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A clean break with federal politics and a return to the academic world is probably the best thing for Iggy. His passion is for teaching and he will find greater personal fulfilment there than on the federal stage.

He is an intelligent man, but unfortunately his personality did not have the charisma for our media based world. He was always trying to recover from the attack adds. The publice remembered 'just visiting', 'doesn't relate to Canadians', etc. His pesonality was too low key to counteract the negative statements. If he was more fiery like Chretien then it might have been a different story. The Conservatives were vunerable with 'contempt of parliament' and a non confidence. The mud slinging by both sides did not resonate with the voters, but for some strange reason the mud did not stick to Harper this time. Sort of like Chretien who seemed to wear teflon clothes.

The surge in the NDP I think pushed a lot of blue liberals to vote conservative to stop and orange tide. Vote splitting and strategic voting allowed a conservative majority with 40% of of the vote. The same thing gave Chretien a majority with less than 40% of the vote when the right vote was split between the Cons and Reform.

   

Indeed. The Liberals were basically destroyed after Chretien left, it just took awhile for it to fall over. I think it was a combination of the scandals under Chretien, but also the lack of Supported and/or Compelling leaders following Chretien. Martin wasn't internally Supported, Dion and Iggy were just awkward types that no one felt inspired by. Chretien was also awkward, but he was plain spoken and had a conviction to his words. No one could understand Dion and Iggy always seemed to be a Kindergarten Teacher trying to explain something so simply that it was annoying and just seemed to lack substance. That lack of substance seemed well founded as there simply was no overall Platform upon which the Liberals were coming from.

Layton had both a Platform and compelling Leadership. That's why he and the NDP are now the Official Opposition.

   

Iggy may be a smart guy and he may know his political science, but when it came to political savvy, he was on par with a bag of dirt. That's not necessarily a parting shot at him, it's just that some people have it and some people don't.

And I don't think the Liberal ad where Iggy tells us "it's your government, you pay for it" was timed very well. Considering it came out AFTER the public got to see he had just about the worst attendance record of any sitting MP, I don't see how anyone could take him very seriously after that.
But it's not all Iggy's fault either. The party had a weak platform full of programs that were going to be susceptible to abuses.
The CPC didn't win the election so much as the Liberals completely blew it.
I mean, how embarrassing is it when you call for a non confidence vote against the ruling party only to wind up being the one no one has confidence in and losing your offical Opposition status?

   

Except Harper had a worse attendance record than him every year except one.

   

Come on Curtman, cut to the chase.

Harper is the Prime Minister, not just a MP. He has International obligations that require him to travel around the World.

Compare the attendance of other leader in the house, like Layton or Duceppe to have a more accurate comparison.

Considering his attendance, people won't even notice he's gone now anyways.

   

With him out of the way, a coalition becomes possible again. Considering the Lib/NDP got 49.5% of the vote this time after being promised by Harper that a coalition would happen, and Harper's percent of the popular vote is basically unchanged it's a clear indicator that Canada wants this.

   

What's the point of a coalition in a majority parliament? If they want to talk merger, that's a different story. But it will drive some people to the CPC. This is a crux moment for Harper. If he's smart enough not to get too far to the right of Canadians, he could have a pretty good run. The Liberals are decimated, and I doubt the NDP could ever form a government in Canada, certainly not a majority one. Unless Harper goes overboard.

   

Another epic fail.

Vote percentage means dick.

The other parties don't hold the majority in the house. Any talk of a coalition is dead on the floor along with Ignatieff and Duceppe.

   

The point I think, is to counter the argument that Iggy and others in the Liberal party had in 2008. As it was explained to me many times, people didn't think there was enough time to negotiate things through the riding associations, which candidates were to be supported, etc.. Also to mesh two policies together, as voted on by their members was very difficult to do. There wasn't really a plan in 2008. We've got four years to give it a go. I don't like the idea of a merger. More like a common-law -vs- marriage deal.

   

Ignatieff was the only roadblock to the coalition. The NDP were ecstatic with the idea. Bob Rae was gung-ho. Iggy wanted his chance to shine. That's what I felt in 2 years of trying to make it happen.

   

Well, you certainly screwed that up, didn't you Iggy? I guess you could say that intelligent academics and policy wonks don't make Prime Minister, but then there's Harper. Actually they were quite alike in a lot of ways.

I wonder who the next pretender to the Liberal throne will be? They'll have to go into rebuild mode, which will take a while. But that's as it should be. There won't be an election for a while now, and the Harper Conservatives, like all other governments, will now start to rack up their own list of problems adn scandals--which they won't be able to blame on the Liberals anymore.

   

For what reason?

Why would the NDP merge with a party that just got the big "f-you" from Canada?

They NDP is riding a high, great election results. There's no reason why they would prop up a dead Liberal Party.

   

I remember the time the dead Conservative party was reduced to less seats than the Bloc is now. Why in the world would anyone want to prop that up?

   

As leader of the country(shudder) he had a job to do. What was Iggy's excuse?

   

He was out driving his bus around or something. Stupid.

   

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