Allies?
Looking confident and relaxed, Mulcair emerged from his weekend victory promising to go into bloody battle with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservatives, barely mentioning the third-party Grits.
In return, the Conservatives welcomed Mulcair’s victory with an online attack, calling him “an opportunist whose high-tax agenda, blind ambition and divisive personality would put Canadian families and their jobs at risk.”
But beyond all the partisan rhetoric, Harper and Mulcair are more allies than enemies in their pursuit of one key political goal — the decimation of the federal Liberal party. …
In sum, the New Democrats have chosen a leader who at least appears to have the essentials to turn his party’s so-called “orange crush” in the last election into a new norm in Canadian politics. …
In a revealing interview with CBC’s chief correspondent Peter Mansbridge after the leadership convention, Mulcair totally ruled out any kind of co-operative arrangement with the Liberals going into the next election. Instead, Mulcair later told reporters the NDP will present itself as “the only party that can stand up to Stephen Harper in the next election.”
The road to Mulcair’s convincing Canadian voters of that is obviously long and anything but certain. But if he does succeed, we may have just witnessed the beginning of the end of the Liberal Party, and the Canadian political landscape will be reshaped as a choice between right and left.
Nothing would make Stephen Harper happier.
It’s true. We think we can beat the NDP 2/3 of the time in a straight-up fight.
But — and here’s why the NDP wants it — the ratchet effect of growing statism (or social democracy, per its supporters) is one that’s very difficult to escape.
If I were to guess, Bob Rae’s expected run for the permanent Liberal leadership is going to re-ignite the civil war, and as many as a half-dozen future leadership aspirants are going to devote the subsequent two years before the next election to knifing him in the back. That’s an easy call to make, since it’s happened so many times before. Look what Chretien did to Turner after the ’84 debacle. Or what Martin did to Chretien after the Grits got tired of winning, Bob will be inheriting a much more dire situation, so the infighting can be expected to be infinitely worse.
During the writ period, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see the NDP and Tories focusing on the three dozen remaining Grit ridings more than they do one another. Because of their third-party standing and the ongoing fratricide in the party, I don’t expect the Liberals to have the money to be very competitive. I can see the Liberals losing as many of 30 of those seats and being finished, once and for all.
On the other hand, Bob Rae is a smart, experienced politician. More importantly, by attacking his Ontario record, I think Harper is giving him the gift of a lifetime because it invites a nice counter-attack on the Conservative record in their first two terms.
If anyone can bring that party through the changing political trends in the party, it’s Rae. On the other hand, I don’t see how he can do it with no money and a party full of Liberals. He’ll have to fight off the Tories, the Dippers and watch his own back, which I don’t think any one person can do and still make gains at the same time.
I’m not as sure as everyone else is about a straight head-to-head between the Tories and the Dippers. As they get closer to power, they’ll probably move closer to the centre to consolidate and build on their gains. If their being lunatic Bolsheviks is off the table, it’s increasingly likely that Conservative ethics could become the central ballot issue. And without the Grits as spoilers, that could go either way.
Worse for the Tories, they’ve built such a personality cult around Harper that he’s not just the central figure in the party, he’s the only one. He could retire before 2015, and almost certainly will by 2019. What happens then? The only clear successor to Harper is Jason Kenney, and he might be the single most beatable guy alive today.