In today's Globe & Mail Rex Murphy highlights some matters which have caused several Liberal bloggers and many Liberal supporters concern over the drifting of the Liberal Party under Ignatieff.
He summarizes his views as follows:
"There is something, however, in the Liberals' approach that suggests that, maybe from their long habit of being in power, they expect it will be theirs again simply by default. Maybe that's why Mr. Ignatieff has had, in terms of visibility and profile, so relaxed and ruminative a summer. Maybe he or his party don't think much work is required, that they also win who only sit and wait. This is an error."
Other points he makes are:
"Repaired party. Brand-new leader. Time of change. The Liberals have a perfect recipe. Why then are they, if only by a cat's whisker, trailing the Conservatives? Why has Mr. Ignatieff been so low-key, almost withdrawn from the public scene? Where is the charge and élan we should expect to see in a political party that has, finally, the leader to unite them and expel the frictions and factions of the past?
By all logical understanding, the Liberals shouldn't be stalled; they should be in upward flight. They are not. Have they been handicapped by Mr. Ignatieff's strange reticence on policy? I call it strange only because articulation, the ability to present and argue, is, of all his many virtues, surely the primary one."
And:
"It follows that to crawl out of their near equivalence with the Conservatives, they and their leader must build on something more than the perceived discontent with the policies or manner of Mr. Harper. But, if this summer, so far, is anything to go by, they evidently believe they have merely to wait for the fruit to fall. That is a delusion."
Food for thought, eh?
