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The "What Do I Know Grit"
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24 comments:
This is just so stupid.
i concur with the first statement......not sure why james you continue to post on your defence of dion's leadership...most canadians know and knew that dion did not connect with them...not sure why so many liberals are surprised at the result from a few days ago...as for ignatieff / rae..or anyone else it was obvious during the campaign that dion needed their help whether it was in vancouver / toronto/ halifax or whereever else ..dion just could not do it or hold his own....i like him he is a nice man a man of substance and integrity but that does not make him a "viable leader"...
Kind of like how Harper didn't connect with the electorate after '04.
And...disloyalty breeds disloyalty.
I expect most of the candidates will announce by mid to end of next week.
The first to announce will not be a Rae or Ignatieff, but one of the young MP's just running to increase their profile for next time. I expect a Leblanc or Dhalla to be first.
I hope Mr. Kennedy runs, as I find Iggy to be Martin 2.0, Rae to be yesterdays man, McKenna will not bother and Manely just does not do it for me.
We are going to be opposition for a while. Even the next election we will lose (might as well keep Dion around for that) so we need someone younger.
to the anoymous comment ....harper has not connected to the canadian people....that is the entire point but after 13 years of liberal leadership it was time for a change...i will not comment on mr martin's reign but let's just say that his people do not know how to win..many of them herle/reid are making comments on this and that and i will let the history books judge them....going back to harper people don't like him but presented with an alternative of jack layton and dion...well you can imagine the rest ....plus dion was told and given frank advice on the green shift it was not going to work and to easy for the opposition to just attack and shred...
James: I understand why you are so ticked off. I know how horrible this all seems and you are clearly venting a lot of frustration that has built up over a long time.
What I don't get though is why this is directed at Ignatieff. Or put another way, why this is only directed at Ignatieff. From what I've seen, heard and personally experienced, the desire to get rid of Dion comes from all corners of caucus and most assuredly not just Ignatieff supporters. In fact, Dion and his team have constantly pushed away potential loyal supporters like me just because we happened to support Ignatieff in the leadership race two years ago. Bob Rae speaks out in public against Dion, actively organizes against him in broad daylight, but you point the finger at Iggy. Take for example how anything remotely tied to Iggy is for you an example of a leadership campaign; and yet, Volpe speaks out openly and this has nothing to do with Rae. Should I assume then that we know who you will be supporting in the next race? That's not what I actually presume but that's the witchhunt mentally you are asking us to adopt.
Take as an example Dion's stupid decision not to do anything about the leadership candidates' debt. They all said that the debt was a party issue and something should be done collectively about it. But Dion said no. As a result, each candidate, Bob and Michael in particular, needed to keep their leadership team together and had to go it alone, on their own, to try to raise their own funds to retire their own debt.
So what did the Dion people then do? Accuse them, especially Iggy, of trying to outshine and undermine the leader. So Iggy is out there trying to retire his own debt on his own because Dion said the party won't do anything and this is now somehow an attack on Dion.
While I respect your frustration and anger, my friend, these kinds of poor judgement calls by Dion adn the OLO and the constant searching for phantom leadership campaigns is as much a part of the reason the knives have come out so quickly as any lingering leadership ambitions.
I don't know if it is the best thing for the party to get rid of Dion right now or not. But your venting on Ignatieff seems to be making the case that it is.
A few observations.
1. It's simply amazing how many of the Ignatieff internet people have resurfaced during the course of one week. Welcome back Francesco, Alex and Ted.
2. Ted, I look forward to reading your blog again. Many of us missed your commentary. Some of us would have enjoyed it if you would have stuck around to comment over the past almost 2 years in aid of the party.
3. Nobody I know alienated any of you from the party. Alex was on the campaign plane.
4. I name names. And I'm not shy. The "phantom leadership campaigns" are/and were very real. Unlike some of you, I have made a point of being involved at every level. I've been on the ground during by-elections, AGMs, etc. Some teams have continued to "recruit" and "campaign" and "hold meetings".
In Outremont, for example, I stood beside Pablo Rodriguez and Denis Corderre as they gave "anonymous" interviews to La Presse an Le Devoir knocking the leader. Who did they wnat as their leader Ted?
5. As I've told you in the past, I have a deep respect for Michael and his lovely wife. It's his team of thugs that have offended an entire side of the party that will never forgive and forget.
6. I welcome all of the Ignatieff team back into the blogworld and look forward to their commentary....especially Cerberus.
James
for me this is not about ignatieff or any other candidate ..i was an alternate delegate for ignatieff at the convention and lived abroad until late 2002 before returning to canada ..but i am proud to be in a picture with jean chretian from circa 1989 when he came to prince rupert b.c. and he was campaigning for the leadership...i have always been around and always been a liberal and i just spent 30 out of the 36 days canvassing in trinty spadina and here in toronto danforth....to me the liberal party comes first and to any possible leaders of the liberal party this is not a sandbox for you to play in....for me it has always been about the party and values the party exposes...as for leadership i thought dion had a chance but he was stubborn which is good in certain situations but at the same time he just would not listen and take advice from others...and why are you attacking iggy..don't you know that saying its not your enemies you have to worry about but those who appear closer ...:-)
Iggy announces what? That he's stopping campaigning? Because that would be the only announcement that makes sense, logically. Can't really announce you're running for the leadership when you never stopped running for it.
Jim:
To quote our leader, you are not being "fair". At all. Perhaps even playing with the facts here. I'll forgive you because the wounds still hurt, but watch you don't try to smash down bridges.
I had wanted to quit blogging by the time the leadership race was eneded. I stayed on for about a year to try to help out and I've been commenting regularly so don't give me any crap about suddenly resurfacing like I'm some sort of vulture.
You and I have also been in touch. I gave you a lot of information that could have helped Dion. Didn't see that much of it anywhere, but you're welcome.
You mean Pablo and Denis don't like Dion? That's news? None of the Quebec delegates liked or like him. He placed what? Third or fourth in his own province? All of Bob's Quebec delegates went over to Michael. That is a big problem that we have such idiots in our party, I will agree with you about that, but that doesn't mean there is some phantom out there maliciously working against Dion at every turn.
It doesn't mean there isn't some organizing going on. There HAD to be organizing because Dion refused to help out with anyone's debt so they had to keep their teams together, had to keep organizing.
But they were all doing it Jim. Iggy was in no way the worst. So it is very interesting that you make every link back to him, while there is Volpe saying Dion should step down and nothing about Bob. There is Bob speaking out directly against Dion policies (before he was elected) but we'll forgive that.
There were many people who didn't like Stephane as a leader. None of his fellow cabinet colleagues endorsed him. There were people who didn't like Trudeau or Chretien too. They used that to strengthen their positions and power. Dion and his team built up a wall out of insecurities.
Ted, why are you inventing things about Rae's delegates going to Iggy. That's simply not true. If they had, he may have won. Instead the Iggy campaign didn't grow and this was due to the obnoxiousness of his campaign. At first, I thought it was just a Qc thing, but when the national campaign descended upon my city, I realised it was an organisational problem. Stop your spinning.
With all due respect Ted. Don't pretend to know what was goig on in Stephane Dion's head, or that of OLO.
None of his caucus supported him and who gives a flying fuck Ted. The people of this party supported him and that's how he was elected Leader in the first place. The caucus didn't listen to those members of our party that spoke in Montreal Ted.
Instead ALL OF THEM CHOSE TO NOT SUPPORT THE LEADER. Bob didn't want to go to ele ction last fall cause he wasn't in the house yet. Dion wanted to go then....and the carbon tax wasn't an issue.
Michael already had a carbon tax in his Nation Building book (yes I have several copies).
So please. Give me a break.
BTW. This argument over Dion is over as of this minute.
Time to look to leadership and where I will land on that.
Ted your accusation about campaign debt is absolutely 100% false. Dion was having fundraisers where the proceeds were divided among all the candidates while Iggy and others were having fundraising and keeping all the money themselves.
That is why Dion as leader hs not retired his own debt.
This lie is shameful and unfortunately is all we can expect from someone who supports a candidate whose team did nothing but try to undermine our elected leader for 2 years.
Sinestra:
I'm not so interested in debating the semantics of what happened at the convention in 2006 but Bob Rae's Quebec delegates went for Iggy when Bob dropped out. Iggy did grow: he started with 1,377 delegates and ended up with 2,084; he grew by 10.8% on the last ballot alone (compared to 17.7% for Dion). Most of this was Bob's Quebec delegates like Martin Cauchon and others who had an unhealthy personal dislike for Dion. I am not agreeing with that, just pointing out a fact.
No s.b., Dion did not consolidate the debt like he should have. By not doing that, the other camps were forced to keep their campaign teams together meeting and organizign regularly.
Dion did not retire his own debt because (1) he was busy running the party and (2) he couldn't get anyone to give him money.
Good grief, are we going to fight the "last" leadership race all over again? What a total waste of time and emotion.
This hateful crap has to stop. It hurts the party too.
Get over it. And, get over the fact that not all people agree with you.
You got so combative and nasty when it came to David Orchard - he lost.
Dion lost. It's over. Time to move on like adults.
Ted:
You are mistaken.
And interesting to see you back. Guess the campaign is on.
Sinestra: are you actually trying to say that Ignatieff's convention support didn't grow?
Like I said, it is silly to quibble over irrelavant history but facts are facts and we can only learn from facts not myths. The important lesson is the pack mentality of certain veteran Quebec Liberals.
Cerberus seems to have great difficulty with facts contrary to his narrative - perhaps he should just dismiss them with his hero's line in Denis Smith's book: "misplaced specificity". Dion was second in QC, with 30% of elected delegates, to Iggy's 39%. As a Quebec Liberal, I am unsurprised at the success of the big lie. But still, this "3rd or 4th in his own province" thing is interesting - I suppose in the time between Cerberus' disappearance after the leadership & sudden reappearance, his memory may have gone a bit faulty - an honest mistake, no doubt. The same "honest" mistake repeatedly made by Chantal Hébert, CTV, & all the usual suspects. Curious, n'est-ce pas?
http://queer-liberal.blogspot.com/2008/04/beware-revisionist-history-from-lysiane.html
My goodness gracious me but some people are frothing with anger and hatred. So much so that they want to continue to quibble about the last leadership race and how it was one.
The point I was clearly trying to make was not that Dion did well or poorly in Quebec. I said if memory serves and clearly it did not as he mounted a solid campaign in Quebec. I'm not here to spear Dion, folks.
My point was simply that many in the Quebec Liberal Party viscerally hated Dion. So their leaking to the press had little to do with Rae or Ignatieff or any other leadership contender, but a desire to stick to Dion and in large part because of the Clarity Act. That is why they went over to Ignatieff from Rae and that is the lesson we have to remember.
Since reading does not seem to be your strong suit, let me repeat: I highlight this because I think it is a problem, not because I think Dion was the problem. (Though I think he was in many other respects.) Quebec is a problem for this party as also shown by the low low voter turnout in the Liberal race in 2006 and poor showing outside of Montreal in 2008.
That is more than Dion's problem or fault.
So you folks here have a choice. You can continue the stupidity of "branding" anyone by who they may have supported a few years ago and attacking them today for that - a continuance of Chretien vs. Turner and Martin vs. Chretien that did us so well. OR you can get you head out of your butts and HELP renew by being honest about the problems instead of scurrying into leadership camps so quickly.
I know it is a lot to ask and I don't hold out much hope.
First para: s/b "how it was won".
What I'm saying Ted is that Rae's original Quebec delegates certainly did not flock en masse to Iggy.
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