Hope for Iggy

I probably pick on Iggy too much, but it's only because I like him. Not as leader of the Liberal Party per say, but as a person. I've seen him up close, followed what he has too say and it's pretty obvious he's a decent and caring human being. Which does not necessarily make him the best candidate to be a party leader - in fact quite the opposite. He would be better suited, it often seems to me, to be the policy wonk behind the scenes doing policy grunt work. Or, as I've said before, he should be the guy behind the guy, and not the guy.

At every turn Harper seems to have had an edge on Michael Ignatieff up until now. Even when he was using cheap American style politicking tricks like demagoguing, fear-mongering and sneering. Today however Michael Ignnatieff fired back at Tory spin in a manner the suggests we may be in for a learning curve. I did say I thought he was smart, right?

In an interview this weekend, Ignatieff said he'd be open to a coalition with the NDP if the electorate didn't give the Liberals a mandate to govern solo. For some reason the Tories believe this can be made into a controversy. I fail to see how - but they've tried before. It's not unprecedented in Canadian history and I have this vague memory of a party called the Alliance Party wanting to merge with the Conservatives and form a coalition to oppose the Liberals - but that could just be a bad dream. 

So when the Tory spinsters got hold of this they declared, “It’s not acceptable to ignore the election result and install a party and leader rejected by the voters,” according to the talking points. “It’s not acceptable to give the NDP co-management of the economy.”

I have never understood their objections to a progressive coalition. If Canadians vote for progressives from the Green Party, the NDP and the Liberal Party, and those number far exceed the number of people who vote Conservative why shouldn't they form an alliance and govern? It's the Parliamentary system. That's how it works.

Anyhow, instead of apologizing for thinking this way, Iggy shot back that the Tories were being "ridiculous."

"To say that coalitions are legitimate is like saying the earth is round,” a senior Ignatieff official said Monday morning. “It happens everywhere. Mr. Cameron (British Prime Minister David Cameron, who leads a coalition government) said so to Stephen last week."

You go Iggy!