The PC's No Longer Represent Albertans

One only need look at this weekend's leadership review for Ed Stelmach.

Mr. Stelmach received a vote of confidence from 77.4 per cent of PC delegates eligible to cast ballots during a mandatory leadership review. The result of the secret-ballot vote was announced to the cheers of more than 1,000 people on Saturday night at the close of the party’s annual party convention in Red Deer.

Considering that less than half that number in the general population would vote for Stelmach, I'd say that 77% suggests that the PC party has officially lost touch with Alberta voters.

Stelmach is easily the weakest Premier this province has seen since Don Getty and by far the most out of touch with Albertans as a whole. (a neat trick, given how awful Getty was) That the party delegates chose to give him such a high approval rating says more about the party's sense of entitlement than anything else.

A premier who has bungled every major policy decision moment since the last election should be in deep trouble with the party apparatus. Instead, they give him a resounding vote of approval - as if the anointed one could not possibly make a mistake.

Going From Extremist To Extremist

Anybody associated with the Conservative party in Canada that thinks Jason Kenney would be a good replacement for PMSH has rocks in their head.

Giving Kenney the reins of the party would put another hyper-partisan politician at the helm. It would be only marginally less destructive than handing the party leadership to a one-issue nutcase like Ezra Levant.

But, then again, it's not like the front ranks of the CPoC are exactly filled with promising talent. Lots of Harperite yes-men, but any real talent has been shuffled to the background - usually as soon as they make one mistake that angers the theocon base.

Of course, Kenney won't do that - like Harper he has spent too many years pandering to them to dare do anything but their dogma-inspired bidding.

Ignatieff Differentiating Himself

As a political leader, Ignatieff is starting to sound very interesting. Of particular interest is this article from the Globe and Mail yesterday.

And in contrast to Mr. Harper, the new Liberal Leader, who is well-travelled and well-known in Britain and the United States, even has an advantage when it comes to Mr. Obama, who is visiting Ottawa next week.

"I just pick up the phone to some of my friends in his administration ...," Mr. Ignatieff said on CTV's Question Period earlier this year when discussing how close his ties are with the Obama White House.

Well, Harper used to brag about his connection with Bush II. I'm not sure that this means much in terms of relations with the White House under Obama, really.

Ignatieff's profile on the world stage is almost guaranteed to be better than Harper's. Harper was an unknown on the world stage until 2006, and since then he's done little more than demonstrate that he's a puppet for the neoCons in the Bush Whitehouse.

And while Mr. Ignatieff says he can pick up the phone to call the White House, his senior staffers say that his MPs can pick up the phone to call him. In fact, about 300 Liberal staffers, MPs and senators showed up to partake of Canadian wine and cheese at his office Tuesday night where he thanked them for being the "real guts of the organization."

By far, this is the more important aspect of the distinction between Ignatieff and other political leaders in Canada lately. He's clearly reaching out to the membership of his party and making himself accessible. How much that contact will influence his decisions and direction is hard to say, but from an organizational culture standpoint, it's a very interesting aspect of his leadership, and it will result in a much more cohesive party in the long run.

This is in extreme contrast to the iron-fisted, top-down style that we've seen from Harper. As I have expressed before, Harper's style has distinct limitations that we should not ignore - micromanagement doesn't scale well to large numbers of issues; and there have long been signs of various factions within the Conservatives squirming to make themselves heard. This is not exactly unifying the Conservative party.

Perhaps most telling is the Conservative party's lack of reaction to Ignatieff:

"Canadians are concerned about the economy right now, they don't want to see politicians playing political games at the moment," the Prime Minister's communications director, Kory Teneycke, said, explaining why they haven't done to Mr. Ignatieff what they did to Mr. Dion. "But we're not focused on politics right now. We're not planning to go to a campaign right now."

I'd have to suspect that it also boils down to the fact that Ignatieff has already shown that he will not be bullied about by Mr. Harper's tactics. That simply doesn't give the Con$ the kind of easy target that Dion made.

Ignatieff's much stronger presentation in the House of Commons also flies in the face of the kind of slime throwing that the standard attack ad tactic relies on, and I think people are picking up on that as well. (Not to mention the stunning crash of Rovian style campaigning in the United States has got to have made the Con$ a whole bunch more cautious)

Dion's Goose Is Cooked

Regardless of how you feel about Stephane Dion, his political career is over. Politics is a harsh game, and it doesn't give people many 'do over' opportunities - especially not those who step into the leadership of their party.

Two things in today's Globe and Mail are particularly interesting:

Dion ignored advisers' advice, preferring to act as 'a lone wolf'

So it was a combination of factors that cost the Liberals so dearly: Mr. Dion was not connecting with voters and his Green Shift was unpopular.

“The Green Shift was a millstone around his neck,” the Dion adviser says.

In fact, he had been counselled in the spring by his senior advisers, including campaign manager Gordon Ashworth, not to use it as a major election piece.

That's consistent with Dion's background. He's an academic - used to charting his own path and dragging a handful of promising grad students along for the ride. That's quite different from a political party on the national stage - a place where even if the party leader is a strong personality, a degree of humility needs to be applied within the party - recognizing that the party structure exists to put people around the leader who can help fill in the blanks - the leader is not all-knowing (in spite of Harper's apparent beliefs)

The second piece of some interest is titled "Key Liberals send out feelers for Dion's job".

Meanwhile, people close to MPs Michael Ignatieff, Bob Rae, Gerard Kennedy and Dominic LeBlanc, former deputy prime minister John Manley and former New Brunswick premier Frank McKenna were contacting influential party members to test the waters.

There's only two in that list that I would consider worth the time - Kennedy and Ignatieff. Not because I necessarily agree with either of them or necessarily like them, but rather I'm looking at their ability to stand 'toe to toe' with Harper and slap him about when he starts playing thug.

If the Liberal party is smart about this, they'll make the leadership race to replace Dion brief - 3 months at the outside - and pick a sitting MP - someone who, on day 1 can, and will, stand up in the House of Commons and take Harper to task - and stick to it.