[Gunnair]

$1:

Those vastly premature and gluttonously unnecessary TV ads the always aggressive Tories have run against Bob Rae were wrong in so many different ways that they deserve some kind of inverted prize. They are petty and mean, and they hit out against a dubious target. It is not the Liberals and their temporary king, Mr. Rae, who threaten Mr. Harper and his increasingly sloppy team. It’s the NDP, with their new and encouragingly battle-ready leader, Thomas Mulcair.

The anti-Rae TV barrage did nothing but remind voters that the Harper Conservatives are always on the edge of being angry about something, hardly ever cheerful and never at ease, even now when they have a majority.

The Harperites should be enjoying political nirvana at present. They are kings of the Hill and have decimated their life-long enemies, the Liberals. You’d never guess, looking at the grim faces and drooping heads of the Cabinet this week as they hopelessly tried to unsnarl the F-35 mess.

Mr. Rae, however, has no confusion. He knows that Canadian politics is different now. And he knows it’s the NDP, and particularly its leader, that are the new and challenging factor. The holiday that the NDP race gave the Liberals is over. The Liberals and their (it is to be presumed) interim leader will have to struggle for every morsel of publicity and airtime they can get.

The one exception is Justin Trudeau, who inhabits a singular world all his own — that of Canada’s number one celebrity-politician, who can summon the cameras and laptops anytime he wishes to take a shave or clobber a Senator.

Just how parlous Mr. Rae’s circumstance has suddenly become can be divined from the language he directed toward Thomas Mulcair. He reached for the heaviest, hardest rhetorical stone: He called Mr. Mulcair — brace yourselves — a “mini Harper.” Apart from sprinkling Mr. Mulcair with Holy Water, identifying him as Beezelbub, and summoning the Saints for aid in exorcising him from the Commons, Mr. Rae could not have hit any harder: In Liberal circles, “Harper” is a synonym for every mean and nasty thing under the sun, and a few that the sun has lacked the courage to look at.

He went even further, when he tried to turn the legacy words of Jack Layton, about hope and optimism, into a parody insult against Mulcair. That was harsh and meant to wound. Said Mr. Rae, of the NDP under Mulcair: “We’ve now moved to a world where anger apparently is better than love, arrogance is now better than humility and petulance is much stronger than respect.

What all this tells us is that at least one leader in the House of Commons has sized up the new reality. Thomas Mulcair is the real and serious challenge. And he is not in the mold of the opposition panda bears with whom Stephen Harper was blessed in previous outings. This is neither Dion nor Ignatieff.

Mulcair, in fact, has very much of Mr. Harper’s own style. He is not unequipped with self-esteem, has a bristling, prickly way with opponents, and would rather hit hard than not hit at all. If the Tories launch ad drones against Mulcair, they will find themselves equally under fire.

There is another element to Thomas Mulcair we have not really seen in a while. He actually wants, deep in his heart, to replace Stephen Harper. Really. In the days of Dion and Ignatieff, the wish to beat Harper was there, but it was somehow a timid thing, half-way between a whim and “it’d be nice.”

There’s no equivocation now. There’s nothing lukewarm about Mulcair’s determination. He knows the job he wants. The Harperites have a dedicated and intense opposition on their case and a leader who really understands that the only purpose of an opposition is to turn it into a government — an insight not really on display in the last five years or so.

All this should really worry the Harper administration, for they have coasted with weak opposition for a long while, and not paid a heavy price for having so unimpressive a front bench. The period of laziness without cost, and mediocrity making do are over. With this new opposition under a new leader, the Liberals will have to fight for their political lives, and the Conservatives will have to give up their useless games and conduct politics as adults for a change.

National Post

[Unsound]

He might be right about Mulcair, but I wonder if the NDP will be able to hold on to enough of what they gained in Quebec to remain official opposition.

[Gunnair]

Unsound Unsound:

He might be right about Mulcair, but I wonder if the NDP will be able to hold on to enough of what they gained in Quebec to remain official opposition.

Depends really. I rather like Mulchair and I cannot wait to see him get to grips with the CPC, if only for the fun. The politics of Quebec aside, if Mulchair scores big, the Quebec voters will know which side of their bread is buttered. The Bloc did nothing for them and would never do anything for them as they are simply a regional protest party. A revitalized NDP, however, with fire and brimstone leader at its head - well that's different. Frankly, as much as I liked Jack Layton and rather admired him, I didn't see the tough as nails I wanted to see in him when I imagined him as a PM on the international stage. Harper has that and Mulchair may have that as well.

Again, all Mulchair has to do is make himself look Prime Ministerial and he'll maintain the Quebec vote and frankly, attract those Liberal voters looking for anything but Harper - unless of course the Liberals manage to pick a populist leader like say, Trudeau.

Justin's time may be coming sooner rather than later since Rae has long past his best before date and the NDP look to gain even more of the Liberal vote. They may have to wheel out Pierre's progeny and since he can hold his own in the ring, I think thay must be considering it even more.

Perhaps that's why Rae looks so damned scared these days.