Saturday, May 07, 2011

Toronto Star: "It Was Iggy's Fault"

Michael Ignatieff, Canadian politician                                        Image via Wikipedia
The Toronto Star is bailing on Michael Ignatieff. He's the proverbial scapegoat. The Liberals' collapse had nothing, noth-ing, to do with the Liberal Party, its policies, its candidates, or its policies. The Star has analyzed the collapse and here's their conclusion: it was the Liberal leader's fault.
Extensive Star interviews with campaign insiders and politicians show a large slice of the loss must be attributed to the arrogance of the Liberal leader. In the end, a central Conservative criticism against Ignatieff — that he was arrogant — turned out to be true. 
Pigs fly and hell freezes over -- the Star uses Conservative rhetoric to advance their argument!

The Star's analysis strikes me as simplistic. The Liberal leader surely didn't decide on his own to force this election. It was the Liberals as a pack, lusting as they do for power.


A much better read is the Macleans serialization by Paul Wells. I blogged on it earlier.

And that's the way the Ball bounces.

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3 comments:

Canadianna said...

They promised universal daycare --- AGAIN! What, 7th time since 1993? I don't like Ignatieff much, but blaming him for the party's inertia is unfair.

BallBounces said...

Good point, Canadia-anna.

Next time, they really, really mean it.

Anonymous said...

I think Ignatieff does deserve a lot of the blame (not all of the blame though, the party has been coasting since the Chretien years).

When Chretien was running the show, the Liberals had The Red Book, a guide line for what they believed and wanted to do. Sure they broke a lot of their promises or just failed to keep any of them, but they still had something to show.

Likewise under Stephane Dion. The Green Shift may have been massively unpopular, but at least it was something.

But since Ignatieff took the job what has the party stood for. What policies did they advocate. It seems that all they have done is whine and complain and just promised to do the opposite of what the Conservatives have done.
Just my 2 cents.

Lee

"... nothing intellectually compelling or challenging.. bald assertions coupled to superstition... woefully pathetic"