Thank you CBC

[james_davis_nicoll]

Because the knowledge that if I slept in I'd be scourged by listening to Michael Ignatieff pontificate was just what I needed to get me up and moving.

[I already had a worst liberal leader ever tag?]

Comments

[cyprinella]

I used to use Garrison Keillor's morning droning much the same way. Then my snooze button broke and I was left with turning the alarm off entirely. Didn't quite work.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

He left me wondering if (a) he just isn't get going to Get the Clues, or if (b) I've missed something he understood better than I ever will.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I doubt the Man Who Destroyed the Liberal Party, who having brought his party to electoral humiliation expected to keep his position, has any useful insights. This is Mr. Waterboarding, A Soulful Defense and The Reason Iraq Did Not Work Out Like I Said It Would is Because the Facts Are Defective, after all. The guy who was apparently surprised to find out Montreal Jews are bilingual and the fellow whose reaction to war crimes varies by the day of the month. Essentially, he's our Romney, only as an ignorant, destructive, self-absorbed academic rather than an ignorant, destructive, self-absorbed plutocrat (although Iggy does have that whole Russian aristo thing going).

[dewline.livejournal.com]

And more polite about it that Romney's proving out so far. At least Ignatieff has learned that lesson!

[(Anonymous)]

"... the Man Who Destroyed the Liberal Party"

I disagree.

Paul Martin and his coterie are the ones who did that ...

The Iggmeister is just a secondary or tertiary consequence, IMHO. A symptom, -- not a cause.

I mean, for example, how can you stack nomination conventions (etc.) to screw over Sheila Copps
(as just one example among Martinite reptillions of others), long, long, long before Ignatieff ever
thought of leaving Harvard to come rescue us all, and not have it do fundamental damage to the
Liberal Party of Canada? -- Perfectly predictable, major and excruciating damage to the tangled
cross-weave of interpersonal alliances that is a healthy political party?

And Dion can't be to blame, either, because he was a compromise leader without a faction (which
in turn was one cause of his eventual political failure).

Arguably, the party fissure in question has origins in the Turner/Chrétien conflict, but it was just
ordinary factionalism until the Martinites decided taking no hostages and eating the resulting LPC
dead, was the path to electoral success and political glory.

Rant, rant, rant.

TSM_in_Toronto

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Paul Martin and his coterie are the ones who did that

Yeah, except no, you're wrong. Completely wrong. Start to finish wrong from first principles.

Martin got booted for defrauding the country for "half the cost of a small coffee, each" - and left the party still popular and generally well-regarded, in the standard "someone other than the Liberals gets a chance to remind us why the Liberals run the country in sane times" period that happens every few decades. Ignatieff then took that and said "Durr, I'm a Republican, from the USA. I'm here to be Republican, from the USA" and made the majority of Canada actively hate the Liberal party, correctly deeming them to be "Republicans, from the USA"

Ignatieff is why the Conservatives have a majority, and why Jack "I'm not QUITE as crazy as my opponents" Layton got taken seriously, for genuinely being the first NDP leader to ACTUALLY not be quite as crazy as his opponents.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

(It wasn't because he was less crazy than previous NDP leaders. It was because Harper was equally as crazy as before and Ignatieff was a Republican, from the USA. I say this as a constiuent of Brigadier General Fuckwit McStupidpants, who has *no* military personnel among his supporters because anyone who as ever served with with him would make sure he was dead before pissing on him to put the fire out.)

[(Anonymous)]

"Yeah, except no, you're wrong. Completely wrong. Start to finish wrong from first principles."

Reading your post, I think that maybe you and I are talking about different things:

You seem to be talking about what, for lack of a better word, might be called "the electoral destruction of the Liberal Party of Canada".

I am talking about what might be called, for lack of a better expression, "the internal, institutional destruction of the Liberal Party of Canada."

Plus, you seem to be talking about things at a different time-depth than I am ... [?]

I think you need to go find and talk to some Liberal Party of Canada members, and to ask them what went on, inside the party, from about
1999 onwards. Ask several. Triangulate. Cross-reference the stories. See who, from which faction, says what about who did what to whom.

But especially: find some former LPC members, to ask such questions. Ones who didn't renew memberships, 1998-2005, say.

Especially, consider the stories about personal political blackmail, opposition-research tactics used ruthlessly against other-faction party
members, systematic infiltration and purging of LPC constituency association's BoDs coast to coast to finesse all the nominations, etc., etc.

The only plausible hypothesis is that you and I are talking about different things, because you seem to be unaware of what happened within.

(The alternate hypothesis, is that you are a Martinite, oozing to the defence of The Mighty Paul, Jr. -- which is not a tenable hypothesis,
given for example the pro-NDP things you say above and have said elsewhere, and the fact you show no evidence of being an @$$-Hat).

And, given that an eviscerated party tends, in general, to do badly at the polls (e.g., Dalton Camp vs. Diefenbaker, etc.), the electoral
ruination of the Liberals has deeper roots than you seem to be aware of.

None of which is a defence of Ignatieff: don't blame the Jackal for the Hyena's messy killing, is all I'm arguing.

TSM_in_Toronto

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I was, in fact, talking about the failure of the Liberal party as an electable body.

Which was Ignatieff. Admittedly, Bob Rae could have also tanked the party, but it would have been because Rae would cost them all of Ontario, not because Rae was so justifiably hated as a proponent of Bush policies.

However, if Ignatieff and Rae had dropped out and stopped talking, *any* inoffensive leader would have avoided the driving of just about every Liberal supporter to the CPC and the NDP. The electoral crushing of the party can be laid absolutely at the feet of the Republican.

[jamoche]

I've read Flashman; "Russian aristo" isn't the first thought that comes to mind.

(Flashy had a unfortunate (yes, even by his standards) encounter with Iggy's great-grandfather).

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

In Iggy's defense afaik Iggy never personally tried to stop a woman from obtaining a medically neccesary abortion that saved her from dying, nor did he ever try to use the threat of excommunication or similar pressures to force a single mother to put her child up for adoption against her will just because he personally objects to single parent households, which are both things Romney tried to do while he was a bishop of the LDS church.

Iggy's more about the banality of evil than Mittens "dog on the car roof" Romney's gleeful sociopathy.