Prime Minister Stephen Harper's kickoff for his caucus retreat tonight is being advance-billed as The Dion Dare, a gauntlet he will throw down at Liberal leader Stéphane Dion's feet demanding he pull the parliamentary plug this fall or back away from his chronically empty election bluster until next year.
The Dion Dare? HA! It's the cat, playing with the rat. Conservatives are ready, it's the Liberal party that isn't. Now, I have to admit, being here in Conservative land, my view might be skewed, but we are ready to go and get our Conservative MP re-elected by over 60% again!
It's a government that seems eager to make itself very easy to defeat -- and the Official Opposition may find it very hard to resist the temptation to oblige.
Mr. Harper is expected to gloat at being handed the perfect campaign weapon with which to eviscerate the Liberals -- Mr. Dion's $15-billion carbon tax is a tough sell to an electorate that doesn't believe it will get it back, as promised, in tax rebates.
But as news of four-digit layoffs become a gloomy fixture in the headlines, and giant slabs of Arctic ice break free as an alleged result of man-made climate change, there's an alignment of economic and environmental circumstances coming together for the Liberals.
Here's where Martin gets it wrong, but don't tell the Liberals. The environment is going to take a huge beating in the next election, people only pay attention to it when the economy is good. Right now in Ontario, people are more interested in keeping their jobs than worrying about a harmless gas they can't even see. Martin should also check out the fact that Arctic ice is heavier this year and that giant slabs of Arctic ice always break off in the summer! Also believe it or not our cute little polar bears are doing just fine, eating all those baby seals!
The next Liberal gabfest is scheduled for December. That timetable squeezes Mr. Dion into a rock-hard predicament that gives his rivals considerable hope they will have him shoved out by next summer.
If he forces a fall vote, the convention will be pushed back to next spring, where he will likely be turfed by a party that will accept nothing less than a Prime Minister Dion as leadership success.
But if the campaign starts after the scheduled 2008 convention, Mr. Dion will have almost two years to rebuild a support base before his leadership is validated or revoked at the next biennial gathering of the Grits in late 2010.
The Liberals can not get rid of Dion at the December convention, they elected him, and they have no proof he would lose the election with the numbers showing the Conservatives and Liberals tied, so they are stuck with him. I suspect Liberal friendly pollsters are telling Canadians one thing (tie), and internal polls are telling a whole different story (Conservative win), but the Liberal media has now put the Liberals in a bind, they can't get rid of Dion!
That means Dion would be smart to wait until Oct 2009, by then people might have forgotten his green shaft. Only remaining question, how smart is Dion?? HA!
6 comments:
My prediction is that the Liberals will fail in the next election, and when Dion turns to find his friends standing by his side, he'll feel a sharp pain in the back, followed by Ignatieff and Rae suggesting a leadership review. Who will be the first to bury the knife?
They already are burying the knife, they are letting Dion run on the green shaft all by his lonesome. Dion can get back at them by not calling for an election, make them stew in their juices that much longer.
'Who will be the first to bury the knife?'
My bet is Coderre will be given that mission.
There is still a way for Dion to turn this around, but it would involve him going down a path he's never taken before.
He'd have to get the right-wing-leaning members of his party to draft up an "economic stimulus" package, using those points from his Green Shift plan that could be applied to benefit Canadians economically (i.e. tax exemptions for reduced-carbon-emission products, some tax relief on petroleum products, direct investment on infrastructure, etc.) Which he can market as an alternative to the Tory status quo, which is generally a shell for whatever programs the Dept. of Finance tries to use to manage the economy.
The big problem for Dion, though, is that he's a details man. Which means while he has a firm grasp of what he markets, he has trouble communicating said virtues to a widespread audience.
And three years focusing on Tory "malfeasance" has pretty much reduced to zero the idea that the Liberals can manage the economy better than the Tories, which is exactly the idea they want to communicate. They can't -- they don't have enough time thanks to their obsession with scandal-mongering.
Martin neglects to mention a crucial factor: Dion can not topple the government on his own. He needs the support of either the NDP or the Bloc to do so. Has either party stated any intention of cooperating with Dion? On the contrary, I think *both* parties have no good reason to be seen doing Dion's bidding. The Bloc don't want to rush into an election where they're sure to lose ground on all sides, and if the NDP are seen as too cozy with the Liberals, they lose votes & seats.
I think it would be damn funny, if Dion finally did grow a spine and try to topple Harper, only for Layton & Duceppe to refuse to play ball.
It wouldn't matter what kind of an economic pkg Dion and the Libs came up with,
would Canandians believe Liberals would delivery, given their years of broken promises?
Dion campaigned for Lib leader on NO carbon tax....once he got the crown, a carbon tax is his platform from which all other policy is based on.
Special side deals for the provinces.
No special side deals for the provinces.
There is one message coming thru loud and clear:
Dion and his Liberals don't know what the hell they are doing.
period.
Why would you hand this crew a country to run?????
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