Rae won't say so out loud, but he aches to be PM

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the OIttawa Citizen is, I think a pretty fair assessment of Liberal Party of Canada leader Bob Rae:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Tandt+loud+aches/5676946/story.html

Den Tandt: Rae won't say so out loud, but he aches to be PM

By Michael Den Tandt, Postmedia News

November 8, 2011

OTTAWA — Bob Rae won't say whether he wants to be prime minister. But he does want that, with every fibre of his being.

And here's the curious magic that charisma, gravitas and a dash of hubris can effect: Listening to Rae speak, it's hard not to believe, at least for a while, that he might pull it off. Certainly he thinks he can. The pat responses about heeding party rules calling for him to stand aside in 2013? Let's quietly set those aside. Rae is crafting a come-from-behind run for the country's top job. And he's going about it in clever, methodical fashion.

The Ottawa Citizen

On the face of it, Rae's situation could not be more grim. Last May 2 the once-mighty Liberal Party of Canada, led by Michael Ignatieff, was reduced to a pitiful 34 seats. It was a humiliation on par with John Turner's drubbing at the hands of Brian Mulroney in 1984. Rae has the unenviable task of sorting through the ruins looking for salvageable beams.

As he himself acknowledges: "If you look at the results of the last election, we pretty well lost everywhere. It would be hard to say we we've . . . succeeded in defending any particular bastion in the last little while. We've been receding. That can't continue."

In the past nine months, Rae told an online audience Sunday, Conservatives have raised $18 million to the Liberals' $8 million. With both corporate and government "sugar daddies" out of the frame, Liberals must rely on themselves, Rae says: "We need thousands of shoulders to the wheel."

It's a nice image. But what can it yield, if Grit supporters are an increasingly grizzled group of primarily urban, retired, degreed professionals and civil servants — while the Conservatives and New Democrats carve up Main Street between them? Polls suggest this is precisely what has happened, and continues to happen.

One knock against Rae has been that, though he loves to speak and is very good at it, he's not a natural listener. The same might be said of his party. After May 2, just as they'd done to former leader Stephane Dion after his loss in 2008, senior Liberals dragged Ignatieff out behind the barn and put him down. It was quick and relatively painless.

The implication? If the leader had only been more effective, dodged the dastardly Harper attack ads or returned fire more effectively, they could've been contenders.

A possibility many Liberals still fail to acknowledge, is that large numbers of Canadians simply don't agree with them any more, on some core issues. The long-gun registry is one, certainly in rural and small-town Canada. Borrowing billions to fund new federal programs, as Ignatieff promised to do in the last campaign, is another.

For years, Grit politicians have bemoaned the loss of Canada's international reputation. Oddly, that message doesn't seem to have caught on internationally, where Canada is, in fact, widely respected — particularly by our closest allies the United States and Britain, whose troops fought alongside Canadians in Afghanistan. The world likes our banking system too, apparently. Canadians have the Internet, and can read the foreign news.

Liberals have tried hard for half a decade to turn the plight of Omar Khadr into a rallying cry for human rights. They have a point: Khadr was just 15, a child by UN convention, at the time of his arrest. But do ordinary Canadians empathize enough with an enemy combatant, whatever his age, to make this anything but a loser, politically? The answer is no.

Rae appears to understand the branding problem, which Ignatieff did not. He also knows the prize is the solid centre — with a leftward tilt on social issues, and a rightward one on economics and geopolitics. On Iran he's a hawk. On marijuana he's a dove. On taxes he muses about lowering, not raising. "It's productivity that speaks to our prosperity — we have to look at everything."

If it holds, it could be the germination of a Liberal shift back to the moderate centre-right, where the party had its success in the '90s. Pragmatic Liberals would cheer. Rae's biggest problem, should he manage to stick around until 2015, will be Ontarians' memories of the recession of the early '90s. That's a big problem. For now though, it doesn't appear to be spoiling his fun. "I enjoy it," he says of his role as scrapper and underdog. "I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't enjoy it."

Fair enough. Aside from all that, however, would Bob Rae like to be PM? Honestly? Don't ask. He won't say.

mdentandt@postmedia.com

© Copyright (c) Postmedia News

I heard Mr. Rae on the radio today, talking socially left, fiscally right sense.

 

[Good2Golf]

...I heard Mr. Rae on the radio today, talking socially left, fiscally right sense.

Ironically, what some of us might liken to be not too far from past PC platforms.

The NDP CoG is vulnernerable now and Rae might just be the one to recover the Liberal's losses to the left and exploit potential NDP self-collapse when/if the Quebec honeymoon sours.


Regards
G2G

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Rae's big strike is that he needs Ontario to win.

He'll be dead and buried before, he, our former Premier is forgiven or forgotten by most in this province.

People here still spit when they say his name.

 

[a_majoor]

While it is quite easy to believe Mr Rae will flout the rules and attempt to become the "once and future" leader after being the "interim" leader, it is even easier to believe that various factions in the Liberal Party will be waiting in the corridors, behind curtains and in the kitchen with knives out for Mr Rae.

The infighting that surfaces from time to time is still going on, if only because the internal conditions which promoted such infighting have not changed. I suspect that after the Liberal convention bloodbath, the party will be full of bitter people divided against themselves. The NDP may or may not be a contender at that point in time but Steven Harper's CPC will roll the Liberals over post hast.

If the LPC is going to be a contender in 2019 (or even around then), they will have to do a lot more of the core work of defining what, exactly, they stand for, and define it in a positive manner that induces people to vote "for" them on their own merits rather than as an "against the others" vote. Realistically, I don't see this happening anyway, not only because they won't do it but because they can't; the Progressive project is unravelling and the legal, fiscal and moral arguments for Progressivism in any form lie in ruins. The NDP and Greens are entrenched in the ruins (like Russian soldiers in Stalingrad) while the "Classical Liberal" values of liberty, property rights and Rule of Law are (imperfectly) championed by the CPC, and even more voracious small "c" conservative parties on the political Right. There is literally no place for the Liberals to go.

So Bob Rae may go down in history as the man who's ambitions destroyed the Liberal Party through infighting, while history passed it by.

 

[Edward Campbell]

And more speculation, by arch anti-Conservative Lawrence Martin, reproduced under the fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/lawrence-martin/and-the-next-liberal-leader-is-bob-rae/article2235985/

And the next Liberal leader is ... Bob Rae?

LAWRENCE MARTIN
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail

Published Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2011

Some time ago, I jettisoned my crystal ball owing to its serial malfunctioning. But recently, while I was reading a book on table-rapper Mackenzie King, it reappeared in all its non-glory. Here’s what it said:

For lack of a better candidate, aging Bob Rae will become permanent leader of the Liberal Party and lead it back to respectability, though not victory. Mark Carney, the Bank of Canada governor celebrated on a magazine cover last week as “The Canadian Hired to Save the World,” will take over the Rae reins after the next election.

Benefiting from the most starlit international reputation since Lester Pearson, Mr. Carney, who recently ruffled Tory feathers in declaring the Occupy movement as being “entirely constructive,” will be elected prime minister in 2019.

By that time, the Conservatives will have been in power for a 13-year stretch, the longest since the days of John A. Macdonald. They will have moved the country so far to the right that Don Cherry will be its official mascot.

At the moment, the exceptional story is the ascendancy of Mr. Rae. Funny thing. The interim Grit leader who vowed not to seek the permanent leadership just a few months ago is already making big strides toward claiming the prize.

Everything is falling into place for him. Rae ally Sheila Copps has become the leading candidate for the party presidency. Ms. Copps has already stated that she thinks Mr. Rae should drop his pledge and run for the permanent leadership.

Fast off the mark, Mr. Rae has introduced a sweeping reform and modernization plan for the party. He is impressing many with his experience, his savvy, his command. Unlike the previous two leaders, he does not need on-the-job training. Though his Liberals are a third-party rump, it is Mr. Rae who comes across as the official opposition leader in the Commons. While trying hard, NDP interim leader Nycole Turmel lacks the experience and English-language capability to be effective in the role. Mr. Rae overshadows her completely.

He got a big break recently when Justin Trudeau declared he would not be a candidate for the leadership. Bearing the Trudeau name and youthful charisma, he might have been the one for the party to rally around. As it stands, unless Mr. Trudeau changes his mind, there is no big-name challenger to Mr. Rae and the party will be hesitant, after the experience with Michael Ignatieff, to reach outside for a newcomer.

By the time of the next election, Mr. Rae will be 67. That’s hardly apt for a party in need of revitalization and generational change. But his “Roadmap to Renewal” reform plan is designed to overcome this perception. The plan includes the introduction of an American-style primary system to elect the leader and the opening up of party memberships to anyone, free of charge. The idea is to create a whole new grassroots breed of Liberal.

As he spelled out in a speech last week, Mr. Rae is out to reclaim the lost centre. While sharp in its critique of the government, the speech was bromide-plagued in its attempt to define a new Liberal way. Reclaiming the middle will not be easy. Although Stephen Harper is brandishing his ideological stripes in some policy domains, in the area that counts most, the economy, he is showing himself to be adroitly capable of moderation. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s decision last week to put back his deficit-elimination target was an example.

Nor will it be easy for the Grits to make gains on the second-place New Democrats once that party has selected its new leader. It has a strong list of candidates to draw from.

But there is no doubting Mr. Rae’s impressive start. Given his age and checkered history, he is not an ideal choice for the leadership. But until someone of the stature of a Mark Carney comes along, there is no ideal choice. It’s Bob Rae and he’s probably a big enough improvement on previous leaders to save the Liberal Party.

Leave aside the Mark Carney wishful thinking: Martin is committing the standard Liberal sin of looking for a celebrity to lead the party without the need for the drudgery of renewal. Even if, and it's a HUGE IF, Mr. Carney has any political ambitions he will note the Ignatieff experience and shake his (wise) head from side to side, indicating "No." Politics is, now, a profession and some serving Conservative and NDP members indicate that it might be one your enter fresh from university.

 

The Hon. Andrew Scheer, (CPC) Speaker of the House of Commons                                              Laurin Liu (NDP) was elected while still studying at McGill
has never worked at anything except partisan politics:
first as a staffer, then as an MP

Scheer and Liu are the face of the future of politics as a profession.

A factor Martin ignores is that the Liberals have an unwritten, but very strong, alternating rule: leaders are, alternatively, from English and French Canada - people like Martin Cochon and Denis Coderre think they have a right to be leader.

But the next Liberal leader, and the one or even two after that matter to us all. One of therm is far, far more likely to be Prime Minister of Canada and, therefore, to set policy and tone for our country, than is any member of the NDP.

 

[a_majoor]

And more on the trials and tribulations of the LPC:

http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/Liberals%2Breflect%2Bmiss%2Bpoint/5705242/story.html

Liberals reflect, but miss the point

The Liberals admitted they had no defence against the assaults the Tories launched against Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff.
 
Matt Gurney, National Post · Nov. 14, 2011 | Last Updated: Nov. 14, 2011 2:08 AM ET

The good news is that the Liberal Party of Canada is finally giving serious thought to what's wrong with their organization. For too long, the Liberal approach to party rebuilding was, "Lose election, replace leader, campaign on past glories of party, repeat." Almost anything would be better than that, and the party's report, Building a Modern Liberal Party, is a step in the right direction. The bad news is that, even in this lengthy document, there are signs of the same old Liberal sense of entitlement that was the party's real undoing.

The grandiose regard the party has long been held in by its troops is still much in evidence. Last Wednesday, my friend Chris Selley was at Bob Rae's speech in Toronto, and told of a ripple of surprise and mild discomfort that went through the crowd when MP Scott Brison called the last election's result a "drubbing."

What else could it be called? So long as acknowledging the sad state of the Liberals remains taboo, the party can't move forward.

The document does concede that the Liberal defeat last May was "devastating," and contains page after page of thoughtful, largely accurate analysis of the current Canadian political landscape (if filtered through a partisan Liberal lens). But when the document discusses its political opposition, the worst habits of Grits start to shine through the introspection.

Take their long analysis of the Conservatives, and why they continue to dominate. The Liberals correctly conclude that the Tories have been better organized and better prepared over the last few elections - in both the "air war" (politics through media) and "ground war" (legions of volunteers and staff ready to knock doors and press flesh), the Liberals agree that they lost the last election as soon as it began. They admit that the party had no effective defence against the pre-emptive negative assaults the Tories launched against both Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff. And they are right that the Tories have been successful at having broad appeal to the political centre while using narrow wedge issues (wheat board, gun registry, etc) to retain the support of their base.

But buried amid all this accurate analysis is the Liberal conviction that the Tories have somehow tricked the Canadian voter. The old Grit stand by, the hidden agenda, has been given a 21st-century update - now the Liberals accuse the Conservatives of a stealth agenda to remake Canada.

But remake it from what, and into what? Canada is not a theoretical construct, frozen in amber since the Liberals lost power in 2006. It will change whether the Liberals want it to, even if they happen to be out of power. It's as easy to argue that the Conservatives are benefiting from natural changes in Canadian society as it is to imply they are secretly orchestrating them.

But the Liberals don't see it that way. They are palpably uncomfortable being out of power, like a proud car owner forced by circumstance to let someone else take the wheel. As far as they're concerned, the Tories have used their "stealth agenda" and "message discipline" to send "the right coded messages" to their voting base, which is driven by "underlying extremism."

The end result of all this plotting by the right-wing extremists? The Liberals believe that the Tories have "fooled" enough voters to take power.

The NDP are portrayed as being similarly devious - the Liberals feel they are "misleading Canadians" about their true socialist nature (the Liberals also feel the NDP's current caucus, composed of strong-central government types and soft Quebec nationalists, is probably unsustainable, and they could easily be right about that). But the Liberals are as dismissive of the NDP's move to the centre as they are the Tories' - it's merely a trick that the voters fell for. That's the only possible explanation for last May's result.

But there other explanations, and ones the Liberals can't afford to ignore. What the Liberals have never wanted to admit is that, even if the Tories have a hidden extreme base and even if the NDP is misleading Canadians, it doesn't matter. What matters is that the Liberals get out there and convince Canadians that they are, in fact, the party of the centre, rather than fretting about the other parties eating their centrist lunch. Simply telling the voters that they've been had isn't going to cut the mustard. It hasn't so far.

Fixing the Liberal party's internal mechanisms, updating their voting registration and fundraising strategies, ridding themselves of the old leadership rivalries - are things that need to happen. The Liberals are right to address those deficiencies. But if they want to become a force in Canadian politics again, it must be by convincing the public that the Liberals are able to best represent the centre, not by simply declaring any other party an interloper when they reach for the middle.

mgurney@nationalpost.com

 

[Danjanou]

Rae's big strike is that he needs Ontario to win.

He'll be dead and buried before, he, our former Premier is forgiven or forgotten by most in this province.

People here still spit when they say his name.

I hope you're right but I'm wondering. Considering the attention span of our sound bite media pablum fed average Ontario Voter is about the same as a cat with Alzheimer's he may get it. Look what we just did provincially. :

 

[Fishbone Jones]

I hope you're right but I'm wondering. Considering the attention span of our sound bite media pablum fed average Ontario Voter is about the same as a cat with Alzheimer's he may get it. Look what we just did provincially. :

The same Union people that let McGuinty back in haven't forgiven Rae for the Raeday vacations and the stab in the back his Dipper gov't doled out to it's grass root supporters.

 

[Danjanou]

True and they're usually the minority that get off their fat arse and actually vote. either way I'm keeping my Passport updated and the property tax on the that foreign beach front property paid up.  8)

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the National Post, are some interesting observations on the Liberal Party of Canada's main problem: it's continued idolization of Pierre Trudeau, Canada's worst ever prime minister:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/12/30/kelly-mcparland-liberals-need-less-trudeau-more-mackenzie-king/

Kelly McParland: Liberals need less Trudeau, more Mackenzie King

Kelly McParland

Dec 30, 2011

I was shopping before Christmas and came across a new book on Pierre Trudeau: Trudeau Transformed: The Shaping of a Statesman 1944-1965 by Max and Monique Nemni. This is the second volume on Trudeau by the Nemnis, presumably with more  to come, since Volume Two only takes us to the cusp of his parliamentary career.

Nearby the Nemnis book was another book on Trudeau, and near that, a book on Margaret Trudeau.  The Nemni biography is the second recent assessment of Trudeau’s life: a well-received two-volume official account was produced by the historian and academic John English, beginning in 2006. English wrote an earlier volume on Trudeau, The Hidden Pierre Trudeau, published in 2004. In addition there have been books by Nino Ricci, Ron Graham and Ramsay Cook, just in the past five years. There is a whole library of works from earlier years, not to mention those by Trudeau himself.

There is another new book on a Canadian prime minister in the stores this season, Allan Levine’s King: William Lyon Mackenzie King, a Life Guided by the Hand of Destiny. It’s the first full biography of the country’s longest-serving Prime Minister in 30 years. King doesn’t get a lot of attention from Canadian historians. The other main work of the past decade was “Friends and Lovers“, a look at his odd (to say the least) relationship with (preferably married) women.

Which made me wonder: Why are we so obsessed with Pierre Trudeau, and so little interested in King, who re-assembled the Liberal party from scratch beginning in 1919 and, when he finally stepped down in 1948, handed over the most potent and successful political machine the country has ever seen? Don’t tell me it’s because Trudeau was charismatic and King was dull and gray. Mackenzie King was by far the weirdest man ever to run this country, and he ran it for 22 years.  What’s more, his utter nuttiness is there for all to see, in 30,000 pages of the diary he kept for 50 years, and which is available free online .

Most Canadians first became aware of King’s secret world in 1976, in C.P. Stacey’s A Very Double Life. Stacey told us about the nightly sessions in the little room on the third floor of Laurier House, where King chatted with his long dead mother, sister and brother, plus a host of friends, relatives and historic figures who regularly trooped through, offering advice and support. He was big on seances and table rapping; messages hidden in clouds, tea leaves and shaving cream; secret signals sent via dreams, visions and daytime revelations. He may or may no have tramped the street looking for prostitutes to rescue, and venerated images of his mother the way pilgrims react to images of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes.

Yet Stacey barely scraped the surface. And even in his enjoyable biography, Levine can only add so much more.  He notes that the King papers in Ottawa fill an area equal to three football fields. Much of the diary has only become easily available recently. Yet we’re satisfied with a new look at King every 30 years or so while constantly inspecting and re-inspecting the minutia of Trudeau’s life in search of some new revelation to chew over.

It’s not that Trudeau was the better politician, or the more important figure. King conceived and created the self-sustaining electoral juggernaut that current party elders would kill to have back. King brought Quebec into the Liberal fold and kept it there, ensuring majority after majority from 1935 through to 1957. He began the transition from British supplicant to independent Canadian nation that Pearson and Trudeau completed. He did it while balancing the books, keeping the country united and alienating very few. With the exception of Alberta, which was in thrall to Social Credit, the Liberal party was viable throughout the West into the 1950s.

King also established the image of the Liberals as the party of social welfare, though he was horrified of debt and believed strongly in individual responsibility. It was Trudeau who twisted that out of shape, setting off a borrowing binge that amassed debt and shackled a generation to the eternal repayment plan. Trudeau amplified the breach with the West that no Liberal since has put much effort into healing and which has largely eliminated it from the country’s most vibrant region.  But perhaps worst of all, it was Trudeau who personified and validated the superiority complex the party is still struggling to rid itself of, the belief in its absolute right to rule, the sense that Liberalism is the only authentic manifestation of the Canadian character. Every Liberal leader since has been infected to some degree by the assumption of the inevitability of Liberal success, and its manifest right to expect it.  Peter C. Newman, in his new book on Michael Ignatieff and the Liberals’ decline, writes: “If politics is a fever of the blood, arrogance is the Liberals genetic code.”

As they scratch through the ashes of what they once had, looking for a few flecks of hope, Liberals might be better to quit fantasizing about a new Trudeau and skip farther back into their own past. Mackenzie King, for all his weirdness, understood the Canadian character and played to it, oriented his party to satisfy it, and won long-term allegiance to its values rather than to himself. When Trudeau left he took whatever personal magic he had with him, and it turned out there wasn’t a lot else left behind.  Charisma is not a workable political platform, and during his 15 years the party became Trudeau, and expected the country to do so as well, or take a hike.

When King retired he left the country in sound financial shape, vibrant, peaceful and sure of itself. If not perfectly at harmony, it was at least in a period of truce over French-English relations. His party was strong and united, and easily won two more majorities after he departed.  Trudeau left the country deep in debt and saddled with an enormous deficit. The West was angry and alienated, Quebec in the throes of its separatist fervour. The party was crushed at the next election and would spend nine years out of power, and still struggles with other Trudeau-era legacies it has yet to overcome.

We don’t need more Trudeau. As Liberals debate how to revive their party, they would do well to ignore their most charismatic leader and head straight to the dull gray man who gave them the position of strength they have since squandered.

National Post

I repeat: I supported the Liberals in the 1960s, when I could first vote. I thought knew that the St Laurent/Pearson visions of Canada, at home and abroad, was better than the Drew/Diefenbaker one. I ceased supporting the Liberals when Mike Pearson bought Marchand, Pelleteier and Trudeau into the party. I also knew that none of them was good for Canada and I disliked Trudeau intensely; I found him a petite, petty, puffed up, poltroon and, at best, a pseudo-intellectual who forswore serious academic work to be a "star" in Québec - talk about being a big fish in a small pond; he made his reputation writing anti-Duplessis articles in magazines with circulation lists of dozens, not hundreds. Given an opposable thumb, my Aunt Florence's pet cat could write credible anti-Duplessis articles.

I would be willing to support the Liberal again IF they elected a John Manley Liberal who would repudiate Trudeau and all his works - none of which, including the (unnecessary) Charter, did anything but harm to Canada - and restore the St Laurent vision of Canada.

 

[The Bread Guy]

.... I would be willing to support the Liberal again IF they elected a John Manley Liberal who would repudiate Trudeau and all his works - none of which, including the (unnecessary) Charter, did anything but harm to Canada - and restore the St Laurent vision of Canada.

I'm guessing that bit in red'll never happen, at least in this generation - and with a fils in the caucus, the changeover isn't going to be happening soon.  Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe with enough time in the political wilderness.

 

[Good2Golf]

John Manley is the only person who could bring the Liberals FULLY back to relevance. 

Bill Graham could probably do the job to 75-80% of how John Manley could do it.  Unfortunately for the Liberals, however, it seems their options are either "le petit dauphin" of Bob "Ontario still remembers you" Rae.

Regards
G2G

 

[Edward Campbell]

John Manley is the only person who could bring the Liberals FULLY back to relevance. 

Bill Graham could probably do the job to 75-80% of how John Manley could do it.  Unfortunately for the Liberals, however, it seems their options are either "le petit dauphin" of Bob "Ontario still remembers you" Rae.

Regards
G2G

I disagree. I think the Liberals have a couple of good potential leaders; leaders who can, probably, unseat Harper's successor, e.g.:

   

   

Scott Brison                                                              Dominic LeBlanc                                                        Judy Sgro
Good choice - smart fellow                                        Best choice, overall                                                    Could manage in a pinch, has one obvious plus

 

[GAP]

and Dominic LeBlanc is tightly tied into the old boy's network like none of the others......

 

[Edward Campbell]

and Dominic LeBlanc is tightly tied into the old boy's network like none of the others......

He is indeed but he is, also, a shrewd and able politician. The other Franco contenders, Bélanger , Coderre, Cochon, Garneau and Trudeau are either damaged good or lightweights. (I'm not counting  Kevin Lamoureux (Winnipeg North) as either a Franco or a contender.)

I suspect Brison and LeBlanc actually frighten the Tories; unlike Rae or any of the other Liberal leader wannbes.

 

[GAP]

Unfortunately, I suspect that whom ever the Libs choose will be chosen with the intent in mind that he/she is only a temporary step until "le petit dauphin" is ready. They are so fixated on Trudeau and offspring, they see no other.

 

[ModlrMike]

The Liberals are so blinded by the light of the next shining star that they can't see that they have one food in mid air over the chasm of obscurity.

 

[Edward Campbell]

At the risk of repeating myself, we had better hope they survive and prosper because, sooner or later, probably around 2023, we are going throw the Tory rascals out; they will have gotten too stale and too corrupt to stay in power. The NDP cannot grow into a responsible, worthy of government, political party without, first, destroying itself and its core beliefs. The only acceptable alternative to a Conservative government is a Liberal one - absent a new centre/centre-right party emerging.

 

[GAP]

Awhhh....come on E.R......give Elizabeth a chance huh?  ;D

 

[Good2Golf]

Mr. Campbell, if the Liberals truly want to recover from their near auto-immolation, Brison is the one to do it.  Leblanc is smart...lawyer smart (Harvard)...but he's still a lawyer and political scientist.  Brison's involvement in economics, particularly with the US (once it recovers from its current state of affairs) will be the CoG of Federal governmental stewardship.  Liberals will have to look past the cliff of legacy BS that they currently seemed Hell bent on steering towards, and will have to figure out how to regain the center that they foolishly gave up to the Conservatives while they witlessly dabbled farther to the left.  Unfortunately for them, they realized too late in the game, that the flakiness of the far left was something that neither a) they could grab hold of, nor b) be anything of worth.  All the while, the new Conservatives expanded the centrist support from the old PC's base as well as the Blue Liberals who were driven away from the LPC with the leftist "dabbling" and ended up not needing even a hint of Quebec to grab the majority.  If the LPC doesn't sort itself out soon, the CPC will convince another 4-7% of the popular vote that they're not so bad, and that will seal the Lib's fate for quite a while.

:2c:

Regards
G2G