The polls say he's 20 points behind the conservatives, so short of a drastic reversal of fortune there is no chance that Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff can win enough votes to form even a minority government, yet he desperately wants an election.
Many have already speculated that if the conservatives win a similar minority, Iggy plans to revive Stephan Dion's unholy alliance with the separatists and the socialists to form a government. He has kind of, but not really, denied this in such a way that he can easily deny that he denied it. Yes, confusing, and this will haunt him for the rest of the election.
But I wonder if he wants an election for a much simplier reason: maybe he's fed up with being in politics. It's much easier being a pundit about politics than actually being a politician. In fact, I'm reminded of the HBO series Rome when Ceaser has left Mark Anthony in charge of Rome for a time. Anthony, clearly missing combat and bored silly, complains, "Running Rome is not as amusing as I thought it would be."
But now that Iggy is leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, how does he quit and go back home to Harvard without looking like...well...a quitter? Simple: force the election that some of his party members want, go down spectaularly in flames, and he'll get tossed by his own party after the election. He can go back to Harvard with his head held high, write a book about it all and go on talk shows, where he'll probably talk about what "we Americans have to decide" about the issue du jour.
But if his plan is the unholy alliance, he's going to find himself in huge trouble. It may not be illegal to form the government even though the Conservatives have the biggest share of seats, but Iggy would be breaking an unwritten rule. I once read a book in which a king states that he can break laws while ruling his kingdom, but he can't go against what the people have always assumed is the law, the tradition. In this case voters expect the party with the most votes gets to form the government.
If Ignatieff goes against that he may form his coalition government and hold power for a while, but he'll have to shovel endless money at Quebec and NDP socialist programs in order to stay afloat. This will be incredibly unpopular. Eventually even Iggy will have to admit that the country is out of money and the Bloc will bring down his government just to prove they have the power. When he has to face the voters again I believe the liberals will go down to their greatest defeat in Canadian history. It may even rival the shellacking the old PC party received under Kim Campbell.
But untold damage would be done to the Canadian economy in the meantime, and our deficit will rival Obama's GDP ratio debt.
Perhaps its wishful thinking on my part, but I hope Iggy just wants to go home to Harvard.
Mike Downtown
Ya gotta wonder why any Liberal would want to have an election now, unless it is just to get rid of Iggy.
Posted by: WiseGuy | March 25, 2011 at 06:26 PM
I can already imagine Ignatieff's speech on election night: he'll lose, but will still make those snotty, snarky, remarks like he always doess and he'll have his communist-born wife by his side wiping away the tears. Send the jackass home.
Posted by: Low Fuss | March 25, 2011 at 07:16 PM
What a lot of Conservative malarky. I especially love Obama being blamed for the recession that was largely caused by Bush.
Posted by: Bill Fiinegan | March 25, 2011 at 08:29 PM
Well, it appears that Bill is an expert in Malarky. Let's blame Bush for Libya, Canada's deficit, Angela Merkel's troubles, global cooling, quantitative easing, jihadists. Hell, let's blame Bush for Christ's crucifixion.
Well that is off topic. Back to reason. Iggy would be willing to sell his soul for an election victory. Perhaps the "collector" will visit him soon.
Posted by: bmatkin | March 26, 2011 at 09:00 PM