Modeling Journey

Liberals, he said, have to fight back by rebuilding the party, root and branch, and that will take time. While he did not express a preference for any precise date, Mr. Rae urged delegates to defer a leadership vote and give the party time pull itself up off the mat.

This is the way that  Allan Gregg describes the impact of the unfavourability ratings of Michael Ignatieff as compared to Harper and Layton (Ignatieff 52% unfavourable, 26% favourable, result negative 26%; Harper 51% unfavourable, 42% favourable, result negative 9%; Layton 46% favourable, 36% unfavourable, result positive 10%):

Harris-Decima chairman Allan Gregg said Ignatieff's continuing poor leadership numbers help explain why Harper's Conservatives have managed to maintain their lead in the overall polls despite recent controversies over disgraced cabinet minister Helena Guergis, the treatment of Afghan detainees and abortion policy.

Indeed, Harris-Decima found national support levels essentially unchanged, with the Tories at 32 per cent, the Liberals at 28, the NDP at 17 and the Greens at 11.

Polls for the past few months have been lamentable for the Liberal Party, which seems stuck under Ignatieff in the Dion-quadrant (about 25% or so). Voters have not bought into the Liberal Party, its leader (whose positive numbers are extraordinarily low), Liberal tactics in Parliament, and Liberal statements out of Parliament.

Having lead his party during the past two years or so in striving mightily to score debater's points rather than in telling voters why they should elect a Liberal government, Michael Ignatieff is now reaping his just reward.

The latest Harris-Decima poll is bad news for the Liberal Party of Canada.

It is terrible news for the Liberal leader.
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We need look no further than the Greenies and the Dippers, according to Bob Plamondon in today's Globe & Mail:

Whither Michael Ignatieff? Other than inheriting the legacy of Canada's natural governing party, he doesn't have much of a coalition left to lead. The Liberals have been crowded out of the centre by the Tories, and the NDP and the Greens are eating his lunch on the left.

A man who is deft with words has just formulated a very, very effective framing of the political landscape of Canada, using just 5 words: national left-of-Harper parties.

Take some time to consider this observation. Not only does it avoid any use of the rather useless categorization of Left, Right and Centre, it also draws immediate attention to the essential outstanding feature of our political contour – the dominance of Stephen Harper over all the landscape.

And it does more. By grouping the NDP and Liberal Party into one portion of our political space (left-of-Harper), his delineation forces us to focus on the elements which unite the Dippers and Liberals rather than divide them.
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Finally, a leading Liberal has stepped forward and told the truth about the emperor who is wearing no clothes. Kennedy has boldly spoken out about the need to redress the fiscal misake made by the ideologically-driven Harper:

For months, Liberals have recoiled at any talk of raising the GST. But a senior Liberal MP says the idea needs to be on the table as the party crafts its long-term plan to balance the country's books.

Toronto MP Gerard Kennedy, the party's infrastructure critic, says he's speaking for himself - the Liberal leadership want nothing to do with his remarks.

The Cat has puzzled over exactly what model of politicking the Liberal Party seems to have adopted over the past year or so, and after delving into the history of the past century or so, has concluded that the model now being used by the LPC is that of an aristocratic government-in-exile.

The analogue that seems to resonate the most is that of the aged aristocrats who fled from the bloodthirsty Red Russians during the Russian Revolution. These people ended up sprinkled amongst various capital cities in Europe, where they busied themselves forming committees for the restoration of the monarch and the old order in Mother Russia.

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Two weeks before he was asked to join Michael Ignatieff's team, pollster Donolo had this to say about the tactics of the Liberal Party:

"He needs to find issues that have sharp edges to them and that serve as really sharp wedges between him and the government. And he needs riskier events to do that."

The Cat agrees with that advice, and offers a sharp edge for the Liberal leader and his new Chief of Staff to consider.
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Here is one problem for Michael Ignatieff to mull over: only one in four of voters 45 years old or older favour the Liberals, while almost half prefer the Tories. The Conservatives have walloped the Liberals by opening up a huge gap in potential support amongst the older voters.

The EKOS poll of October 15, 2009 shows that amongst those 65 and over, a startling 50.3% favoured the Conservatives, compared to only 27.7% for the Liberals. Amongst the 45 to 64 year old group, the Tories lead with 44.5% compared to the Liberals' 25.1%.

But do not abandon hope, All Ye Liberals!

There is a chance for the Liberals to present a policy to the voters which could dramatically change the relative support of the two national parties by older Canadians.

That opportunity arises from a simple fact: millions of Canadians do not have any or adequate pensions, other than the pitifully small CPP and OAS.

Today's Globe & Mail introduces a week long series dealing with the appalling state of the nation's pensions, and the reluctance of federal and provincial governments to publicly recognize the problem, and to protect older Canadians.

This gives us the chance to forge policies which promise all Canadian seniors a decent life after retirement. This will require the Liberal Party to be bold and innovative, but by staking out the territory of pension reform, the party could win over a big chunk of the senior vote (remember, more seniors actually vote in elections, far more than other age groups do), and at the same time fill a vacuum in our political space left by the timorous right wing Harper minority government, and the equally fearful provincial governments.

How big is the problem?

Consider these facts:

"Another set of poorer Canadians should never have had the illusion of security in the first place. A large proportion of workers - 44 per cent, or eight million Canadians - have neither an RRSP nor an employer-based registered pension plan. A growing proportion is self-employed. They will depend on the Canada and Quebec Pension Plans and government backstops like Old Age Security. These provide basic assistance, but little more. The maximum CPP monthly payment for a 65-year-old is $908.75. Unless blessed with other assets, a senior who relies on the public system alone lives a life of poverty."

Ignatieff can start by reading the G&M editorial, which contains these suggestions:

"With so many Canadians at personal financial risk, a new approach is needed. Regulators must be more active in monitoring plans between official evaluations. Governments should facilitate the creation of multi-employer pension plans, whose scale can help spread risk and attract workers from smaller workplaces; new plans could get tax credits to encourage their growth. Commitments inherent in existing defined-benefit plans should be legislatively enshrined, so that they cannot be lost in bankruptcy or squandered when good times make plan administrators succumb to the temptation to reduce incoming payments. The principle, outlined by University of Toronto professor Keith Ambachtsheer in an unpublished paper, is that "accruing pension promises must be fully costed and fully funded at all times."

But employers do not need to wait for the government's hand. They can ensure their plans are better funded by setting higher default contribution rates from employees. Other employers can facilitate payroll deductions to the savings account of the employee's choice. As long as these schemes, or "nudges," as described by the economists Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler, still leave the ultimate choice on whether to participate in the hands of individual workers, they should be pursued widely. And employers must see the larger public benefits that come with their sponsorship of pensions."

For starters, the Liberal Party should consider making it obligatory for each and every employed or self-employed Canadian to make larger contributions to a revised pension plan, with contributions to the pension plan from both the employer and the federal government. Then the LPC can implement some of the other recommendations of the G&M.

But we should be bold, and innovative, and by so doing, differentiate ourselves from the Harper Tories, who have proven themselves incompetent and untrustworthy in many things, including protecting senior Canadians.

Let us entrench the right of our senior citizens to a decent standard of living after their retirement in our laws, and take steps to make that happen.

In an email to Liberals, Ignatieff summarizes the thrust of the new clean energy commitment of the party as follows:

"It starts with the most significant national investment in clean energy jobs this country has ever seen, including:

 Effective incentives that encourage new renewable power projects

 Landmark investments in clean energy infrastructure, especially smart grids

 Expanded incentives for wave, tidal, geothermal, biomass, and other renewable technologies

 Canadian proposals for a continental cap-and-trade system, with hard caps, so we’re driving the agenda not just reacting to Washington

 Aggressive investment in emerging technologies that clean our fossil fuels, such as carbon capture and sequestration

 Mandatory clean energy standards across the federal government (so that government vehicles will be cleaner, government buildings will be energy-efficient, and telecommuting is introduced into our public service to keep cars off the road)

 Above all, a relentless commitment to power Canada on clean energy."

This is a welcome policy by our future government, and drags Canada into the forefront of the fight against global heating, instead of surreptiously trying to sabotage world wide efforts as the Tory government appears to have been doing.

It is important to note that this policy commitment achieves two important objectives: it positions our country to take a leading role in the fight to save our planet, and it will help create new jobs for Canadians to replace the hollowing out of our industrial base which has taken place over the past quarter of a century. Many of these new jobs will be in Canada, and a big whack of the products and services we will develop in this new clean energy industry will bolster our exports, creating more wealth for our country.

If we tackle this new clean energy commitment in the right way, it will help Canada's moral authority in the world, a coinage seriously debased by the Luddism of the current Tory government under Harper's leadership. The old Tory party had a much wider view of Canada's role in the leading the world on to better things; under Harper's watch this has been changed to one of obstruction, denial of facts, and sabotage.

Harper and his Luddites squandered an opportunity to enter this new clean energy industry by targeting an adequate portion of the stimulus package to this industry. Now it is up to the next Liberal government to clean up this Tory mess.

Ignatieff's full speech can be found here.

Another hat tip to the Liberal Party!

Today's editorial in The Toronto Star should be must reading for Ignatieff, his advisors, and all Liberal MPs:

"How did it come to this? Over the summer, Ignatieff deemed it impolitic to talk policy lest he make himself a target; he succeeded only in making himself invisible. By blatantly playing politics to trigger an election, the Liberals have only alienated voters. Bereft of policy, he has become an even bigger target for critics.
It's not that Canadians think Ignatieff is without substance. But they see someone putting style ahead of substance, tactics ahead of policy.

It is time for Ignatieff to change the channel: to be himself, and let the Liberal party be itself.

Ignatieff's biggest blunder was to put policy on the back burner. He delayed a thinkers' conference that had originally been promised for this fall. Now, it has been postponed until next year, leaving policy-making on hold and depriving the party of fresh ideas. Remarkably, there are still no firm dates for this event.
Recently, Ignatieff has given a series of speeches, notably on foreign policy and the economy. While welcome, they amount to restatements of past policies and general goals, not a bold vision that will resonate with voters and show the Liberals are serious about governing.

With his support eroding, Ignatieff has nothing to lose – and everything to gain – by going back to basics and rebuilding the party's platform. For there are major opportunities for the party to reinvent itself…

So far, the Liberals are offering peek-a-boo policy-making on the fly, not the adult conversation Canadians deserve. A thinkers' conference is no panacea, but it is an opportunity for renewal – and a way of showing Canadians the Liberals are serious about policy-making, not merely politicking."

And in today's Globe & Mail Simpson offers some trenchant advice:

"Today's Liberal Party has forgotten, or is afraid to promote, what it used to stand for: a strong central government, an activist state, an engaged and creative foreign policy and, more recently, balanced budgets and debt reduction.
Unless the party reconnects with what once made it compelling for so many, although repellent to others, it doesn't much matter who the leader is."

The Cat wholeheartedly supports both pieces of advice.

This short article by Clyde Prestowitz bears repeating:

"For years Larry Summers and I had a running argument over industrial policy.

As a mainstream economist in good standing, he, of course argued that governments can't pick winners and losers and that even if it could, special interests would inevitably capture the process and distort it. Under no circumstances, he emphasized, should America have an industrial policy.

My view was that as an industrial nation we would inevitably make decisions that involved picking winners and losers. Breaking up AT&T, standards setting by the FCC or FDA, R&D spending by N.I.H, etc. are all examples of such decisions. The only question was and is whether those decisions would be guided by some overall productivity optimizing criteria or by chance or, more likely, the very special interests Larry feared.

Well, now that the U.S. government owns the banks, insurance, and auto companies with Larry as the chief winner and loser picker, that whole discussion has become moot.

But now that we are picking winners and losers, the question of how we are doing it has become very important. So far, the answer is "not very well."

While pouring big bucks into GM and Chrysler to keep them alive, the administration has largely ignored one of the biggest factors making them uncompetitive - the exchange rate. The strong dollar and the policies of China, Japan, Korea and others to undervalue their currencies tend to undercut the rescue effort. Industrial policy will only work if it is a complete policy, and a complete policy in this case must be one that deals with the exchange rate question.

More important, however, is the question not only of saving Detroit, but more broadly, of revitalizing the whole U.S. productive base. To avoid a repeat of the experience of the past two years, we must come out of this crisis with a vastly reduced trade deficit. But to do that, we must begin to produce more of what we consume, which is, after all, what Obama has been talking about when he discusses creating green and other kinds of jobs. But the problem is that right now, the greener we get, the more we import because we don't make most of the stuff we would need to install.

Take batteries for instance. Electric cars, lawn mowers, and other devices need batteries. With a few small exceptions, U.S. companies don't make batteries. They also don't make windmill blades and turbines. They also don't make solar cells or concentrators.

Even if GM and Chrysler survive in some reduced form, a lot of workers are going to lose their jobs as a lot of factories are shut down. A sensible industrial policy would be looking at ways to replace those auto factories with battery, windmill, and solar cell plants. The new Commerce Secretary ought to be talking to Korean battery makers, Danish windmill producers, and Japanese photovoltaic cell manufacturers about why they should be investing in the U.S. and why they should be doing joint ventures with American companies. He should have some financial investment incentives to use to entice these companies to U.S. shores.

At the same time he should be creating government-industry consortia to promote development of these technologies in the United States. Use the Sematech consortium that was set up in the late 1980s to meet Japanese competition in semiconductors as a model. He should also be working with State governors to see to it that new factories are located so as to replace old ones and to take advantage of concentrations of worker skills.

In short, America needs a real industrial renaissance policy, not just a save GM and Chrysler policy."

The same applies to Canada, and the need for an industrial renaissance policy here is yet another reason why we need to replace the current minority government (which is ideologically opposed to using the power and influence of the federal government of Canada for such things) with a government prepared to design and implement such a policy.

Known for her keen insight into Quebec, and her reasoned analysis of the realities of politics, Chantal Herbert now weighs in with an explanation of how a deal between the NDP and the LPC could put Michael Ignatieff into the prime minister's post in the near future:

"For those reasons, the Conservatives may need to do more than win the most seats in the next election to be certain to have a third shot at governing Canada for any length of time.

Coming first seat-wise will likely not do the job if the Liberals turn out to be more competitive than last fall.

In a published interview in Le Devoir earlier this week, Michael Ignatieff once again ruled out another Liberal attempt at crafting a governing coalition with the NDP in the next Parliament. But he also left the door open to other undefined "arrangements."

One obvious possibility would be a two-year governing agreement, copied on the Ontario deal David Peterson struck with Bob Rae's NDP in the mid-1980s. Peterson's Liberals were four seats behind the then-ruling Progressive Conservatives on election night. Negotiating the policy parameters of a Liberal mandate with the NDP allowed them to vault over the official winners and form a government that could count on the daily support of the New Democrat opposition for its survival.
Instead of resigning on election night in 2006, Paul Martin could have made overtures to Layton to try to stay in power. With the guaranteed support of the 29 New Democrats, he could have attempted to run Parliament with 103 Liberal MPs to the Conservatives' 124.

Back then, though, the Bloc would almost certainly have vetoed the arrangement. Quebec had just massively censured the Liberals for the sponsorship scandal. It would have been politically unthinkable for Duceppe to help them cling to power at Harper's expense.

Since then, the Quebec climate has changed for the worse for the Conservatives.

Duceppe's decision to formally support a Liberal-NDP coalition led by Stéphane Dion last fall met with widespread approval in Quebec. The concept remains popular to this day. At this juncture, more than 80 per cent of Quebecers prefer parties other than the Conservatives. Ignatieff is seen as a better potential prime minister by a ratio of 2 to 1 (followed by Layton.)

In the probable scenario of another four-way split in the House of Commons, winning 100 seats in the next election could be enough to put the Liberals within reach of power."

Of course, for this to happen, the Liberals would need to table a motion of no confidence in the Harper government later this year …

Instead of reluctantly facing up the fact of global warming, this is the kind of bold, sharp-edged, and innovative policy which I would expect my Canadian government to be offering:

"Germany launched a campaign Wednesday to put 1 million electric cars on the road by 2020, making battery research a priority as it tries to position the country as a market leader.

The program, which draws on euro500 million ($705 million) set aside in an economic stimulus package earlier this year but leaves many financing details up to the next government, drew criticism for being too vague.

"It is our aim to make Germany into the market leader for electric mobility," Economy Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg said after the Cabinet approved the plan.
He said the 1 million target by 2020 "is an ambitious aim, but one that we believe can be realized." Germany had more than 41 million cars on the road at the beginning of this year — only 1,452 of them electric cars."

Lead from the front, Canada; establish our country on the cutting edge of climate technology, and create high paying manufacturing and service jobs right here in our provinces.

Instead of wringing your hands, MPs, let's see some imagination.

Let's make sure that over the next fifty years, Canada establishes itself as an industrial leader.

We can do it.
But can our representatives in Parliament?

Let's hope that Gerard Kennedy manages to persuade a majority of the caucus to go along with his proposed sharper focus for stimulus infrastructure spending.

Kennedy is recommending to his fellow Liberals the targeting of two major objectives with infrastructure spending, together with tighter control and easier access by municipalities:

"While collecting his data, Kennedy has been thinking about what kind of infrastructure policy the Liberals should take into the next election.

He can't speak in specifics because he hasn't presented his proposals to the party, but he outlined some of his priorities in an interview last week.

He believes federal infrastructure funding should serve two primary purposes: to make Canada's cities more sustainable and to renew the quality of life in northern and remote communities.

This would make Ottawa less open to proposals to widen highways and accelerate road-building in urban areas and more open to proposals to find new uses for public buildings in towns struggling with depopulation.

He thinks the gas tax fund, through which Ottawa transfers a portion of its gasoline tax revenue to the municipalities, should be the principal vehicle for distributing infrastructure money.

The Conservatives did add $1 billion to the fund in January's budget, but Kennedy would like to have seen most of Ottawa's infrastructure funding delivered that way. As well as being more efficient, he points out, gas tax transfers allow municipalities to use federal money intelligently, rather than coming up with hasty proposals to take advantage of on-again, off-again infrastructure programs.

He would like to break the link between infrastructure spending and political pork barrelling.

It is hard to blame Canadians for being cynical, Kennedy admits. For generations, politicians have used capital projects to reward their friends and pay back voters who supported them. "We need to convince Canadians we can use their money to make their lives better.""

Now if the Coalition was in power, the infrastructure stimulus would have been far more tightly focused, and better administered.

Compare Kennedy's targets to the wasteful home renovation stimulus funds which the Harper crew came up with.

Harper and his Tories are aiming at getting personal political bang for the money spent, and not at making taxpayer's hard earned money being well spent on meaningful projects, such as the two outlined by Kennedy in his initial plans.

One of the major mysteries of Canadian politics in 2009 is how the leader of a minority government during a severe recession (which the government failed to anticipate, misgauged its severity, and was very slow to respond to), and of a right wing party (impoverished with respect to any major policy initiatives and content to bask in the glory of being the government), should be able to dictate to the major opposition party how that party should conduct its affairs.

Take this for example:

"Some of Mr. Ignatieff's own advisers admit he has yet to offer a clear, defined political identity to grab them.

“They don't know who this guy is, and what he stands for,” said one, who only spoke on the condition that he not be named.

Most Liberals are wary of filling the gap by putting out detailed policy platforms, fearing it will make the same kind of target that Mr. Dion's Green Shift plan did, when it was released months before the campaign.

But they also fear Mr. Ignatieff hasn't given tentative voters any sense of his identity, and how it differs from Mr. Harper's."

Let's pay particular attention to these words (very similar to the utterances of many an unnamed 'Liberal advisor' over the past few months, and of many a Liberal blogger): "fearing it will make the same kind of target that Mr. Dion's Green Shift plan did."

Why not announce to voters what your party stands for? Because you fear that Stephen Harper will trash your policy?

Take a step back and ask yourself this simple question: What kind of a message does this political cowardice spell out to voters?

And ask yourself if you can think of any leader of any significant party in the Western nations who would harbour the same fears and decline to let their voters know what they and their party stands for?

Could you imagine De Gaulle giving this as a reason for not having a policy laid before voters? Or Tony Blair? Or Pierre Elliot Trudeau? Or Winston Churchill?

Perhaps the Iron Lady might have hidden her policies out of fear? Not so: Maggie Thatcher never shirked from letting voters know at all times what she stood for.

How about Ronald Reagan? Do you seriously think that 'The Great Communicator' would shelter in fear of the Democrats and never reveal his policies until the very last minute?

Take President Obama. Did he fear the Republicans so much that he hid his policies from them during the many years of campaigning prior to the presidential election?

One cannot even think that the failed president, Gorge W. Bush, would have so much fear of the ability of his opponents to trash his policies that he would keep them hidden until the very last minute.

So what does this craven excuse for not providing Canadians with a set of policies to help them decide whether to support the Liberals rather than the Tories or the Dippers or the Greens or the Bloc, tell us about the current leadership of the Liberal Party?

That Harper is deciding for them when they should announce their policies?

That they fear their policies will be such that Harper will be able to demolish them if they give him enough time?

That they won't be able to defend their policies against the attacks of the other parties?

Or does it also tell us that these leaders believe that voters should simply vote Liberal by default: that the Liberal Party should become the government simply because we exist? A type of automatic Liberal-by-default reaction which will sweep us to power?

Perhaps such an attitude, and the resultant lack of any reasons for voters to support the Liberal Party, lies behind the following worrying negative trend in the party's traditional edge amongst certain segments of the electorate:

"Mr. Ignatieff has returned the party's traditional core support levels – and revived it in Quebec – but the Strategic Counsel poll found they have lost the traditional edge among women, younger voters, and Canadians who live in cities and large towns, crucial to their hopes of victory. The NDP vote has remained firm."

Wouldn't it be nice if the current Liberal Party leadership team had the courage of their convictions, and gave voters reasons for selecting our party over all the others?

The answer is not clear, according to the Strategic Counsel pollster:

"Some of Mr. Ignatieff's own advisers admit he has yet to offer a clear, defined political identity to grab them.

“They don't know who this guy is, and what he stands for,” said one, who only spoke on the condition that he not be named.

Most Liberals are wary of filling the gap by putting out detailed policy platforms, fearing it will make the same kind of target that Mr. Dion's Green Shift plan did, when it was released months before the campaign.

But they also fear Mr. Ignatieff hasn't given tentative voters any sense of his identity, and how it differs from Mr. Harper's.

One Liberal strategist noted that Jean Chrétien's winning 1993 campaign included policy details, but what mattered was the core message that he stood for jobs and growth.

“It was, ‘Buy me, and this is what you get. Jobs and growth,' ” the strategist said. “If you buy Liberal now, what do you get?”

Mr. Harper's Conservatives, under minority-Parliament pressure, have unveiled massive stimulus-spending packages, at the Liberals' insistence.

It has left Liberals searching for something to differentiate them."

And this just a few months before a possible election?

It gets worse:

"Mr. Ignatieff has returned the party's traditional core support levels – and revived it in Quebec – but the Strategic Counsel poll found they have lost the traditional edge among women, younger voters, and Canadians who live in cities and large towns, crucial to their hopes of victory. The NDP vote has remained firm.
“The Liberals have plateaued,” said The Strategic Counsel's Peter Donolo.
“The constituency that Ignatieff needs to rebuild is primarily more female, more urban, younger, centre and NDP voters.”

Time to wake up and smell the coffee, Liberals!

The latest (July 30) Angus Reid poll has details on the momentum of the three leaders:

"Despite the increase in Grit support, the momentum numbers for Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff continue to worsen. His momentum score of -18 is five points worse than it was two weeks ago (13% say their opinion of Ignatieff has improved in the last month, while 31% say it has gotten worse).

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s momentum score remained essentially unchanged from the last poll at -28 (one point worse from -27). That the momentum scores of the two leaders are so close represents a huge shift in political perceptions from as recently as February, when Ignatieff had a positive score of +7 compared to Harper’s -35.

New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Jack Layton stands at -15 (an improvement of two points from two weeks ago)."

Perhaps it is time for the Liberal Party to start giving voters some reasons for actually thinking that Michael Ignatieff might be a better leader than the rather shopworn-but-remarkably-resilient Harper?

Liberals should read the following extract from Lawrence Martin's column in today's Globe & Mail. And then re-read it. And then read his whole article.

Why?

Because Ignatieff and his nameless advisors are betting the party on a wimpish, 'fight the last war' strategy, which is absolutely doomed to fail.

Martin writes:

"But if the Liberals don't change tack now, if they continue to drift, what position will they be in to go to the polls at that time? They would have only a short five-week campaign to turn things around. No big deal, said Liberals at party central. “In politics, things change real fast.”

With their roll-no-dice strategy, they better hope so."

Other points that Martin makes are equally valid, and Liberals concerned about the wallowing leadership of their party should now start asking pointed questions of all leaders in the party before it is too late.

To expect these advisors, who have shown such lamentable talent in the past year or so, to suddenly best Harper's Tories in a short election campaign, at a time most likely chosen by Harper, and with Harper's Tories given virtually free rein to capture the media's attention in the months leading up to the next election, is to court disaster.

The Liberals should become the next government, given the sad state of the economy, the inaction of the Tories, and the many missteps Harper has made, but this lemming-like strategy of these 'advisors' will ensure that Harper gets back into power as a minority government.