Angry in the Great White North

Back in January, I wrote that the Liberal Party faced a serious problem in the aftermath of Stephane Dion's disastrous leadership and the coup mounted by Michael Ignatieff to take over the leadership of the Liberal Party without a vote.

The problem was the fury of Canada's Left, both within the Liberal Party and those outside of it, which had come so tantalizingly close to achieving power, only to see it all torn away from them:

But I'm more interested in the internal stresses building up in the Liberal Party.  Under Stephane Dion, the Liberal Party left wing was ascendant.  Left-wing Liberals must have thought it was only a matter of time before they owned the party.

So much for that, eh?

Are these Liberals going to allow themselves to be marginalized quietly?  I don't think so, and that's mostly because of that coalition.  These Liberals came so close, and now Ignatieff is throwing it all away talking like, well, a Conservative.

How is Michael Ignatieff going to marginalize these Liberals?  And if he tries to, can the party contain the pressure that builds up until one side or the other emerges victorious, or will the party explode before that happens?

Think about it.  Until Stephane Dion accidently won the leadership of the Liberal Party, Canada's Left parked their votes with the NDP and the Green Party.  In other words, useless parties that would achieve nothing.  Now you might be thinking that the Liberal Party is part of that Left side of the spectrum, but spend a little bit of time at rabble.ca and you will see that true Leftists think of the Liberal Party as a right-wing fascist clone of the fascist Conservative Party and their fascist agenda of fascist blah, blah, blah.

The point is that the Liberal Party is not perceived as truly Left.  But then the miracle of Stephane Dion happened.  Suddenly the Left had gotten control of one of the two major political parties.  Stephane Dion was the perfect leader.  He is a well-educated idiot, the sort of weak and pliable intellectual who will sign on to whatever agenda is put in front of him as long as he thinks it will win him friends among so-called progressives.

Remember the cringe-worthy decision to not run a Liberal candidate against Green Party leader Elizabeth May?  You could almost sense Dion's desperation to have Green Party supporters like him.

So Stephane Dion did what Leftists told him the ought to do -- propose solving the world's problems through punitive taxation.

The result was Stephane Dion's Green Shift policy.  An election was fought on the idea, and the Liberal Party went down in flames.  Why?  Because most Canadians, including those who vote Liberal, could tell this was a stupid idea (taxes as a solution) dreamed up by stupid people (Marxist environmentalists) who believed in stupid things (like global warming).  These traditional Liberals didn't vote for a Liberal Party suffering from a major case of the stupids, and the Liberal Party plowed into the side of the electoral mountain.

That disappointed the Leftists, but it didn't anger them.  What angered them was how Michael Ignatieff abandoned the Coalition.   Imagine the opportunity that presented itself.  After the election, the Liberals and the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois agreed to form a coalition to replace the Conservatives.  It was a chance for Canada's Left to take over the country without actually having to win an election, and a chance to impose a policy on Canadians that Canadians had already been rejected in a national vote.  And even better, that illegitimate government would be led by the well-educated idiot Stephane Dion!

But Stephane Dion's incompetence was no match for Stephen Harper's cleverness, and the Coalition was run off into the ditch.  Stephane Dion was left in that ditch by the Liberal Party tired of looking stupid all the time.  Instead, the Liberal Party arranged to have crypto-conservative Michael Ignatieff installed as leader, without going to the membership for a vote.  Michael Ignatieff's first move was to kill the Coalition even as Canada's Left tried mightily to get it running again.

And that was it.  Canada's Left had gotten this close to the brass ring.  It would be one thing to lose an election, but to actually be a step away from taking power, and still come up empty?

Canada's Left was furious.  And in January, I wrote that for the Liberal Party, this would be a serious problem.  Michael Ignatieff's conservative-flavoured Liberal Party would be forced to marginalize these Leftists, if not eject them altogether, if just to keep them from creating further mischief.  That would have worked if the Liberals could at the same time entice an even greater number of Conservative supporters to their side, but Michael Ignatieff failed to do this, and so the Liberal Party has been plummeting in the polls.

It is against this backdrop that Janine Krieber's letter was written:

A scathing message attacking Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff appeared today on the Facebook site belonging to Janine Krieber - the wife of Mr. Ignatieff's predecessor, Stephane Dion.

The message, a copy of which was obtained by The Globe, says the party "is falling apart, and will not recover." It also blames "the Toronto elites" for being out of tune, arrogant and unrealistic.

Mr. Ignatieff's leadership is openly questioned, as is his decision to shun the coalition deal struck by Mr. Dion, NDP Leader Jack Layton and Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe.

"The time for choices is now," the message says.

This isn't a reaction to Michael Ignatieff in particular, nor is it simply an angry wife defending her ill-treated husband.  This letter gives voice to what I said has been bubbling under the surface since last January.  Canada's Left is hopping mad.  Michael Ignatieff has done nothing to mollify them, and if anything, has exacerbated the problem (voting for the crime bill, allowing a free vote on the gun registry, and so on). 

Being upset with the Liberal Party is nothing new for Canada's Left, but what is different now is (1) Canada's Left is way past upset with the Liberal Party led by the usurper Ignatieff who is personally responsible for wrecking their plans, and (2) the Liberals are weak and vulnerable.

So weak, indeed, that the thinking now is that the Liberals will not force an election for a year or more -- and that message is coming from within the Liberal Party!

[Incoming Chief of Staff Peter Donolo] has squelched all election speculation, predicting to Liberals there'll be no national vote for at least seven months and possibly more than a year.

He's told the election-readiness team to stand down, sending war room head Warren Kinsella, who had been coming to Ottawa several days a week helping to plot question period attack strategy, back to Toronto for the time being. Nine junior staff members in the leader's office, most hired in anticipation of an election, have been let go.

Shutting down the campaign team was both logical and a financial necessity. Insiders say donations to the party, after getting off to a good start in the first half of the year, have tailed off dramatically this fall.

So now the Conservatives will have free rein to run the country for quote some time, and Canada's Left has become unhinged, knowing that they could have prevented this from happening by usurping the government in January -- if it weren't for Michael Ignatieff!

Indeed, Janine Krieber's letter reads like it was written by someone suffering from a serious break from reality:

I don't want to see the Conservatives continue to change my country. They are, slowly, like any dictatorship, changing the world.

Dictatorship?  Changing the world?  See what I mean?  Unhinged.  Krieber's letter is explicit in blaming it all on the missed opportunity for the Left to take over the country through the Coalition:

By refusing the historic coalition that would have placed it at the helm of the left, it will be punished by history.

That's the root of this.  It is the Left making its move against the Liberal Party, part of a plan of revenge for stopping a Leftist takeover of Canada in January.  This has been coming for some time.  They have just been waiting for the right moment.  With the Liberals hurting in the polls and hurting financially, that moment has come.  

However, it is the strength of the Conservatives across the country, even in Quebec, strength at a level no one had predicted back in January, that has added a strong tinge of madness to the attack from the Left, potentially making it even more volatile and dangerous for the Liberals than what I had predicted.

For the Liberals, this is going to get worse before it gets better.  Actually, I think there's a fair chance it is simply going to get worse, period.