- Liberals mutter darkly over Ignatieff election bravado
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Michael Ignatieff's decision to call time on the Conservatives appears to have unified his party as never before -- it seems he now presides over an entire caucus of what Jean Chrétien famously called "nervous Nellies."
Maybe that's going too far. There must be a Liberal MP somewhere, sitting on a fat majority, who welcomes the chance to test the patience of voters less than a year after the last election.
But many members of the caucus have come down with a bad case of cold feet since Mr. Ignatieff announced his decision to bring down the government at the first opportunity last week. Speaking privately yesterday, a number of MPs and backroom Liberals professed extreme disquiet at Mr. Ignatieff's strategy.
- Five reasons Ignatieff might have wanted to wait a month
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If you are a new and ambitious political party leader, there are any number of reasons not to lock yourself into a course of action you can't escape without serious public embarrassment for yourself and your party. Like, for instance, declaring your intention to never ever vote again in support of the government, thereby making a general election likely in the near future.
The danger of general elections is that you might lose them. And the main reason not to lock yourself into one 30 days or more before you can actually bring one about is that situations can change. Just say, for instance, that you lead an opposition party called The Liberals, and you want to bring down a ruling party called The Conservatives, so you announce that you will use the first opportunity to defeat them. Here's what could happen before you actually get a chance to go to the polls:
1. Public opinion polls could show you're nowhere near popular enough to be forcing an election.
- September 9, 2009| By Derrick O'Keefe|So long, Green Shift. Ignatieff's so keen to win seats in Alberta, he’s willing to sabotage the fight against climate change. At least that’s what his recent tar sands boosterism would suggest.
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