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Monday July 31 2006 |
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Liberals
back to plan "A": Frank McKenna
by Angelo Persichilli
THE HILL TIMES
If you ask some Liberals
who, among the 11 candidates, is going to win the leadership campaign, the
answer is now the twelfth, Frank McKenna.
But when you point out that he's not in the race, the said Liberals will
explain to you that the time to register is not up and there's still the
whole month of September open for him to make the move.
This might sound crazy and may be the result of a summer hallucination on
the part of some Liberal strategists who've finally been hit by the depth of
the destruction their party was plunged into after the
Martinites-Chrétienites civil war.
However, the race has failed, up until this point, to provide the name of a
person who can unify the party, first, and lead it back into government.
There is no front-runner yet, and, from the looks of it, they have no
intention whatsoever of throwing support, meaning soul and energy, behind
one.
"Each of them has something to bring to the table, but none has the complete
package," one disappointed Liberal strategist told The Hill Times.
Many agree and some are getting ready to go to "plan B." But it's really
"plan A," meaning Frank McKenna.
Here's how it's been explained to The Hill Times.
First, the said Liberals want to create a vacuum around all 11 candidates,
in terms of support, financing and policy, in an effort to asphyxiate them.
This is not hard: in the last few weeks, the only mention of the Liberal
leadership race in the media has been about Liberal MP Jim Karygiannis.
It would seem many are on holidays.
There are rumours about the lack of financial support in many campaign
organizations. Some are saying that many have problems meeting the payrolls
for their organizers. The only candidates who have no problems in financing
their organizations are those who have no organizations.
Second step: spread rumours among the grassroots that none of the present
candidates has the ability to defeat Stephen Harper in the next election.
Even this concept, considering what we've seen up until now, is not hard to
sell.
At this point, what you need are rumours that Prime Minister Stephen Harper
is about to provoke a snap election in the fall and if that message
succeeds, then you've hit the jackpot, meaning there is panic among the
Liberals.
At that point, you don't need to convince anybody that something has to be
done. The only thing that can scare Liberals more than a fall election is to
have a campaign led by the present interim leader Bill Graham.
The fact that Liberals have already started their nominations of their
candidates for the next federal election might be part of this
"crazy-but-not-that-crazy-plan."
Of course, some are suggesting that the scare of the imminent federal
election is part of a Michael Ignatieff strategist's plan.
If an election is called in the fall, there's no time to have a convention,
so there are two possibilities: go into the campaign with Graham as a leader
(for some, it is a nightmare more than a possibility) or go to the caucus
which has the power to appoint another interim leader.
And, guess who's the candidate with more support in the caucus? Michael
Ignatieff. Of course, he was the darling of many MPs before he spoke on
Afghanistan and before he remained virtually silent on the Middle East
issue. Things now might be different.
However, this master plan might work with one condition: Mr. Harper could
dissolve the House. In fact, this might be more a Liberal aspiration than a
Harper plan. Many Liberals are already convinced that Harper will win a
majority in the next federal election, so why wait another two or three
years before he starts his second term?
According to many, however, there will be no fall election, despite the
scare, but excluding an accident that a minority government might always
incur.
So, what's left? The concern of many Liberals to be stuck with a leader who
will not be able either to unify the party, or, to defeat Harper.
So, let's go back to the original "plan A." Frank McKenna.
Some might argue that he doesn't have the time to build an organization.
This, in fact, is not a problem. Mr. McKenna has never had time to build
organizations, he rents them.
Mr. Ignatieff, on the other hand, doesn't have one. He is not the one who
has created the organization: the organization has created him. They can
drop him like a stone if he's not perceived to be a winning candidate any
longer.
The way things are going are parallel to the events of the provincial
Liberal leadership race that led to Dalton McGuinty's win. The front-runner
in that race was Gerard Kennedy. In fact, Kennedy won four of the five
ballots. Unfortunately, the one he lost was the last one.
Meanwhile, in this race, Liberals are waiting around the corner for
something to happen and it is that "something" that scares most of the
Liberal strategists, especially the so-called "gentry."
So, let's go back to McKnenna.
He would have won the race had he decided to run at the beginning of the
year. If he was not available then, why should he be available now?
The question is valid, but there are some good answers. Frank McKenna
doesn't like races, he wants to be acclaimed. Being engaged in a race for
months is against his style and there are also financial consequences.
He has a lifestyle he likes and a job, and a salary he's not willing to
trade in for months of campaigning in a boring campaign, travelling the
country explaining that he's the Messiah the Liberal Party has been waiting
for, and, fighting for new members and delegates on every street corner of
the Confederation.
So, when September comes, look out for an increased campaign to convince
Canadians, and Liberals that Harper is about to call an election, look for
panic among many Liberals and look for pressure on some of the 11 candidates
to move out and lend their organization to Frank McKenna.
At the same time, according to some Liberal strategists, there will be an
intense media campaign courting McKenna to co-opt him into the race.
If the pressure is intense and some of the candidates are willing to put an
end to their misery and disappear, at that point, the former premier of New
Brunswick, the former Canadian ambassador to the United States, the former
potential candidate to the Liberal leadership will, "for the sake of the
party and this country," accept the mantle and become the next leader of the
Liberal Party.
Is this only an hallucination of some Liberal strategists?
From what I've seen in the Liberal Party in the last few years, it is very
hard to see the difference between reality and hallucinations.
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