Proving Once Again....

...how out of touch with reality academe can really be...

Harvard shocked by Canada’s rejection of Ignatieff

"Boston’s chattering classes are struggling with the stunning political defeat of one of Harvard’s most popular academics at the hands of Canadian voters, painting Michael Ignatieff’s historic loss as Liberal leader as a new low in Canadian politics.

A series of editorials and articles published this week in the Harvard Crimson, Boston Globe and elsewhere have blamed Canadians for being close-minded and anti-American when they handed Mr. Ignatieff and the Liberals the party’s worst defeat in history."

or maybe it's just Boston:

"“Harvard sees itself as the centre of the universe, so I’m sure it felt it very deeply,” said Graham Wilson, chair of Boston University’s department of political science."

It's pathetic. Even the excuses given miss the mark:

"In a front page article, The Boston Globe said the main reason for the Liberal collapse was that Mr. Ignatieff — the former director Harvard’s Carr Center of Human Rights Policy and an expert on international military interventions — had views on the Canadian mission in Afghanistan that had pushed “war-weary voters toward the more left-leaning New Democratic Party.”

The paper’s editorialists noted with some disbelief that Canadian politics had become “surprisingly caustic” and described the “sadness and indignation” his former Harvard colleagues felt at seeing that Conservative attack ads painting Mr. Ignatieff as a foreign Ivy League elitist had played so well with Canadian voters."

Look, people, Western Canada, the most America-friendly part of the country, always rejects Liberals. It was the Liberal Party of Canada that decided to parachute Iggy into the leadership position, by-passing the wishes of the rank and file membership. That sort of hubris doesn't go well in most of Canada, never mind just Western Canada.

And besides, Iggy was out of touch with Canada's political landscape. It doesn't matter what country he had been in, he wasn't here and there are numerous niggling little details of which he was obviously ignorant that would have translated into disaster for Canada had he been Prime Minister.

We tend not elect parties based on their foreign policy stance.  We're more concerned with bread and butter issues right here at home, and we wanted someone who deeply and intimately understands what those are.  All politics is local, right?

And - and this is a big one - I really think the Liberal Party is over. It is elitist. People of the Liberal persuasion have been preaching to us and looking down their snobbish noses at us for decades and we're sick of being treated like plebeians. So we banished them. Hopefully for good.

Oh, and we take great delight in the internal melt-down, squabbling and finger pointing in the Liberal ranks taking place now, as if to say, "how could this possibly have happened". Kinda proves our point.

Oh. And does this not also say something about the attitude so prevalent amongst liberal arts faculties in North American universities?  Time for an overhaul in that arena, as well.

Perhaps the Boston Globe and the Harvard Illuminati can just dismiss this as Canada's version of the Tea Party movement.

PS: American Thinker has taken note. The smirking is palpable.