More any anything else, Michael Ignatieff’s love for himself is what is causing the Liberal party to fall. He is completely out of touch with Canadians, so much so that when his fanatic Liberal advisors (read: Warren Kinsella) tell him that the Tories are evil and everyone in Canada just can’t wait to see them get reduced to rubble, Ignatieff believes it. Ignatieff’s Messiah complex clouds his vision so effectively that when he sees Canadians telling him they don’t want an election, he claims one is necessary. That is, of course, until his latest flip-flop.

Liberals pay price for month of mistakes

Popularity plunges after Ignatieff misreads public’s willingness for election

By Lorne Gunter, Edmonton JournalOctober 10, 2009

A month can seem like a lifetime in politics — an eternity if you’re Michael Ignatieff, the Liberal leader.

At the beginning of September, the Liberals were riding high (or at least as high as anyone was riding in a Parliament that at the time looked locked perpetually in a minority morass).

They were in a virtual dead heat with the Tories in the polls, both parties hovering in the 30-to 34-per-cent range.

There had been complaints all summer that Ignatieff had been invisible. But senior Liberal operatives told their caucus and staffs to calm down. Once Parliament resumed, Prime Minister Stephen Harper would no longer have the spotlights and headlines to himself, they reassured. Ignatieff and their party would quickly make up any lost turf and, in all likelihood, pull ahead.

But before equilibrium could return to political coverage, Ignatieff indulged in a fatal conceit: He assumed he was more popular than he really was. Or he convinced himself that Harper was as hated by most Canadians as he is by Ignatieff and his party faithful. Or he misjudged how willing Canadians would be to stomach a fall election just so the Liberals could replace the Tory minority with one of their own.

Or some combination of all three.

THEN CAME THE TURNING POINT

The Liberals then overplayed their hand. Ignatieff, quite by surprise to most of his caucus, stepped before the microphones at the party’s Sudbury retreat and declared that Harper’s time as PM was up. He huffed and puffed that the Grits would force an election at the earliest possible opportunity.

But at the end of summer, the prime minister, while hated by some, was no more or less popular than Ignatieff. And Canadians genuinely appeared not to want a fourth election in five years.

If they were ready to stomach anything, it was a few more months of Tory government, rather than yet another national vote.

Voters turned on the Liberals, and Ignatieff in particular.

Since ordinary Canadians seem not to share the Liberals’ detestation of Harper–they may not have warm-fuzzies for him, but they don’t see him as the embodiment of evil, either–the Liberals’ insistence that his immediate ouster was a national priority made many shake their heads in incredulity.

It was seen for what it was–pure Liberal vanity.

Harper had been in charge of the government long enough that Liberal warnings about “hidden agendas” and “Reform-Conservative policies” no longer scared voters the way they did five years ago, either.

Indeed, one young visitor to the Globe and Mail’s website even asked “What is Reform-Conservative?” A party that has not existed in nearly a decade–the Reform party wrapped up operations in 2000–is not only no longer a threat, it is unknown to most voters under 30. Evoking its memory in an attempt to frighten Canadians would be nostalgic, if it weren’t so pathetic.

Also, this latest threat by the Ignatieff Liberals to bring down the Tory government was the third in nine months.

One had been made in January over the budget and the possibility of a Liberal-NDP coalition held in power by the Bloc. A second had been made in late June over the budget-stimulus report card. And in early September, Ignatieff made his third in Sudbury.

Voters were getting tired of the Libs’ hollow bravado.

Then came the Liberal breakup in Quebec, which pitted the Paul Martin and Jean Chretien wings against one another again over who should have the nomination in the riding of Outremont. It led, of course, to Denis Coderre levelling the ultimate in political-suicide charges–that Liberal decisions about Quebec are being made in Toronto.

BLUNDERS IN THE PARK

The Liberals also made blunders by filming Ignatieff’s woodsy ads in a downtown Toronto park and by Vancouver-Centre MP Hedy Fry making the preposterous claim that the Tories had somehow manipulated The Bay and the Vancouver Olympic Committee into putting Tory “C” s on our athletes’ gear for the 2010 games.

No wonder the Liberals now find themselves as much as 12 points behind the Tories just a month after having been tied–although so much trouble has befallen them in the past four or five weeks that it must seem like years ago.

But lest the Tories think this makes them a shoo-in for majority and convince themselves to pull the plug on Parliament, let them consider this: Things have merely returned to where they were a year ago.

This time last year, on the eve of the last election, the Tories were the ones riding high, headed for a majority.

Then the financial crisis hit and then they overplayed their hand by proposing to withdraw public funding from Canada’s political parties and the Liberals replaced Stephane Dion with Ignatieff. The Tories dropped quickly. Their fundamentals are no stronger now than they were before their fall.

As much as a month can be a lifetime in Canadian politics, a year can be a mere blink.

lgunter@shaw.ca

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