Jay Currie

I posted this in the comments over at Glavin’s:

Terry I am having way too much fun with this. What we are actually seeing here is a fight for the soul of the Liberal Party and for its very existence.

(And, before I go on, I rather like Iggy and could easily live with him as Prime Minister.)

For the longest time there has been a split in the Libs between the left, multicult, pc bunch and the right, business, not so pc bunch. The lefties tend to dislike Israel, want out of Afghanistan and are convinced that the NDP have some good ideas about the economy. The righties like Israel, understand the commitment to the ‘Stan and think the CPC are lousy managers.

Both factions believe, notwithstanding the Liberals having been reduced to a few urban, vis-min enclaves, that the Liberal Party has a natural right to govern Canada.

In the background to this split are the “party pros”, a diminishing band of people who believe that the Liberals should be in power which is not quite the same thing as governing.

Iggy is of the right wing of the Liberal Party and, in the last few weeks, has lined up the pros. Only the pros could have delivered the caucus and the Senate and the Party Executive gift wrapped as an early Christmas present.

But Iggy got his present at the cost of accepting the pragmatic fact that the Liberal Party is not in a position to challenge the CPC in an election.

Bob Rae, on the other hand, was never embraced by the pros and has decided to continue his hunt for the Coalition unicorn. He is too smart to believe the unicorn exists; rather, his quixotic hunt is designed to stir the romantic imagination of the Party.

He will lose.

We don’t know what sort of campaigner Iggy will turn out to be. I suspect better than Dion but my black cat could meet that mark. What we do know is that the pros are not letting Iggy out of the gate until they have some money. And I have no doubt at all that Iggy has the capacity to raise money.

The question will come down to whether or not the leaden anchor of the coalition can be firmly tied to Iggy’s ankles. Harper will try and with a great deal of justification. But Iggy has the chance to wriggle free.

The Toronto Party had the shit scared out of it when it saw the first round of polls. All of the people they knew (invoking Pauline Kaal) thought lining up with the NDP and giving the Bloc a veto was just spiffy.

The problem is that when you are confined to enclaves you have no idea what is going on in the rest of the country. Faced with that the Toronto Party freaked out and we are left with The Count.

Or are we…
Hugely entertaining, possibly the end of the Liberal Party.