In exciting news that I just happened upon in the paper today Liberal golden boy and HisHighness' favourite (remember him boys and girls - Liberal 4 Life), Scott Brison, who has been humming and hawing and pretending to be thinking about running for the Liberal leader's job, got nicely shafted today when a dodgy email he sent before the last election mysteriously surfaced in the newspaper.
It had something to do with high finance, and insider trading, and a scandal that broke during the election but nothing was ever proved, and all that kind of nefarious stuff.
Of course, innocent until proven guilty etc.
I love the Liberals. They think nothing of eating their own for breakfast.
I wonder who leaked it? Belinda Stronach? Stephane Dion? Michael Ignatieff? They were all in town last weekend gladhanding the local Libs at their annual convention. The leadership battle is going on for months.
I should email HisHighness.
No, I should be nice.
2 comments:
Get real, Liberals!
Harper and his New Tories are doing a wonderful job of slow-motion implosion on the ethics side, which Harper rode to victory on.
The next leader of the LPC should not have any ethics-related baggage which Harper can campaign against.
Brison will make a good target for the New Tories who successfully imported the US neocon “framing” tactic during the recent election. They framed the election as a rejection of corruption, with Harper being Mr Clean. And they won on that framing. Imagine how Harper would frame Brison …. The New Tories would hang two millstones around his neck: either he was involved in tipping a banker off about the income trust change, or he was incredibly incompetent for a senior cabinet minister in exchanging those kinds of emails with a banker. In both instances Harper will claim that it is “business as usual” with a Liberal Party which clearly has not learned anything from the spanking administered to it by the voters. Either tag probably will be enough for Harper to resurrect his Mr Clean image, and move on to a majority government.
Stronach has the weakness that she takes away from the LPC the ability to hammer Mr Clean on his MP-switcheroo tactics and arrogance in claiming imperial powers as prime minister. She also is a relative newcomer to the LPC and open to claims of Liberal-of-convenience. So she, too, is highly vulnerable to New Tory framing.
Get real for another reason: the way Harper is carrying on, another election could come well before the LPC have chosen a new leader. In that case, guess who will choose the leader he wishes to run against? You got it – Mr Clean. Imagine the framing opportunities if he can go through a list with Brison and Stronach on it and hammer away at them as his chosen targets! Be handing him a majority government on a platter.
Politics is about power, and about reality, as much as about idealism. It is foolish to start off the next campaign (against a US-style perpetual campaigning party such as the New Tories now are) by making yourself vulnerable.
Time to move on to other candidates, who come to the table with less baggage or no baggage. The next Liberal leader should be the Mr or Ms Clean, in contrast to a tarnished Harper.
Time for Brison and Stronach to gracefully exit from the leadership contest.
Don't be shouting at Liberals on my blog. This is a nice blog. Even though it is not a Liberal blog.
You and your 'framing'. Framing is just a snazzy neocon word for attacking the opposition, which has been an election tactic since the days of the Roman Senate.
Jesus Christ on a bicycle, I am sick of people who bang on about election tactics being used by the neocons and the Tories here in Canada like they were effing invented here.
Us Europeans have been doing it for millennia!
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