Iggy morphing into Dion

Do I really believe that the Conservative government is going down defeat?

What I post is the way it is Captain

Fair enough Liberalman... Personally, I think that you'll be in for some very disappointing results.

I leave it up to our current bumbling Prime Minister like the public humiliation of one of his closest MP that happened yesterday I hear the some Conservative MPs take this as an insult.

When the House of Commons resume in September you might see a lot more Conservative MPs crossing the floor or becoming independents Captain.

Yeah, do Indians drink because of treaties? Hardly. Most don't have the slightest understanding of treaties.

Michael Ignatieff hurt by his own tactics
Jul 14, 2009 04:30 AM
--

OTTAWA
There are two basic political rules that rookie leaders break. One warns against taking a position that can't be abandoned without severe damage or high risk. The second, related to the first, cautions against cornering an opponent unless the purpose is to force a fight on advantageous terms.
In roughly six months of on-the-job training, Michael Ignatieff has savaged those axioms. The result is that a party that should be riding high is down in the dumps. It's squandered an opinion poll lead and lost the swagger that carried caucus through spring and toward yet another early election.
Part of the problem is politics is unforgiving as well as not easily mastered. Worse, it's at least as complex as chess and cruelly punishes new players by discounting their experience and success before abandoning real for elected life.
Putting Conservatives "on probation" is a prime example of what happens when a tactic is too clever by half. Instead of putting pressure on the Prime Minister, it creates a periodic test the Opposition leader can only pass by forcing what may be an untimely election.
Ignatieff compounded the error by ignoring Rule 2. Threatening to bring Conservatives down before Parliament's summer recess was only sound as long as Liberals, and particularly their leader, were ready for a campaign. They weren't and Stephen Harper shrewdly called the bluff, sending two parties in different directions.
For Conservatives, the Canadian season of mushy ice is now a time to fill an empty net with pucks. With no one crowding them, they have time and space to enjoy the benefits that flow to current champs. So they are busy announcing, or reannouncing local projects, reinforcing the party base with a narcissist agenda that draws attention away from lousy times and sending the Prime Minister swanning across the world stage.
Liberals enjoy none of those luxuries. They have yet to provide compelling reasons for a return to government, seem content defining themselves as Conservative-lite and are following a leader growing awkwardly into his political skin.
Failings can be fixed. Conservatives did it in 2006 with easily grasped promises, a sharply defined position on the political spectrum and the clear understanding that their prime-minister-in-waiting made many voters queasy.
Liberals remain at the back of that class. As much as Ignatieff brought greater stature, superior staff and firmer discipline to an office short of all three, readying for the coming confrontation is still a work in progress. Liberals can't count on Conservatives to defeat themselves and have plenty to do before fall when some of the country's attention will drift from the picnic table back to Ottawa.
Between then and now, Liberals need to build a platform strong enough to carry the party though a campaign, one with planks that prove their standard-bearing public intellectual is also smart enough to have good, practical ideas. No less significantly, Ignatieff needs what Jean Chrétien and Brian Mulroney had in Jean Pelletier and Derek Burney: A tough, confident, savvy field marshal able to focus the leader, refine and concentrate the message and, most of all, explain why some rules shouldn't be broken.

Looks more and more like Stephy every day; even the Star is noticing.

It's not your smarts, stupid, it's your arrogance

By Barry Cooper, For The Calgary HeraldJuly 15, 2009 9:06 AM

Ever since the conservative ads critical of Michael Ignatieff hit the airwaves last May, the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada has been on the defensive. As did his predecessor, the hapless Professor Stephane Dion, Professor Ignatieff has trouble making his timid actions square with his bold words. He said often enough that he had "put the government on notice."
They were "on probation" and he would bring them down and force a summer election if the Conservatives didn't do as he wished. In the event he has actually done very little.
One of my cowboy friends invoked some old rangeland wisdom regarding such people: "all hat, no cattle."
The reasons for Liberal timidity in action are obvious enough.
First, they are still far short of the kind of money needed to run an election campaign. Thanks to Jean Chretien's campaign finance "reforms," the Liberals now have to raise money the same way the Conservatives do, from their members. Inheriting the populist tradition of Reform, the Conservatives mastered the necessary fundraising techniques two elections ago.
In this regard the Liberals have not adapted to the new electoral environment. True, they have the opportunity of stealing a march on the Tories by following the Obama campaign and getting networked. But so do the more wealthy and nimble Conservatives. Besides, there is no evidence of such innovative thinking at Liberal Party headquarters.
The second reason, as John Ivison pointed out in the National Post a few days ago, is that a lot of Canadians retain a negative view of the Liberal Party and consider Ignatieff a net liability to the success of the party. Ivison said this is evidence of a "distrust of learning and worldliness." I don't think it's that simple.
A couple of days after Ivison's piece appeared, Nigel Hannaford provided additional evidence of Ignatieff's state of mind to readers of this paper. Hannaford analyzed Ignatieff's remarkable comment to the Globe and Mail where he dismissed the prime minister as "a politician formed and shaped in the radical conservative ideological world of Calgary and Calgary think tanks."
Whatever or whomever Ignatieff had in mind (and he was not at all specific), these were certainly bold words as well. So the interesting question is: notwithstanding their timid actions, why do Liberal leaders make such audacious statements?
The main reason, it seems to me, is that Liberals and especially Liberal intellectuals such as Dion and Ignatieff find it difficult to believe that normal people are not liberals and Liberals as they are. That such an attitude is not confined to Canada is confirmed by the response of their American counterparts to Sarah Palin, both during the 2008 election and after her recent announcement of her resignation as governor of Alaska.
The late William Buckley once famously said he should rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the 2,000 professors then employed by Harvard. This was not evidence of an anti-intellectual view, he explained, but a consequence of his abiding fear of "intellectual arrogance," a besetting temptation, I can tell you, of professors everywhere.
Traditionally, political parties have been coalitions held together by beliefs and interests of various kinds. The condescension expressed in Ignatieff's disdain for Calgary and the beliefs and interests of Calgarians indicates the presence of a third factor, which might be called a superior sensibility.
With Dion, disdain was expressed in a refusal even to consider that it was intellectually respectable to question the premises of his "Green Shift," including the dogma regarding anthropogenic climate change. Ignatieff is more subtle. Nevertheless, it is clear that he thinks everything about these radically conservative Calgary ideologues is simply in bad taste.
With such people what is a guy like Ignatieff to do? For those sharing his lofty sensibilities, a serious conversation, where one is open to the possibility of actually learning something, is preposterous. It would be worse than deciding to vacation in Moose Jaw rather than Provence.
If Canadians do see Ignatieff as a liability to his party, it is not because of their anti-intellectualism. Quite rightly do they disdain those who condescend to them.

Iggy has missed the boat... I'd wager that come X-mas this year, Iggy will be calling Harvard to see if he can get his old job back.

we should maybe wait for an election. iggy is doing what he needs to do. he has to establish himself before any election. the cons are already attacking him the most shallow way they can so they must fear something.

Ahh, the Messiah has descended from heaven....

Unfortunately, the Cons attacks are dead on.

As I've said before, Iggy's claim to have been "searching for Canada" is soooo ludicrous......did he think it was in Massachusetts??????????

He could have devoted his alledgedly superior academic skills in a Canadian university, thus really investing in and exploring Canadian culture.......but he did not.

Which is perfectly fine! Obviously, his skill and experience have qualified him as a Harvard professor of history. I'm impressed, I truely am.......and I intend to do everything possible to send him back there ASAP.

Because Canada has not been in the forefront of his mind, it has counted little in his career decisions, he doesn't give a hoot about Canada.....unless he gets to be boss.

Which is perfectly his right. But it disqualifies him for the position of PM, IMHO.

Iggy's non-Canadianism will be highlighted at the point where an election becomes imminent and will also be compounded by some of the negative policies that are being developed and imlpemented by the US State department.

I have no clue what the Lib party was thinking when they begged Ignatieff to jump on board and parachuted him into the leadership position... The guy will be poison to the libs and hopefully they will pay for that arrogance for years to come.