Follow up to my previous post about the Karmic payback to Paul Martin when he loses power in Monday’s Canadian Federal election.
But first, a short diversion.
Here’s a must see video of Paul Martin showing his love for Alfonso Gagliano, the public works minister during the sponsorship scandal which happened on his watch in his department. martin later fired Gagliano from his patronage appointment as Ambassador to Denmark
via shotgun blog. Back to our story.
Warren Kinsella former Liberal party campaign strategist and long term Jean Chretien loyalist ttalkabout why he and ex-liberal cabinet minister Sheila Copps (another long time Chretien loyalist) are advising non-liberals on how to defeat Paul Martin’s liberals.
He describes a situation where he was taking to a member of Paul Martins team or “The Board” during the nomination meeting in Shelia Copps riding was stacked against her by Paul Martin’s team (Shelia ran against him in the previous leadership campaign which Martin won).
Unfortunately, Warren’s blog has no permalinks, so instead of linking directly to the post, I have to link to the December 05 page and ask you to scroll down until Dec 21st. UPDATE He finally does now in 2008, but too late for this link to work, he’s killed his old stuff off.
Me: “I think you are about to f**k over a woman who has been part of the heart and soul of the Liberal Party for twenty years. I think you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”
He grinned. Back in those days, The Board were the very personification of arrogance and conceit. Mike thought it was all very funny.
Before he could say anything, however, I asked him this: “So, are you going to kill her?”
Mike looked shocked. “What do you mean?”
“Are you going to kill her, Mike? Because, after this farce is finished tonight, you’re going to be wishing you did.
You’re going to wish you killed me, too. Because, Mike, you aren’t going to be able to shut us up.
The media are going to call us up, and invite us to write columns, and ask us to go on TV. And we will do what you did: we will go after you, over and over and over. Relentlessly.
And you won’t be able to complain, Mike, because we will merely be doing what you did to Jean Chrétien.”
He stammered.
I said: “The only way to shut us up now, Mike, is to kill us.”
And so it went. Sheila was done in by Paul Martin’s thugs, that night, and the Liberal Party of Canada was the only murder victim.
I, like Sheila, am providing advice to people I like – in whatever party they belong to. Liberals, Tories, New Democrats, Green candidates. I, like Sheila, know the best thing that could happen to the Liberal Party of Canada is a loss – and, as soon as possible thereafter, the departure of Paul Martin and his coterie of well-paid thugs.
Some houses can be renovated, some houses you need to tear down and start over. This one is a tear-down.
And he and Shelia proceeded to do just that. They got a lot of media attention, and used it to continually point out martin’s failings (not really a hard task).
In the next entry, Warren posts an item about Shelia Copps saying this about the NDP candidate in her old riding, Wayne Marston
I would like the political process to be a more honest profession,” Copps said. “Wayne Marston is a very honest guy. He’s decent and honest and would make a good member.
She’s also helping to advise the campaign manager for the conservative candidate in her old riding against her enemy liberal Tony Valeri
Ken Audziss, Rukavina’s campaign manager, said he’s had several talks with Copps about strategy on boosting the Tory vote.
“Sheila is a wealth of information,” Audziss said. “We’ve talked about all sorts of things that we can work on to ensure we defeat Mr. Valeri. I learn something every time I speak to her. If it results in us running a stronger Conservative campaign that appeals to people we have not been successful in appealing to, I’m for it.
So this is another way martin has contributed to his upcoming karmic loss this Monday. Smart politicians running for the leadership of their party invite the losers into the cabinet or caucus to win them and their supporters over, if for no other reason to avoid an internal party war. Martin not only didn’t do so but actively campaigned to defeat her in her own riding.
There’s healthy competition and there’s slash and burn competition. If you do slash and burn competition and you don’t kill, but merely wound, you run the large risk of creating a wounded, hostile, angry highly motivated opponent. In these two cases, opponents that know the liberal party and paul martin on a very deep level, are well connected and very media savvy.
And you can’t really demand loyalty to yourself as the leader when you showed disloyalty and treachery to your previous leader.