Inkless Wells

Paul Wells on all the latest out of Ottawa—along with the occasional post about jazz. Follow Paul on Twitter: @InklessPW

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We've been wrong about everything

by Paul Wells on Friday, July 16, 2010 10:52pm - 0 Comments

The president of the Liberal Party of Canada has sent out a memo explaining that the Parliamentary press gallery and its outport operations in Toronto and Montreal don’t have a clue what’s going on. You have to admit the argument has a certain surface plausibility.

Anyway, here’s an account of Alf Apps’s memo, with the memo itself embedded in full. Frankly I found the memo more useful than the accompanying story, but no matter. Good on Public Eye for getting this memo and posting it. I have analysis of my own, but I’ll refrain from contaminating your consideration of Apps’s arguments.

Open discussion in the comments — ideally more polite, each commenter toward the others, than some of our comment-board discussion has been lately.

Tags: Alf Apps, failure, liberals, Michael Ignatieff

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JDot

The PPG and the MSM are not LPC supporters? My reaction..
http://trinisan.coldfloor.net/images/weebay.gif

Love that Apps uses Ekos to support his opinion.

Liberals whining about the Media, I have seen it all now. If it was not for the media, the Ig would have his party below the NDP numbers..

I am assuming this is a shot at the PPG to get in line. And I also assume the PPG will fall in place…
http://intensedebate.com/people/AJR79 AJR79

That's some great analysis. I'm another CPC suppoerter who would welcome a Liberal Democrat Party. We'd find the centre of Canadians politics quickly, while pushing the Bloc to the side.

It'd be beautiful, but I think it's also pretty unlikely for the immediate future. Too much bad blood between Grits and Dippers, to make it an easy sell to either party.
http://intensedebate.com/people/madeyoulook madeyoulook

It's Friday night, it's late and IT'S EIGHTEEN PAGES of insight coming from a partisan immersed in politics. I will wait for my consideration to be contaminated, thanks just the same.
http://intensedebate.com/people/Halo_Override Halo_Override

Heh. :)

I'll say this much, given how rarely I've seen any Canadian media source run a photo of Ignatieff that didn't look it was chosen for scoring highest in the Facial Awkwardness category, either there's at least a photo editor conspiracy or Iggy has really bad luck around cameras. I swear I saw one once where he was doing Blue Steel.

On the purely superficial level that counts so much is swaying voter intentions, he needs to learn a mask (not a grimace), and hold it in place at all costs whenever it's not necessary. Like the photo series of Obama meeting with a couple hundred different people, and his face is so identical in each pic it could have been copy-pasted.

The Apps thing, meh.
http://intensedebate.com/profiles/tigerinexile Ben (The Tiger)

In that chart on page five, Apps gets the Liberal leader wrong — in April 2006, there was no leader; Dion wasn't picked till December. Graham was interim leader, and could not — for obvious reasons — keep strict party discipline.

What's the significance? Apps is trying to hide that pre-writ Dion fared better than pre-writ Ignatieff. And circulating 18 page memos saying "no, really, we can win!" is not exactly a position of strength.

That said, Apps is absolutely correct that the Liberals can win the next election. Harper has respect but not affection, so his support is somewhat brittle. Events will dictate, and it's entirely possible that Ignatieff will be the PM in the 41st Parliament.
hollinm

Halo_Override………there are people who cannot take a good picture if their lives depended on it. Obviously Ignatieff is one of those people.
Some of the pictures confirm what Canadians think and Harper doesn't have to run ads as Ignatieff does it himself with some of those pictures confirming that he is effete, arrogant and elitist.
The other thing is my wife says he has the creep factor. Other woman on various blogs have said this as well so it cannot be intirely dismissed.
So Ignatieff and his crew can run around the country pretending they are making headway, meeting the people i.e. basically Liberals and pretending they are in an election campaign but most Canadians are not following the tour de farce.
Harper could force an election this fall and guess what Ignatieff will not have had his naps and he will be one worn out dude.
http://intensedebate.com/people/hollinm hollinm

Ben (The Tiger)……that would be a pretty big upset. The wheels would have to fall off the Conservative bus for that to happen.

Polls do not lie. While they are different the trends need to be considered. There is no leadership poll that says Ignatieff is wanted by the vast majority of Canadians. Yes Harper's numbers are soft as well but he is seen as a leader; Ignatieff not so much.

The Libs have lost Quebec and virtually everything in the West other than for a few ridings in B.C. Quebec will go to the Bloc and the GTA will probably be split between the NDP and the Libs. However, that will not allow for even a minority government.

The coalition may be the answer but if it is to work then the Libs have to win more seats than the Conservatives and I don't see that happening.
http://intensedebate.com/people/OntarioTown OntarioTown

Ever heard of Dewey wins? You just never know. Hey, Harper polled at 14% Apr, 2004 to 10% June 2004.
http://intensedebate.com/profiles/tigerinexile Ben (The Tiger)

If I were a gambling man, I'd put money on a slim (156-158 seat) Harper majority after the next election.

But you never can tell what will happen on a campaign — strange things go on. I think the PM knows better than to tempt the Fates, but arrogance sets in with every man, given enough victories…
http://intensedebate.com/people/austinso austinso

What did I say earlier about "garbage on the internet"…?

Vanity. Insecurity. Spite. Give a voice to anonymity and watch it become everything that it isn't.
http://intensedebate.com/people/Halo_Override Halo_Override

Sigh… once again, you're just repeating the same old tired talking points: effete, arrogant, elitist. I'm talking about pictures that make him look like a goofball pulling weird faces. They are at different ends of the bad picture spectrum. But good job answering a question nobody asked.

It's almost as though you already know exactly what you're going to write when you get here, and you're just looking for places to jam it in.