Liberals’ gaffe-able misleader has two left feet
Jot this down somewhere and refer to it either during a federal election campaign expected within a handful of months or one year to the date Stephane Dion was elected Liberal party leader.
It is this: The man who holds foreign nationality and who did a stint in his beloved France at the Laboratoire d’ economie publique de Paris will be a talking, walking disaster who will make fumbling Paul Martin look sharp.
Now, if he just inflicts his incompetence and zany ideas on the Liberal party that will be fine, but should he win the next election he’d lead our nation into economic and social disaster.
Let’s hope it is the former.
I’m starting to build a suitcase full of background on the increasingly gaffe-prone Dion and it will undoubtedly make for some pretty weird reading.
Especially for the Liberal party hierarchy.
Leadership convention delegates should have opted for Michael Ignatieff, but their lemming-like qualities didn’t allow that.
After not understanding what the fuss was about over revelations he sought out French citizenship, Dion urged Prime Minister Stephen Harper to kill the second part of his GST reduction cutting the tax to 5%.
Since this was one of Harper’s most successful campaign planks, why would the prime minister be so reckless as not to follow through in the next budget?
Some might say Dion was being nefarious in that if Harper followed his advice and went back on his GST promise, there would be such a backlash the Conservatives would sink in the polls.
But Dion wasn’t being devious—he hasn’t the mind for that—he was being naive and not thinking about the consequences, which would be hugely beneficial to the Grits.
The Quebec MP is something of a blue-eyed dreamer who never lets reality and common sense get in the way of pie-in-the-sky ideas.
That, of course, is fatal for a politician—and for the country he misleads.
Then we have his plan for punitive tax measures for Alberta’s energy sector.
He calls this the “carrot and stick” approach, but I’m betting there’ll be more sticks than carrots.
What does Dion actually know about the workings of the energy sector?
My guess: Nothing at all.
Such brain-addled interference will bring on another National Energy Program that will destroy our province’s economy and send shock waves across the nation. Since Alberta’s buoyant economy is the engine driving, to a large extent, the Ontario and Quebec economies, watch for an economic collapse in Eastern Canada.
In the several times I have chatted with Dion, he was perplexed when I told him the Liberals had zilch of a chance of making breakthroughs in Alberta.
This one-time Quebec separatist simply didn’t understand the political makeup or history of Alberta or why there is a seething hatred and fear here for Liberal power in Ottawa.
Of course, that small coterie of Alberta Liberals will keep telling Dion everything is going well for him in our province. That’s what they kept telling Martin and Jean Chretien.
Yet, as the polls and ballots repeatedly showed, things were not going well.
Local Grit honchos told Chretien and Martin—as they will Dion—what they think they and he wanted to hear.
If Dion really wants to know what he can do to appeal to Alberta voters—and to prevent a frightening upsurge in separatist sentiment here—he should go to respected Conservative commentators.
That won’t happen, and with it, Dion’s place in history will be a footnote.
Likely under the section: Incompetence.
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