Count Iggy Resurfaces

Iggy was always much better at this sort of Ivory Tower baffle gab stuff than actually implementing solutions to political problems. Here's in interesting interview with him about the current round of slaughter in the Middle East:

Michael Ignatieff Interview:'Those Fighting Islamic State Are the Lesser Evil'

Iggy and Quebec

Good bye to both of you.

Liar!!

Only a few short weeks ago, he was denying that the U of T had offered him a job.

Oh well. It's a university. That's where elitist snobs who can't find jobs in the real world go.

Good Advise For the Liberals

Liberal remedy to Layton is to look in the mirror

"Since his (Jean Chretien's) departure, and Paul Martin’s defeat, Liberal strategy has consisted of two streams: painting Stephen Harper as a stooge of the U.S. corporate-military complex, and reminding Canadians that the Liberals introduced universal health care.

Is it really a shock that the recipe has failed to excite people?"

[---]

"Now Layton appears to have passed them on the left, and taken the NDP into second spot. What to do?

Answer: Quit reacting. Find a reason for the Liberals to exist.

In 21 elections between 1921 and 1993, when the Liberals won it was because of Quebec. They took the overwhelming majority of Quebec seats in every winning campaign, and only once were they popular enough in the rest of the country to have won without Quebec (and even then, in 1935, it would have been iffy). The Liberal party was about keeping Quebec happy; that’s where power lay.

It all changed when the Bloc Quebecois came along and stole their meal ticket. Since 1993, when the Liberals win it’s because of Ontario, yet the party has never put the effort into pleasing Ontario that it did into Quebec."

[---]

"The party is all but dead from Manitoba to B.C. There is little sign Quebec is likely to come around again, having decided that, if it has to pick a federalist, Mr. Layton most closely aligns with Quebec political thinking. Liberals are still a moderate force in the Maritimes, but there aren’t enough seats there to make a big difference.

It’s time for the Liberals to accept that the world has changed. It’s not 1980, and yearning for the past is no route to success in the future. The party isn’t going anywhere until it figures out how to win more seats in Ontario, and it’s not going to do that until it stops looking at the province and seeing only a clutch of seats in and around Toronto. Toronto may be the most liberal city in the country, but once past its borders you enter a province with a pronounced conservative strain, and Liberals have done very little to appeal to it. Most of Toronto will vote Liberal whatever the case; building the party’s entire platform to satisfy activists in safe downtown ridings is a waste of resources and evidence of atrophy at the top."

[---]

"When you’re dead in the West, on life-support in Quebec and slipping in Ontario, it’s hard to pose as a national party. They need to rebuild from the ground up, and Canada’s most populous and vote-rich province is the place to start."

Yup. And Iggy ain't the man to do it either. And by that time......

I'm looking forward to the new Conservative generation. I'm especially going to enjoy the death throe theatrics that will be on display at Liblogs.

Why Do the Libs Want an Election Now?

Simple.

First: They recognize the mistake they made in appointing and anointing the Harvard intellectual as leader of their party, but they don't want to admit that. After all, they wanted us to be wowed by having such a towering intellect as our fearless leader. They are, after all, Libs, and their natural position is to tower above us while we prostrate ourselves in front of them. And since they don't want to admit they made a mistake, they don't want to change their leader without the customary rejection of him at the polling booth. No siree. They want to be able to blame the voter. They're Libs, after all.

Second: Iggy knows he made a big mistake in accepting the coronation; he is uncomfortable in the role, and he is looking for the most honorable way out. And he too is looking for a way to pin it on the Canadian voter. It's better to make your exit after losing an election, than before it. Being able to blame it on someone else takes the spotlight off the self-serving hubris.

So. The Libs have decided to make the tax payer/voter take the rap and the bill so they can protect their asses, get it over with, to rise from the ashes another day, all the while blaming the honky, unwashed voter.

Thanks, Libs.

For what it's worth, I do think Iggy would be much more in his element locked away in an ivory tower and I don't think he was really leading the Party.  I've read some of his stuff and knew something about him, before he came back to Canada. If he had been leading the Party, his positions and by extension, those of the Libs would be somewhere else on the political spectrum - like on the spot where the Cons are now, and the Cons would be further to the right. And for this we are paying. Thanks Libs.

I hope the Canadian public sends you (the Party) a very clear message that you have not been working for us and you are, as a consequence, fired. I hope we send you into a corner where you can sulk and cry until we have undone the Liberal legacy and you have lost your arrogance.

Oh, Give Me a Break!!!

Go read Ezra's latest about Iggy the Idiotic and the Lunatic Liberals.

But, who am I to complain. The more's the better where the Liberal Party is concerned.

Take That, Liberals!

Broken down and out of gas

"Mr. Ignatieff is in a very cruel spot. He has what’s left of this summer to obliterate a whole year’s worth of accumulated impressions that he’s just not a fit for the job he’s in. But when a leader’s tour revives the memory of Joe Clark’s fugitive luggage, and its first halt is at Harper’s Diesel, the auguries are not kind."

[--]

"Right now, he’s the underdog’s underdog; or, to vary the image, he’s so far into the woods he’ll have to come out to hunt."

[---]

"Mr. Ignatieff may not get the prize he wishes, perhaps because — and it’s not a failing in any final sense — he simply does not have the right personality for campaign politics."

You go, Rex!

Pravda Features Count Iggula

But is this good news or bad? h/t

Russian Duke Craves Power In Canada

On the one hand, you know communism in Russia is well and truly dead when Pravda devotes considerable ink to extolling the virtues of the Russian Nobility in the ancestry of Canada's leader of the loyal opposition:

"...if the Bolshevik Revolution had not won in Russia nearly 100 years ago, the Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff would have had the official Prince’s title and would probably live in a large mansion given to his ancestors by Ekaterina the Great. The palace where the parliamentarian’s grandmother was born was burnt down in 1917 after Romanov dynasty was overthrown. Ignatieff is convinced that it would be hard for him to be a prince nowadays."

[---]

"...his ancestors taught him not to complain and give up when the times are tough but work towards your goals.

He will likely need these lessons on his way to the Prime Minister’s office of the country created by many generations of multilingual immigrants."

One can also say Pravda reveals a certain lack of political acuity to suggest that Ignatieff will soon be Prime Minister of Canada. 

"Most likely, this politician will be the next Canadian prime minister in 2012. One of the wonderful characteristics of Canadian politics is its predictability. Ignatieff’s role in overcoming of the internal political crisis and the system of the protection of the country against economic crisis he created will not be forgotten by his compatriots in the next two years."

There was a day when Russia put some of its best minds to work writing fiction for Pravda. Its quality has declined rather sharply in the last two or three decades, it seems. That might not be such a good thing for Russia, but it can't really be bad for us. I also suspect they wouldn't have reported news from well over a year ago as if it happened only days ago, either.

"Looking for a solution of a recent unprecedented for Canadian history parliamentary crisis, the Liberal Party addressed the country’s governor general with a request to appoint the “aristocrat and his majesty Michael Grant Ignatieff” as an official responsible for forming alternative government."

Huh??

"The title sounds somewhat funny. However, it reflects the actual biography of the parliamentary who started his sweeping ascend early last year when the shadow of the world crisis fell on one the crisis-free countries of the planet."

Yup.  Sounds like they're using computer translation software, too.

Well, okay. Russians may be proud it has a famous grandson leading the Natural Governing Party of Canada, but hold on.  Poll after poll of Canadian opinion suggests Count Iggy is the wrong man.  The Libs have made a mistake.  When Canadians decide who their next prime minister will be, I highly doubt it will be Count Iggula.

It's not that Iggy's family history isn't full of drama and human interest, though. Perhaps, as leader of the Natural Governing Party, Iggy could tap the Party's communications department at 181 Queen Street in Ottawa and suggest they produce a six part series on his noble ancestors and their struggle to survive following the Bolshevik Revolution, making sure it's ready for broadcast in the six weeks before the next election. After all, Michael Grant Ignatieff does at least have some degree of control over when and if the current government falls.  And, if all that fails, it sounds as though there might be an open invitation and a castle waiting for him in Moscow, or thereabouts.

And there might even be a lesson here for the CBC.  There is life after the evil Conservative Revolution.  It's just not as cushy and assured as before.