“Frankly, it’s doubtful the Liberals or Conservatives could field a group of eight such intelligent [leadership] candidates.”
No, it’s not Olivia or Ed or Roy or one of those partisan spinners who appear on TV panels. These are the words of The Globe and Mail’s Ottawa columnist, Jeffrey Simpson, a man who doesn’t throw such opinions around casually.
Think of the implications. Stephen Harper's cabinet – his majority government cabinet – has almost 40 members (are you old enough to recall when he embraced lean, cost-saving cabinets?). Mr. Simpson is saying that fewer than eight of them are the equals of the NDP leadership contenders. This is a fairly chilling assessment since this gang is going to manhandle our country, virtually without constraint, for another three and a half years. And to compensate for their bush-league stature, they are mean and vindictive. They will neither forget nor forgive Jeff Simpson for this extraordinary put-down. Although Mr. Simpson is a fearless man, he should be very afraid.
As for the Liberals, if I too may speak frankly, I’d be surprised if they could field a group of more than one person who’s of the calibre of the NDP Eight. In fact, so far as I can determine, they presently have only a single member of Parliament, a white-haired gentleman moving ever-closer to his best-before date who now constitutes the Interim Leader, wannabe leader and entire front bench of the Liberal Party of Canada. Bob Rae has become the Walt Whitman of our time. While his party tokes up in the background, he too can sing a Song of Myself and proclaim: “I celebrate myself. … Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.”
Of course Stephen Harper's bully-boys are also gleefully familiar with Mr. Rae’s multitudes, like, just to take one incarnation at random, those unforgettable years when he was the NDP premier of Ontario. Of course much of the country wasn’t even born then, but the Conservative war room intends to make those years unforgettable to them as well. In fact the National Citizens Coalition, the Conservatives’ avant-garde, have already produced a You Tube ad with the devastating if fraudulent message: Don’t let Bob do to Canada what he did to Ontario.
Liberals know only too well, and fear intensely, the moment that Bob Rae becomes the actual leader of his latest party and the Harper goon squad goes to work on his career and reputation. Besides, there are always the real historians to remind us that in the entire history of Canada no provincial premier has ever gone on to be elected prime minister.
That’s why the huge hullabaloo about the defection to the Liberals of one of the new NDP MPs from Quebec was mere sound and fury signifying nothing, a molehill touted as a mountain, and many similar expressions. As it has on a regular basis ever since election night, the mainstream media and much of the punditocracy can’t ever resist an opportunity to announce the NDP’s breakthrough to Official Opposition was a complete fluke and is already flaming out.
Of course for the NDP the incident was unquestionably an unwelcome distraction; there’s no way to pretend otherwise. It can’t help the party much, in Quebec or anywhere, to have members slip away, however enigmatic the circumstances.
