The Red-Green show
What do I think about the Dion-May "non-compete" agreement? See tomorrow's column (since the Post has already published it online, I might as well do the same). For a less equivocating view, here's Colby Cosh's take.
UPDATE: Jack's not happy:
Oh, and for anyone who's wondering whether that Green candidate really wrote all those hateful things, yes he did -- and more. And still more.
UPDATE: Jack's not happy:
NDP Leader Jack Layton says a deal between the Liberal and Green Party leaders will deny Canadian choices in the next federal election.This, from the guy who wrote Paul Martin's last budget in a hotel room -- with Buzz Hargrove on the speaker phone!
Layton says he's surprised and disappointed that supposedly principled politician like Green Party Leader Elizabeth May has "so quickly slipped into the muck of backroom wheeling and dealing."
UPPERDATE: Here's the text of the joint statement. May explains why she's running in Central Nova, while former leader Jim Harris offers 12 reasons why it's "a brilliant strategic move".
TALKING OF STRANGE BEDFELLOWS: CAW leader Buzz Hargrove rails against the "insanity" of the environmental movement and blames ... the Conservatives!
APPARENTLY, SHE WANTED A THREE-WAY: The Globe reports that May tried to pull Layton in on the deal:
Green Party leader Elizabeth May, who today announced with Stéphane Dion, that she would not be challenged by a Liberal in the next federal election, contacted former Canadian Ambassador to the UN Stephen Lewis last month asking him to set up a meeting between her and NDP leader Jack Layton. Ms. May, who intends on running against Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay in his Nova Scotia riding of Central Nova, was looking for a country-wide collaborative arrangement involving her party, the NDP and the Liberals. Mr. Layton refused to take her calls, Ms. May said yesterday, adding that Mr. Lewis is an old friend and she thought he could help. “I have been rebuffed by Jack Layton,” she said.
4/13/2007
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48 Comments
Hey, that J.Kay guy leaked it already:
http://communities.canada.com/nationalpost/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2007/04/13/andrew-coyne-on-the-liberal-green-non-compete-agreement-the-real-target-is-the-ndp.aspx
Applaud 9/11 and join the 'progressive alliance' of Liberals, NDP, Greens and the Bloc.
Harper's ticking me off with his spending but rational people don't exactly have an alternative in this country.
Buzz Hargrove's response is the defining moment of today's drama.
next thing you know Jack Layton will be begging Mario Dumont (with unprecedented begging methods, most likely!) to endorse him in the next federal election. oh wait he's already doing that.
This will sound hyperbole but it's not: I have never ready anything more outrageous and stupid than the those three columns written by Potvin.
Read them all...factually wrong, paranoid, raving, arrogant. They have it all.
Time to jump off the gravy train AC. Even Paul Wells has put his Dion pom-pons down. Let me get this straight, Andrew: Harper is cold, unprincipled promise breaker (See your "Harper Has Learned Well" article) but Dion is an innovative and tactical political chessmaster?
Disguising your love affair with the man by coyly playing "devil's advocate" isn't fooling anyone.
I'm sure you're opinion may be different had you spent the last election pounding liberal signs into the snowbanks in Central Nova.
Even beyond putting pressure on the NDP, this formal agreement between M. Dion's Liberals and Ms. May's Greens will serve to highlight the policies of both parties, and educate voters just how far left the Liberals have swung.
Just a few weeks ago, M. Dion was spouting that basically anyone who disagreed with him was "an extreme right-wing ideologue". Oddly, this seemed to include policies on which the Liberals had found themselves to the left of the NDP.
Now, M. Dion tacitly endorses the Green foreign policy (which Ms. May specifically intended to highlight by choosing to run against Mr. MacKay), and gives the impression that voters should consider the differences between the two parties as either flexible or irrelevant: both have presented themselves to Canadians as more than "single-issue" Parties.
Canadians, who have a sense that we need to proceed on the environment in a responsible manner, will start to wonder just how much contempt the Liberal Party has for them and their moderate views.
Mr Coyne,
I suspect you are giving the party brain trusts too much credit for this cunning plan.
I suspect M Dion and Ms May deserve the credit and I am confident their parties will thank them for this wonderful innovation at the appropriate time in an appropriate way.
... The pitiful angle to this story is that it would not be, were the Green leader a Mr. May...
George -
He's playing chess while you're playing checkers! He's nine moves ahead etc.
I am still reeling from the article written by that wacko Green candidate. Un-be-lievable.
AC,
not just chess but the 3D chess that Spock played on Star Trek....
http://images.wikia.com/memoryalpha/en/images/d/df/Spock_McCoy_3D_chess.jpg
Its all so logical
I play neither well. My father from Selkirk would invaribaly set me up in checkers: one sacrificial piece for two-three jumps and usually a king. I never saw it coming.
I suspect Dion has never played checkers and Harper does. So, we'll see........
Yes, AC and everyone who posts anonymously is a coward! See, we both can quote stupid things other people have said.
Is that all you've got? Really?
Everyone who posts anonymously is a coward. What's your point?
Um, wow. I thought you were just trying to be funny. I didn't think you actually believed anything that stupid.
Um ... nevermind, then.
Because of the asymmetries of the deal, I suspect there is more to it than was publicly aired. Perhaps the Greens will fold if this doesn't work...
OR they put together a left-wing conspiracy to crash a (solar powered) plane into the tar-sands.
My God! What this Green canidate Kevin Potvin wrote is an outrage, and now that it's starting to damage his political career he is trying to back peddle and spin his way out.
If the Canadian media has a tiny grain of integrity they would be asking Dion & May to explain their association with Kevin Potvin the very next time Dion & May each have a microphone stuck in their faces.
This comes on a day when we see a wounded Canadain soldier laying outside so he could salute his fallen brothers. Men who died fighting the same muslim terrorist movement that perpatrated the 9/11 attacks the same attacks that brought feelings of joy to Green candidate Kevin Potvin.
I'm from Vancouver and Potvin has been spewing this kind of nonsense for years.
The funniest thing to emerge is that May will give him "benefit of the doubt." So May backs the whacko, and Dion backs the backer of the whacko.
What a shambles.
"Dion tacitly endorses the Green foreign policy"
"association with Kevin Potvin"
On what basis can you possibly make either of those claims?
Both Dion and May have made it very clear they only support each other on one thing, and liberals will clearly be running a candidate against this wingnut Potvin.
In the meantime, how's the Nelson Mandela bashing wing of your caucus doing these days? Will harper sign his papers once again, despite his own riding taking him to court? Boy, Stephen Harper must really love that twerp.
Back to the story at hand...
In an unreported bit, the Liberals also nominated a candidate in South Shore this week. A gentleman who ran for the provincial NDP last time around.
No wonder Layton's throwing a temper tantrum. The guy who brags about working with others and getting things done won't even take a phone call. What a child.
I don't think we should taint the entire Green party, still less the Liberals, because of the words of a single candidate. It was unfair to besmirch the entire Reform party because of a handful of nutjobs, and it's just as unfair in the present case.
What this fellow wrote is indeed abominable, and not in a "gotcha," out-of-context way: it's especially revolting read in context, with all of its simpering rationalizations. It's clearly not a matter of a couple of flip remarks, but a fully worked-out philosophy -- one that he is entitled to hold, and one the rest of us are entitled to find repellent.
The test is what happens next. Ms May should clearly drop him as a candidate, both as a matter of decency and in her own self-interest. If she does not, then she and her party should indeed be held to account.
There are now only two true National parties.
Dion is with this move proving more and more to be the George McGovern of the Liberal party. Just as the Democrats were tearing themselves into two camps - the Northern establishment Liberals typified by Humphrey and the Dixiecrats led by Wallace - so too are the Liberals divided along a Martin/Cretien axis. The two contestants from those camps - Iggy and Rae fought themselves to a standstill and Dion negotiated his way into the role of a compromise candidate.
But since winning the leadership Dion has relentlessly led the Party further and further to the left and introduced party policies that are more intolerant and less supportive of the grassroots - mandating female candidate quotas and now not allowing a Liberal to run in a specific riding.
McGovern managed to have racial and gender quotas applied to the delegates to the '72 convention that completely alienated the party elite.
And just as happened to McGovern when his anti-war and save-the-environment /
anti-rich dogma became more and more strident, Dion's similar tactics are driving more and more of the moderate party memebers into hibernation, retirement or to the opposition ranks. Conservatives, are more and more making sure that the cologne they wear isn't off-putting to these refugees.
Many prominent Democrats secretly donated huge amounts to CREEP while the publically pronounced their support for the McGovern campaign. I suspect similar (legal) things are being done by many prominent liberals today.
Even more so now that Dion has created the Kermit-liberal coalition party without an iota of consultation with them.
The Liberals are on the verge of being throttled at the polls harder than they ever have.
Funny,
Andrew's suddenly not a politically pure idealist, but rather a pragmatist.
In trying to build a case for Dion, that is.
Meanwhile, in the reality based (non pro-Dion la la land) community the outrage builds and Liberals are for the first time talking openly about turfing Dion.
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/203059
As for not branding all of the Greens for the Trade Tower comments,
yes, except May is saying she's "giving him the benefit of the doubt"
It's noted on National Newswatch.
The article is taken down for some reason but the summary is still up at NN.
Gee, radical views from an unnaccountable, unelected radical fringe party? Who'd a thunk it?
What an insult to Steve Smith. The New Red Green Show
What AC Said....
as stooopid as Mr Potvin is this becomes more about May's and Dion's reaction to it.
Test of leadership and all that.
Benefit of the doubt generally gets a failing grade....over to you Mr Dion.
BTW, when s Lawrence Martin getting his Dion biography book deal?
He's probably getting his book deal soon after Duffy and Fife get their senate seats...
I suspect the big winner in Central Nova from the Red-Green show will be the NDP. Few Liberals would vote for the Green, so who else will they vote for?
Ms. May hasn't got a chance, but enough Liberal votes could push the NDP past McKay.
Coyne sez: "I don't think we should taint the entire Green party, still less the Liberals, because of the words of a single candidate."
Uh-huh. Since when has Dion been concerned about fighting terrorists...
Just admit that the Liberal party is now making common cause with the terrorists under his leadership.
AC, I still don't understand why you [and Wells] think Dion already has his environmental credentials. All polls suggest that Canadians do not yet believe that he is serious about the issue.
So this is all about Dion getting a stamp on his Green passport so that people believe he is serious?
You dont think there was another way to do that, assuming this was the goal?
One can only imagine what M. Dion would do to establish Canada's green credentials.....because we all know having the right credentials is what really matters.
"He's playing chess while you're playing checkers! He's nine moves ahead etc."
Partisanship aside, AC's been nine moves ahead of all of us on this one.
AC - why not link to your Spring 2000 Time column? The similarities here are significant.
nottawa says:
"...Both Dion and May have made it very clear they only support each other on one thing, and liberals will clearly be running a candidate against this wingnut Potvin..."
Yes, the Liberals will, and her name is ...Hedy Fry...
It will be the classic battle "wingnut" vs. "moonbat".
I sure hope Sven runs.
Tomm
Okay, I'm going to start taking this subject seriously. Is it my imagination or are the same poltroons that masterminded Martin's "Buzz Hargrove" episode also responsible for the Red-Green show? AC, you seem to be some kind of political pundit, what do you think?
Andrew, read your column. You speak as if being a risk taker is a good thing nad that somehow Harper and Dion are similar in their willingness to take risks. I disagree. There is a big difference between a risk taker and a calculated risk taker. Just ask a poker player. This smacks of desperation and reminds me of Martin's proposal to repeal the notwithstanding clause. Anyone can take risks, to be successful you have to at least understand the likelihood of the risk succeeding. I think Dion has seriously miscalculated.
These days I'm not much a Liberal fan nor am I a Dion fan. That is not to say that I don't enjoy a good election fight. If Dion continues to make mistakes like this, the next election will not be a contest, but a route (it may be already too late).
When abortion is inevitably brought up in the next election by some social conservative candidate, can the Liberals respond after giving a "pro-life" May a free ride? Didn't the liberals say that abortion was protected under the charter? Are they not a "charter of rights" party? Is Kyoto all that matters now?
Forget the chess checkers analogy...Dion is playing Bocci Ball to Harper's Snooker.
AC, wrt your column: when playing Blackjack you only double down when the odds are in your favour. The gambling term most applicable to Dion is chasing losses.
Does anyone else besides Warren Kinsella (talking to Charles Adler, Friday afternoon) care about the LPC Constitution ? Specifically the section that requires the LPC to run a candidate in every riding. The LPC Executive should be all over Dion, for over-stepping his powers. The only explanation I have is that Dion has a note, scribbled on a napkin, from Chretien. Kind of like a "notwithstanding clause", that says "Notwithstanding anything written in the LPC Constitution, I as leader, can do whatever I want"
Warren's friends loved the contsitution. Whatever happened to that convention after the 2000 election? The "every third year" biennial, etc...
Dion is in violation of the Lib Constitution,
both in the spirit, and the letter, the relevant portions:
"2 Purposes
(1) The fundamental purposes of the Party are:
(a) to participate in the public affairs of Canada by endorsing members of the Party as candidates of the Party for election to the House of Commons and supporting their election;
10 Rights of members
(3) Subject to Chapter 12, a member of the Party has the right to seek to be a candidate of the Party for election to the House of
Commons.
Chapter 15 – Candidate selection meetings
58 Purpose
Each EDA must hold a candidate selection meeting to select a candidate of the Party for election to the House of Commons at the time specified by, and in accordance with, the rules made by the National Election Readiness Committee under Section 60."
- Purpose of the party is to endorse party members as candidates: violation (that's a biggie as it goes to the root of the party, which is obviously not to elect other party members),
- Each member has a right to seek to be a member: violation, in the NS riding EVERYONE is prohibited
- Each riding MUST select a candidate to run for parliament: violation.
Dion is explicitly violating his own party's constitution.
nottawa, M. Dion did not endorse Ms. May for only a single purpose, but for everything her Party stands for in the riding on Central Nova.
And that includes an endorsement by M. Dion of the Green Party's foreign policy.
When you vote for an MP, it is an explicit endorsement of all of that MP's policies. When you endorse that MP, you have endorsed all of their policies.
maybe we had better question a fundamental assumption here....that assumption being
1) That this is a move doen by rational players
2) That it was fully thought out
The more I think about this the more this appears as just a mistake of a well interntioned amateur. The professionals will move in soon
88 Days left till Dion coup. (unless an election is called)
obeda, (a) that makes no sense (b) the facts in this case show otherwise.
They both went out of their way to state that they did not support each others other policies.
Second, if your reasoning holds true it would be impossible to differentiate one MPs thoughts from the leader's. So when Jack Layton names a star candidate in Burin St. George's in 2004 who happens to be anti-abortion does that make Layton's stance on abortion change? I think not.
People will read into this agreement what they want to read into it. But anyone who claims to be 100% certain what it means is either naive or blindly partisan. I'm a Liberal, I have many misgivings about it, but at the end of the day it's just the kind of thing that might make politics slightly more meaningful and relevant. It might be a good thing for the country. There's no harm in trying.
Hey Obeda, I voted for Pierre Poilievre, and I think he's a jackass. A vote for the Conservatives doesn't mean you want Senate Reform and a GST cut, it could just be that you want to vote for someone competent who isn't going to send public funds to friendly ad companies and reignite the separatist movement.
Don't be surprised by Dion's latest move; Dion is an idiot. He appointed the worst Premier in Ontario history to be in charge of "Platform Development." Seriously, how moronic is it for Bob Rae to be on a "Dream Team?"
Hey nottawa, of course there is no harm in trying: Even if Green wins a seat they won't be able to do anything in the upcoming Conservative majority government.
nottawa said "no harm in trying"
Not true. I am a conservative, so read this as you will. But as an outsider Dion is doing a number of things
1) Undercutting the Liberal Brand by diluting, a vote for the greens is a vote for us. Rather than a vote for us is the vote that gets what you want done
2) Undercutting his own brand...say whta you want about how nicely he works and plays well with others in this case. But most people dont ant to elect a committee or college seminar. The want a leader which still means an individual.
3) Makes people question what his priority is, Canada or the world. Sounds silly but who are we electing? I want someone who will fight for Canada's interest and not just immeadiately subsume our interest into something Global. He may be convinced the planet is about to go turn into a hothouse but few others are.
4) Hurt your own organization. This is ticking off Liberals nationwide, the most important are the ones in Central Nova.
5) Let himself and his org be drawn into a fight that isnt his...an old PC fight. MAy and Orchard are old PC's and they have bloodlust to get Mackay....irrational given that this is done and complete a long tome ago. What is in this for Liberals given the costs associated above, and the costs to DIon personally.
You can put lipstick on the pig and say what a wonderful eccumenical thing to do, maybe its naive but he really believes this environmental stuff. Well its a pig of a deal for the Liberals and the naivete and selling out are only going to hurt the Libs.
Now speaking as a Conservative supporter....I love the deal, do it again somewhere else. You want a two party system, lets go!
is this the invisible hand of the very, very skanky Gerrard Kennedy ?? He is the official LPC Election readiness leader and is supposed to be advising Steffi.
Since he is more leftie than Steffi, this would make some sense . . .
just wondering . . .
Fred,
You mean the "Himbo"?
Upper Upper Upper Date:
Looks like May decided the benefit of the doubt wasnt enough and she has now bounced Potvin....
Couldnt she have done that in the first place because nothing has changed since she decided to give him the "benefit of the doubt"
Except maybe some polling numbers and some backroom conversations from her new BFF Stephane Dion.
After this attempt at parallel parking I dont know why anyone gives either leader any credibility.