Interesting piece by John Ivison in today’s National Post: Jack Layton apparently has his sights sets on leader of the official opposition.
The task looks Herculean – the Liberals polled an average of 29% in the four polls this month: the NDP just over half that…
It may seem nuts, but I like Layton’s chances, just as I like the Conservatives chances of forming a majority. The truth that’s not being told is, Ignatieff has never been a big player in a high level campaign. He ran one leadership campaign, was way out ahead when it began and blew it: the more Liberals saw him, the less they liked him.
His second leadership campaign he won by backroom manoeuvring, taking the decision making out of the hands of Liberal party members and their inconvenient votes.
You can’t backroom your way through a general election.
Everytime I see Ignatieff, my spidey senses tingle the same little tingle: when the going gets real and tough, this guy will fold like an Ikea chair at an overeater’s anonymous meeting.
Jack Layton is right (yes I wrote that: Dec 15, 2010, mark it on your calendars), Michael Ignatieff is very vulnerable in a campaign. He talks about a campaign on leadership, but what he means is he thinks Ignatieff isn’t up to the job of winning peoples minds and hearts when it counts.
Jack Layton is in the middle of the crowd when they cut to the camera at Wayne Gretzky’s pub in Toronto. A girl’s arm is in the way of the camera showing his always smiling face, and he moves the arm.
I remember it like it was just last year, Jack Layton was telling every microphone within’ diaphram-shot that he wasn’t running to finish third place; he wasn’t even running for leader of the opposition. No in the 208 general election, Jack Layton was running for Stephen Harper’s job. He had the stuff, he was The Man: Prime Minister material.
But Prime Minister’s lead, Prime Minister’s make a decision and stand on that decision. Voting present, as Rudolph Guiliani put it, is not an option. That’s what Stéphane Dion’s Liberals did, and Jack derided him.
Yesterday, “the prime minister in waiting,” Jack Layton, and his caucus sat while Parliament’s confidence in the current government was being decided. For all his big talk the past number of years, when the decision was a tough one Layton’s NDP abstained: they voted present.
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