The media's extended period of mourning for Jack Layton could be viewed as the fallen leader's final gift to his beloved NDP. Any coverage that postpones the inevitable scrutiny of an NDP without Layton is time the NDP brass can use to figure out the best spin to put on the party's leadership travails.
Stockwell Day, former Reform Alliance Party leader and Conservative Party member for Okanagan Coquihalla has come out four square in favour of Christy Clark and her merry band of progressives. The political calculus of Day, and many others who purport to represent the right side of the political spectrum in B.C., is that the right must support Clark, lest the right-wing vote be split (presumably with B.C. Conservatives) and Dix and the NDP win the province.
That the Conservatives won a majority on Monday should have been no surprise to much of the Canadian media, had they not been busy cheerleading for anyone but Harper throughout the election. When it became apparent early in the campaign that Ignatieff was as woeful a campaigner as he is a politician, the folks at CBC, CTV, Global and the print media abandoned the Liberal bandwagon and clambered aboard the NDP express.
Throughout the Liberal leadership campaign, Christy Clark threatened to “unleash the power of Families First” on the B.C. economy. Nobody, besides Clark, really knew what that meant, but Wednesday afternoon we found out. Clark ran as a Liberal, and that is what she is proving to be.
Christy Clark won the Liberal leadership on Saturday and is poised to become our next premier. Her margin of victory was slim (four percentage points) by any measure, and the indifference to her win by many in the Liberal Party is palpable. Clark now leads a party that is, if not divided, disillusioned.