A new poll has pegged support for the Liberal Party at 25%. If an election were held now, the Liberals would do much worse under their current leader Michael Ignatieff than they did in October 2008 when Stéphane Dion led them down the garden path. After all the fanfare and media adulation for Ignatieff upon his return to Canada and joining the Liberal Party, one must wonder why virtually all that support has evaporated.
The biggest problem has to do with a simple fact and observation: like his predecessor, Ignatieff, too, is not leadership material. Dion and Ignatieff are textbook clichés of university professors who have no clue about or very little appreciation for the real world. In Ignatieff’s defence, though, one must admit that he has at least a few toes tickling reality here and there, while Dion had been sucked into another dimension almost the day he was born.
Another factor that is working against the Liberals is Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s rising popularity. Harper may still not have landed safely in majority government territory, but only blind and narrow-minded partisans would still be scared of him or accuse him of harbouring a hidden agenda. Partisans may also find some kind of satisfaction in pointing out Harper’s shortcomings or mistakes, but those are omissions or errors in the eye of the (biased and partisan) beholder only, and not on the basis of objective facts. Whether or not Harper has done enough on the environment, for example, is a moot point, as the “science” of “man-made global warming” is far from established – as a matter of fact, the more time passes, the more flaws are discovered in the various “scientific” theories behind “man-made” climate change, such as that global warming is not happening at all, as our planet has instead been cooling for well over decade.
In a nutshell, partisans will always find something to object to and quibble over, but for the general public Harper has grown into an acceptable and not-scary-at-all prime minister. But where does that leave Ignatieff?
As Jane Taber, an über-Liberal, recently noted, Ignatieff has cancelled all his trips and engagements, including his much-vaunted trip to China. Could it be that Ignatieff has sequestered himself at home, hoping not to see too many glimpses of the nasty real world?
Leadership is but one of the Liberals’ problems. The lack of a serious platform is another. If one were to ask any Liberal supporter about one or two defining aspects of the Liberal Party today, i.e., the ideas and policies that would or should make people vote Liberal, he or she would most likely be dumbfounded and tongue-tied. As noted by most Liberals, including columnists and pundits, the party’s cupboards of ideas are empty. Nor has the party figured out yet whether it wants to step to the right or to the left.
With Dion, at least, people knew what to expect: a dedicated and lifelong student of all things Marxist, he pursued his crazy “global warming” ideas and bundled them into a leftist Green Shift plan of wealth redistribution, which soon got the shaft not only by almost 80% of Canadian voters in the October 2008 election, but also by a majority of Liberals.
To put it more bluntly, when Dion was leader of the Liberals, Canadians knew why they did not like the man and his ideas. Now, with Ignatieff in charge, voters have simply lost interest in him and his party (hence the ever-declining polling numbers), because no matter how hard they try, they cannot say who or what Ignatieff is supposed to be. He is like the proverbial jello that many have tried, unsuccessfully, to nail to the wall. Some will make the attempt in the beginning, but when failure is virtually a given, they will abandon their jello-on-the-wall project and move on to other, more interesting, projects.
Can Ignatieff turn his fortunes around? Hardly. He himself has been unable to nail himself to the wall. To liken him to jello would actually be an exaggeration. He’s, at best, in the liquid pre-mix stage. At worst, he has not even been removed from the packaging yet. Looking at poll after poll, it is clear that Canadians have obviously reached a definitive conclusion: Do not bother to unwrap him. Instead, return him to the (Harvard) department store for a cash refund.
What is truly astounding (and also terribly frightening) is that 25% of people would still vote Liberal! Everything you just said about the Liberals is true. They currently are a directionless bunch that basically stand for absolutely nothing. Therefore, I can only conclude that 25% of Canadians are basically voting for some kind of brand loyalty, supporting a party the way a hockey fan supports his team, instead of actually voting for a plan for Canada.
Posted by: Dave Hodson | October 27, 2009 at 08:29 PM