Follow The Leader

The Liberal Leadership race is getting interesting before it begins, with Stephane Dion declaring French a must, Bob Rae tilting the race leftward and Paul Martin's name being bandied about.

Back on February 3rd, I suggested French Proficiency would be a requirement for Liberal leader.

This Party is not going to elect a unilingual English leader. They would elect Lucien Bouchard before they would go with someone who answers a simple French question with "En Anglais, sil vous plait?"

This actually lead to my first (and only) MSM link, when Katherine Fletcher from the Calgary Herald linked to the above article. That was then. Today, Stephane Dion said it would be "unthinkable" to elect a leader without French:

Can you imagine that at the next debate in French among the leaders in the election campaign the Liberal leader will not be there, while the Bloc, the Conservatives and the NDP will be there?" Mr. Dion asked during an interview. "This is unthinkable."

Unthinkable, untenable and highly unlikely. But if your excluding Mlle. Stronach and M. Brison from the race, who then? How about Paul Martin? Yes, that Paul Martin:

OTTAWA -- A small group of Quebec Liberals is trying to get former prime minister Paul Martin to take another run at the party's top job.

And why would our man run again, for the job that is still technically his?

"With all due respect for potential candidates, it remains that the best one is the MP for LaSalle-Emard, the Right Honourable Paul Martin,'' wrote Sylvestre, who openly called for then-prime minister Jean Chretien's resignation in 2000.

The guy who took them from majority to minority to opposition in 2 short years (2 years 2 months, I believe) is the best potential candidate? The guy who, last we saw him was doing his best Homer Stokes impersonation, yelling "Is you is, or is you ain't, my constituency?" at his campaign stops? Are we beginning to fathom yet how bad things are in Liberal land?

But who are these other potential candidates? There are, as far as I can see, four serious candidates at this time - Belinda Stronach, Scott Brison, Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae. Not one of them was a Liberal when Paul Martin took over the leadership of the party. And lets face it Stephane Dion is right, without French you don't stand a chance. Add in that Scott Brison has been linked to the income trust scandal, and he is dead in the water. Back on February 3rd, I stated that Belinda's response to a question in French "En Anglais, sil vous plait" pretty much sums up what I think of her chances: "No, there's not much point really..."

That leaves Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae. Ignatieff has the problem that he has been labeled the 'next Trudeau.' How can anyone live up to that label inside the Liberal party. Add to that he is a relative unknown, and completely untested , and I think he won't win.

Which brings us to Bob Rae. Bob wants to unite the left, which is remarkable because he left it in tatters here in Ontario ten years ago. The NDP and the unions still do not trust each other after what Bob Rae did to them back in the early 90's. And he simply cannot win in Ontario.

I was talking to my mother-in-law today who likes Bob Rae, voted NDP, often votes Liberal, and she agreed, he wouldn't get a quorum of votes in Ontario. When North America was recovering from the recession in the early 90's, it was getting worse in Ontario. Soft Liberal Ontario voted for possibly the farthest right politician to hold office in Canada in 30 years after Bob Rae.

There used to be a joke you would hear in the early 90's "I can't wait until this recession is over so I can start hating my job again." People would say it when you asked how they were. You'd hear it at the convenience store, instead of complaining about the weather, Ontarians took to complaining about the economy. That is the baggage Bob Rae is carrying around.

So maybe it's true, maybe Paul Martin is the best of the potential candidates. Not a thought that can make too many Liberal's happy I would think.

From At Home in Hespeler