The Globe and Mail's online edition (the only one I will henceforth have access to, given my termination of our subscription) today has an article by Bruce Anderson entitled 'Michael Ignatief faces daunting enthusiasm gap' offering a variety of reasons that the Liberal leader has failed to 'catch fire' with perspective voters. In my humble view, none of them fully explains his failure as leader.
As I have written before, I am convinced that Ignatief's failure to convey any semblance of integrity, given his repeated practice of ensuring an insufficient number of Liberals in the House of Commons when key votes occur, votes with the potential of bringing down the Harper Government, are at the core of the Liberal Party's problems. I am of the view that, even worse than contending with a government whose views and policies may run counter to one's core values, is contending with a political party that ultimately stands for nothing but the acquisition of power for its own sake.
Even though the electorate may at times be befuddled, apathetic, even misguided, I am certain that they can spot insincerity and hypocrisy very adeptly, qualities that the Liberal leader has displayed in abundance since his ascension to the leadership.
Now, how is he supposed to bring down Harper when his polling numbers have teetered close to majority territory each time? If Iggy had his party vote down the Cons, we go to the polls and very likely we would be looking at a Harpercon majority today. Things would be far worse. Try getting rid of Harper afterwards. Not very responsible. How are they to bring down Harper if he doesn't have the support to do it? Judging by those polling numbers, we obviously don't.
ReplyDeleteFor that matter, the NDP does go and vote down the Harpercons and they bring motions and all that, why don't their polling numbers go beyond 20%?
I want Harper out of office, him getting a majority is probably my greatest fear that keeps me up nights, but it can't be done with polling numbers as they are.
CK, what you say may well be true, but if avoiding that fate is Ignatief's goal, wouldn't it be more honest for him simply to have his members abstain from voting on a given issue, rather than go through the charade of pretending to oppose a bill while ensuring there is an insufficient number of Liberals in the House to stop it?
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