Liberal leadership hopefuls sinking just like Poseidon
Over at the Eau Claire Cineplex came a glimpse of the Hollywood version of our nation’s Liberal party leadership race.
A pretty young lady had dragged me to see the movie Poseidon, a remake of the rather superb 1972 flick The Poseidon Adventure.
Let me tell you, the remake, like the Liberal leadership race is absolutely devoid of excitement. And like the Liberal leadership race candidates, there is not a single actor in the remake who has any character. Bland, all of them.
This was not the case in the original movie, in which the characters were carefully built up so you actually cared whether they lived or died. Again, one hardly gives a damn who survives the Liberal race, for they will simply go on to a career of political obscurity. There won’t even be helicopters to haul them to freedom and a new life.
Now, Poseidon is a disaster movie in more ways than the producers and director initially intended, just as the Liberal leadership race is turning out to be a disaster in more ways than initially intended. This suits me just fine, likely you, too.
We already know only three of the 11 candidates are fluently bilingual: Former Ontario New Democratic premier Bob Rae, self-styled noted scholar and academic Michael Ignatieff and former environment minister Stephane Dion. With the exception of Dion, neither Rae or Ignatieff can speak French as well as Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
This bodes well for Harper’s future moves to steamroll through Quebec.
Rae was, of course, an utterly incompetent premier of Ontario, and memories of his reign there are still front and centre in the minds of many of that province’s voters, just as the Liberals’ National Energy Program (NEP) is still front and centre in the minds of almost all of our province’s voters.
Rae’s NDP types backed the NEP, by the way.
Dion, like Ignatieff, is an academic, but unlike Ignatieff, he has spent considerably more time of his adult life in Canada, while the former Harvard professor and world traveller likely needs a map to get around even Toronto, the city Paul Martin parachuted him into as the Jan. 23 election loomed.
Dion is a decent sort, but a blue-eyed dreamer. On the plus side, he is utterly despised by the separatists in Quebec for his harsh stand against them. However, since Harper and the Conservatives are savagely undercutting both the Bloc Quebecois and the Liberals in Quebec, the separatists are a fading force there anyway.
This past weekend, while dying of terminal boredom at the Cineplex, both Ignatieff and Rae popped into Calgary trying to drum up support for their bids.
What a waste of time. Last I heard the only Liberals remaining in our city belong to a handful of firms which prospered getting federal contracts from the Jean Chretien/Paul Martin regimes, and in return made generous financial donations to the disgraced party.
Harper’s team will see those contracts quickly dry up.
Ignatieff immediately took what he perceived to be a lauding of Alberta’s energy industry tied into how we all want to be environmentally responsible.
Assuring us he was not a “scary Liberal”, he declared the federal government and Alberta must work together to ensure energy sustainability and ally environmental concerns.
Liberal Ottawa and Alberta ‘work together’ on energy and environmental matters?
To me, that is scary. Really, it was all a bunch of double-talk and gibberish. Our 28 Conservatives MPs have far more cerebral common sense than Ignatieff, even if they never taught at Harvard.
Rae managed to pull together about 50 onlookers. He really must be dumber than a bag of Saskatchewan hammers, though, because right here in Calgary he praised Chretien—who is absolutely despised here—and attacked Harper, our local boy made good. Bob, you never praise Chretien in this province, and never tear a strip of a local boy made good in his own city. Hardly politically astute. Yet Rae demonstrated his lack of political astuteness at Queen’s Park in Toronto.
My friends, with Harper and the Conservatives, our nation is in good hands. We are not about to hand it over to the likes of Ignatieff or Rae in their suicide missions for our country.
Ah, ah! After yawning through Poseidon, and on leaving the Cineplex, every member of the audience was given a free pass to see another movie of our choice. A consolation gift no less.
Perhaps Liberal delegates at the leadership convention in December will also get a refund.
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