Monday, September 17, 2007
Iggy to Dion: We Didn't Get it Done in Outremont
With the NDP's Thomas Mulcair on his way to a decisive victory in Outremont, Iggy is likely busy sharpening the knives... can you blame him? Everyone expected the contest to be close, but Mulcair is ahead by almost 20 points with roughly 1/4 of the polls reporting. Dion should do the honourable thing and step down to make way for a leader who can, at the very least, protect the party's electoral base. What a terrible night to be a Liberal. I especially feel sorry for this guy who wasted a weekend and a few hundred bucks to see his party get crushed.
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Look I'm not a conspiracy theorist, and I think this little conspiracy theory is B.S. (plus I'm not a Liberal, so I don't have a dog in this fight... apologies to Michael Vick for bringing that up again...).
However, given all the rumours that Iggy supporters in Outrement deliberately screwed the pooch to make Dion look bad, would it not be politic to avoid talk of getting rid of Dion for a couple of secs? At least until tomorrow say?
I guess if I'm going to bring up the big conspiracy theory I should link to it, so no one think I just made it up!
By-election in Outremont being tanked? Perspective from the Ground
On a more serious note, generally parties don't throw their leaders overboard BEFORE their first general election. Though, I suppose getting rid of your leader before he even gets to fight an election has the advantage of being novel!
The Bloc got rid of their 2nd leader, Michel Gauthier, before he contested a federal election. I also seem to recall a Nova Scotia NDP leader who got dumped before an election campaign.
Still, getting rid of your leader because you lost 6% of your vote in a low turnout by-election against a very popular former Liberal cabinet minister, in a riding in which your party has lost 5-7% of their vote in every election for the past TEN YEARS???
That hardly seems rational.
FYI, the Liberal vote in Outrement:
1997: 50.3%
2000: 47.7%
2004: 40.9%
2006: 35.1%
2007: 29.0% (by-election against popular former cabinet minister with less than 40% turnout).
Since when have you become a Dion spin doctor?
Dion's hand picked candidate lost to a NEW DEMOCRAT in QUEBEC.
Liberal vote totals did not increase in the other two by-elections either. In fact, in St. Hyacinthe, the Liberals finished 4th place.
Adscam was suppose to the low point for the Liberals. Now Liberals are realizing that they can sink even lower under Dion's leadership. Time to stop the bleeding and dump DIon.
Well, I'm more of a contrarian than anything else. Everyone's zigging, so I felt like zagging! When I see people making what I think are far out conclusions, I pounce. I like Dion and all, but I could really care less (though my concern over a possible Tory majority is a lot higher today).
You're right on the "hand-picked" bit, I'll give you that, and that adds to Dion's culpibility for sure. But emphasizing NEW DEMOCRAT is at least a BIT disingenuous, isn't it?
Kind of like capitalizing POPULAR FORMER LIBERAL CABINET MINISTER would be.
As for the other two ridings, I write them off entirely as they are conservative (small c) rural ridings that haven't gone Liberal since the Liberals were running the table in Quebec under Trudeau. Not increasing your vote total in meaningless by-elections in ridings you can't win just isn't a huge indictment in my book.
Good post from Andrew Coyne today!
My favourite part is when he discusses what the NDP's latest "historic breakthrough" means for the party's future success in Quebec:
"All the NDP has to do to win in Quebec is to run wildly popular former Liberal cabinet ministers who have recently resigned on questions of principle (the privatization of Mount Orford) and are descendants of former premiers (Honoré Mercier, his great-grandfather), in ridings with a large Jewish population where the Liberal candidate has a reputation for being anti-Israel."
Shouldn't be too hard to keep Big Mo moving, eh?
Who other than Layton and Mulcair was arguing that the NDP had big momentum in Quebec?
Well, I certainly didn't mean to imply that you were arguing so, so I apologize if that's how it came off.
I just liked that particular bit because I thought it was funny. I had no other reason for pointing to it than humour, to be honest.
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