you think they will say anything public before its on the bottom of the boat? Give the chance for the leader to run around and figure out who they are and talk to them? Sounds like mischief. Just more chatter to destabilize the leader.

As for PCs -- their party left them so I would not put them in the same category as people like Emerson.

I am very concerned about the anti-democratic dirty tricks coming from the Cons-- this is adding up. the fact that the media and the public doesn't see this as a disturbing trend makes it much worse.

I think there may be something to it. There's a tendency for Lib MPs to get nervous when their leader appears to be imploding.

Odd that the Toronto Star broke the story though. Haven't seen any verification in the other print media yet.

.

On TAT, I read this as "Liberal defecation pool" and really just clicked to see if anyone else had.  Carry on.

remind wrote:

Is that not a bit of a bit of an overstatement, unionist?

As for it to be a valid contention, one would have to indicate that Mulcair was one of the only NDP MP's, not born into the party.  And that is hardly the case.

 

Yes, remind, it was an overstatement, but I did it to make a point. Mulcair was a highly respected Liberal politician - a minister in cabinet - very popular. In a cabinet shuffle, Charest removed his sustainable development portfolio and offered him the ministry of intergovernmental affairs instead - not a paltry job in Québec, as you can imagine when thinking of relations with Ottawa. Mulcair refused, because of his fundamental disagreement on how Charest was dealing with the environment. He took a break to reflect on other issues as well, and then accepted Layton's invitation to take on a new role.

What I meant was this: Whatever one thinks of Mulcair (and there's much in his views that I disagreed with then and now), his was a courageous and principled choice. He went from a position of power and influence to join a federal party that had [b]never[/b] elected anyone in a general election in Québec. I credit Jack Layton with winning him to this bold stand, and I admire them both for it.

Let me sum it up. Tom Mulcair is not a "my party, right or wrong, and when I join my next party, it will be that party, right or wrong" type of person. He makes choices based on his principles and conscience. The NDP would do well to find more like him. They could even consider a two-for-one trade for a few that are disgracing their caucus right now.

Paul Gross wrote:

Keith Martin and Scott Brison both won re-election after crossing over the Libs. One could argue in the case of Brison that the Liberals were closer to his PC roots than the new Conservative party which makes it odd that Brison supported the merger of the parties. With Martin, it' is even odder that he felt at home in both the Reform and Canadian Alliance parties but not in the merged, more moderate, Conservative Party.

Both of these characters ran for leadership of their old parties (and Brison also ran to be Liberal leader). Now they are both on the rumoured list to perform the rare "double-rat" and desert the sinking Liberal ship for the Conservatives.

No and no. Remeber the last time Martin sat as an independant & didn't join the Liberal caucus until he was elected as one. With Brison, there's too much bad blood between him & Peter McKay.

I would put both Joyce Murray and Marc Garneau in the "no way" category.

It's interesting to note that there is an almost identical thread going on over at the Blogging Tories board.  I haven't read through the whole thing yet, but stopped to chuckle at the comment that says they wouldn't want Ruby Dhalla, but were sure we'd take her in a second (not bloody likely).

Also interesting is that they wouldn't mind Paul Szabo or Dan McTeague, and would take Keith Martin back.  In fact they quite like Szabo, which is interesting given his role in chairing the Mulroney committee.  I think I read that he was a go for a fall election, but would reconsider his future in terms of running again if the election were put off longer than that.

flight from kamakura wrote:

i'd say we could cut it to:

Paul Szabo (Mississauga South)
Andrew J. Kania (Brampton West)
Brian Murphy (Moncton--Riverview--Dieppe)

The two New Brunswick MPs (Murphy and D'Amours) are possibilities.

Not Kania though: big Liberal party insider.  I'd highly doubt him.

Yeah, just to be a wise guy, I'll guess that the three most likely floor crossers are Michael Ignatieff, Bob Rae, and Justin Trudeau