Stupid Canadians. Wherever would we get such an idea?
The reaction to Mr. Ignatieff’s defeat has focused largely on trying to explain how his reputation as one of Harvard’s most respected professors, a charismatic intellectual who could pack classrooms and once graced the cover of GQ magazine, could have worked against him with voters.
Mark Leccese, a journalism professor and media blogger at Boston.com, wrote that Mr. Ignatieff’s colleagues were dismayed that negative connotations about Harvard — long a code word in U.S. political rhetoric for “out-of-touch elitist” — seemed to have crossed the border into Canada.
“If Ignatieff had been a professor at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople, would the ad have been as powerful?” he wrote.
h/t Lookout
Michael Ignatieff did not lose because he is intellectual and educated. He did not lose because of Conservative attack ads. He did not lose because he was out of Canada for thirty years.
He lost because he was perpetually angry. He was angry at Canadians for not embracing him, the way the party did when they promised him the office of Prime Minister if he would leave Harvard and return to Canada.
He scowled, he raved, he ranted, he shook his finger at us like we were errant schoolboys.
He scolded us as he scolded Harper, he was angry that we were incapable of seeing the perfection of his lofty views.
His frowning, jowl shaking, dressing-down of the government and the citizens did not get the results he expected, and he became more angry.
Even if he had done everything else right, his ridiculous “Rise Up” performance would have defeated him. It was embarrassing to watch, and must have rendered a lot of his own people queasy.
The voters did not defeat Michael Ignatieff, Micheal Ignatieff defeated Michael Ignatieff.
That was also the premise of their campaign. Us good natural order party, them evil Boy Scouts. Trust me, I am respected in Boston.
Of course there are no Boy Scouts in Canada, only a co-ed group. Iggy might have know that if he lived here.
Well, P D Q Bach makes more sense than Canadian politics lately. Maybe people are looking at the US administration which is basically the Harvard Faculty and a total disaster. All these people do is cause problems, thats what they do best. Yhey’re not interested in solving any of them.
The ‘Rise Up’ episode must have been an acid flash back to the MacArthur Park cake that was left out in the rain. I believe that was Iggy’s era was it not?
Iggy has been left out in the snow … and the fool forced an election before he had is “two and six” for the 72 virgin-level Canadian MP’s indexed pension.
Gee, do you think it might have something to do with the fact that everything he said during his years at Harvard aligned him with the Conservatives? Then he comes up here and joins the Liberals, and suddenly he’s changed his stance on just about everything?
“If Ignatieff had been a professor at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople, would the ad have been as powerful?”
Short answer is yes, of course it would. Because it doesn’t really matter if it was Harvard or Bumwad U, it was an American university. And no-one has done more in the last half-century to foster an instinctive anti-American bigotry in Canadians than the Liberal Party so beloved of the Harvard drones. They made that bed – it’s only fitting they should have to lie in it.
(And BTW, where is Southern North Dakota?)
Micheal Ignatieff would have been more comfortable in the Conservative Party.
IMHO, his discomfort arose from the fact that the Liberal Party that he knew when he left Canada has been taken over by NDP Trojan Horses like Bob Rae.
Stephane Dion moved the party left, Harper took over the territory Iggy was more comfortable with.
Simple.
Michael Ignatief lost because he was the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and the LPC is finished, redundant, irrelevent because they share too much in common with the NDP.
How did that happen?
Stephen Harper made that happen by pulling the CPC to the left and forcing the LPC into NDP policy territory.
Quote “short answer is yes, of course it would. Because it doesn’t really matter if it was Harvard or Bumwad U, it was an American university. And no-one has done more in the last half-century to foster an instinctive anti-American bigotry in Canadians than the Liberal Party so beloved of the Harvard drones. They made that bed – it’s only fitting they should have to lie in it.”
Thread winner ! What they did was despicable, and so many brainwashed CANADIANS believe it still.
We had one previous “gifted academic”, “intellectual” prime minister during my lifetime. He gave us massive debt, 12% unemployment, 18% inflation, the NEP and soldiers on welfare. The Harvard elite seem not to realize we the voters have a learning curve too.
“If Ignatieff had been a professor at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople, would the ad have been as powerful?”
Well, considering that North Dakota has a $1 billion budget surplus, less than 4% unemployment and the fastest growing per capita income in the country — whereas Massachusetts has a $2 billion shortfall and a slumping economy — I would naturally assume a North Dakotan would know something about governance.
Very well said sylvanguy
Iggy’s loss didn’t have as much to do with his time outside of Canada as it had to do with his time inside of Canada.
That Lecesse would pose the question in such a manner confirms the “out-of-touch elitism” of Harvard professors.
Iggy was his own worst enemmy.
Allied to a party renounedforits corruption with onluastatagy of division by the now proven insanity of Multiculturalism.
The lIberals tribalizeed Canada & for that we should be grateful? Its been a disaster.
JMO
Pete at 12:41 nailed it. The Liberal party presents itself as everything for everybody. They have no ideology except to be elected. the Conservatives should take note as to how that particular idea worked out and get back to their core values. They have 4 years to convince Canadians that they stand for something.
Great point Lord of the Fleas, demonize for years all things American as a way of bullying anyone advocating a less statist form of anything, and then sit there gob-smacked when the self-declared American academic isn’t instantly welcomed to run the country! I hope you don’t mind I added that very point to my comment at the Boston Globe.
As LotF alluded to, please note that the Leftards at the Harvard Crimson are seriously trying to arguing that the Liberal Party of Canada is pro-American and Conservatives are anti-American.
The depth & breadth of that assertion gives an entirely new meaning to “Stuck on Stupid”!
I would say being out of the country 30+ years did not help his case much. How eager would Americans be to crown someone President who had been out of THEIR country for 30+ years, only being back for 5 or 6? HMMM?
“If Ignatieff had been a professor at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople, would the ad have been as powerful?”
As far as I’m concerned, more so, powerful that is.
Many young Sask farm lads have gone down to ND to get an education on a hockey scholarship and done quite well for themselves.
Also, North Dakotans as a group are hard working, semi-libertarian (i.e. leave me along to farm in peace)who display grace in hospitality. Any affect of influence by them would be viewed as a positive in my mind.
So, yes, if I found out one of our leaders had been educated in ND it would have been more powerful… for the better.
BTW, North Dakota is also in the midst of trying to repeal property taxes… nuff said!
I prefer to look at it this way.
Would Americans accept a President who lived out of the country for 30 years? (I’m not referring in anyway to BHO). Just, consider for a moment if a candidate for the Republicans lived in Canada or UK and then jetted back in to lead the party in the 2012 election.
The MSM and the Ivy League elites would tear into them.
So, I have no qualms about the fact that I didn’t vote for Iggy.
Canadians didn’t really like him. That was about it.
People liked him well enough as an academic, coming to Toronto for his highbrow CBC lectures, being all engaging and charming. I remember listening to him on the radio late one night, and it was better than a glass of warm milk.
But he was not a leader that Canadians wanted. In fact his leadership ratings were in the toilet long before the attack ads started. It just took a while for the Liberal party to follow him.
It is ironic that through the election, it became painfully obvious that he just did not “get” Canada, and the last 35 years of politics in this country. He didn’t know he was sticking his foot in his mouth over and over again. Even his constant baseball analogies, while they are OK, seem out of place in Canadian political talk.
The original column by Shalini K. Rao is worth a read only to learn the depth of ignorance of this young woman. She is just another Urban Left Bigot who only has disdain & contempt for conservative Canadians.
Ignatief was largely irrelevant to the results of the last election. The federal Liberal Party has been in steady decline since the 2000 election. It became apparent during the Chretien years that the Liberal Party had no meaningful future vision of Canada, had no long term strategy or ideas for the country’s future, and had no useful concept of Canada’s place and role in the world.
The policy bankruptcy of the party is illustrated by the fact that they trotted out another Red Book, which was largely just warmed over stuff from the original one in 93. Ten years ago, the Party still had lots of people with talent and energy. Most of them on the centre and right of the party largely left during the Martin years.
The reunification of the right accelerated matters, but the simple fact is that the Liberals have given central Canada less and less reason to vote for them. The party’s financial straits are one thing. Far more serious for them is that the party has been bankrupt of vision or ideas for about 20 years.
Are the majority of the Boston Elite even aware that we just had an election? What we’re seeing is the reaction of the media (who are just trying to sell newspapers and to whom being patronizing comes naturally – see Heather Malice’s column in the Grauniad for example) and a few liberal academics who probably are not aware that there are people living outside of Toronto (which, by the way is the REAL centre of the universe, not Harvard: lets get that straight).
A little research revealed more about Shalini K. Rao.
There’s one particularly interesting factoid near the end: “… and the previous summer I interned for a Canadian politician.”
Wanna bet which party that politician belonged to?
Did they offer their ‘star professor’ a job or is Hogtown the new center of the universe?
I would have paid money to have been in the local Harverd Starbucks the next morning after this happened.
I don’t GARA what they think about us and I seriously doubt that they GARA about the Canadian election. This just gives academics another opportunity to feel persecuted for the crime of being intelligent and just all around fabulous human beings. It is the high class version of a pity party – someone send them some ice cream and expensive scotch.
doesn’t say much for the USND, hard working farm folks. but then again, conservatives have been known to eat their young and their elders.
several posters made salient points as to Iggy’s failure
but at the end of the day, he was a “academic”, with NO leadership qualities, and in that area he has a lot in common with Obama bin Laden
cgh: ouch. lol !!!
When he came up here to great MSM fanfare, I looked into his background and thought that he had some appealing positions which could move the Liberal party firmly to the centre and even centre-right. This all changed when he said some really stupid things (the Israel=war criminals is the first one that comes to mind) that I couldn’t forgive him for. I then began to view him as someone who would say anything to get elected and he quickly got sucked into the Liberal Party mindset.
Simply put, Ignatieff lost because he had the political instincts of a puffin.
Stupid Liberals. Wherever did they get their crazy idea?
“Being an academic would not be a good start in this county and being an academic who had spent a long time outside of the United States is a double whammy…People would be less surprised that it happened and was done badly but that it happened at all.”
Peter Shickele aka PDQ Bach “The Stoned Guest” University of Southern North Dakota. Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtqtrCbj3kk
Iggy wasn’t comfortable in his own skin.
It’s obvious that he’d bought the Rosedale backroom boys’ promise of making him Prime Minister without his having do do very much, other than be crowned LPC leader, sit across the aisle from the CPC, slag the CPC, mock Prime Minister Harper, and show up occasionally at the HOC (‘turns out, only 30% of the time).
He bought their bribes hook, line, and sinker (hey, he and Szuszanna did get to live in Stornoway for a few years, when they weren’t in residence in their Yorkville condo) and because all he had to do was “show up” and be an “intellectual” Liberal leader (even that he didn’t do very well), there didn’t seem to be any authentic energy or conviction put into his performances.
I always saw a hand puppet, smiling on cue, nodding his head on cue, shaking his finger at us and the CPC on cue. All the energy came from the hand(lers), not him.
It’s hard to be a cypher and keep your sense of perspective. Iggy lost his — and never really found his groove here in the True North Strong and Free.
And, Iggy’s Harvard Cheerleading Team, that’s why we didn’t vote for him,
At American Thinker, here’s another article about the short sightedness of the elites, “Harvard Grapples with Rejection”. (An American friend alerted me to this.)
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/05/harvard_grapples_with_rejectio.html
The good thing about the elites’ navel gazing is they have no plan to actually get power back: simply kvetching, loudly, about the lowliness of their new political masters just doesn’t cut the mustard these days. Poor dears.
And isn’t it a pleasure to watch?!
Igggy and the Liberals lost for three reasons.
First, everyone outside Toronto, Vancouver and Quebec has had it with tax-and-spend socialism. It isn’t working, we won’t vote for it.
Second, Iggy didn’t run as himself. He’s an academic and a stiff. That could have worked for him, because HONESTY always works. People like honesty. Instead he ran as stiff-trying-to-be-cool. That doomed him.
Last, he repudiated everything he believes in just to be in the Liberal Party. I doubt anyone was much impressed with that.
re. that Rao article Robert W. linked: Doesn’t anyone proof read the Harvard Crimson for grammar? Yeesh.
What self-important fools.
Ignatieff, charismatic? PLEASE! Spare us the bad humour. The guy was about as suave as sandpaper.
once graced the cover of GQ magazine
Gee, if I’d known that, I would have voted for the guy. Nothing says leadership, good ideas and management skills like having your picture taken.
the Phantom – “…everyone outside Toronto, Vancouver and Quebec has had it with tax-and-spend socialism. It isn’t working, we won’t vote for it.”
“Harvard sees itself as the centre of the universe, so I’m sure it felt it very deeply,” said Graham Wilson, chair of Boston University’s department of political science.
How can there be two centres of the universe? While Harvard is dismayed at Canada’s non-acceptance of Iggy there has been no mention of whether or not they offered him his job back.
Ah, there’s nothing like watching a liebral on the defensive…they manage to alienate ‘ordinary’ Canadians even more when they start talking about the ‘uneducated rabble’ that didn’t instantly realize that a hahvurd professor that didn’t know anything except how to be a professor was to be looked at in awe and immediately given complete and utter control over their unworthy lives without any foolishness like asking them to vote for him…because they should know that adding letters after your name makes you omniscient and supremely wise in away that a non-professorial serf could never understand.
The biggest problem facing the liebral party, and the one that they won’t get over for at least a generation, is that they still think that they’re automatically right on everything they say or do and to question them is to show ignorance. It’s still being pushed at universities today by the professors that were hired there because they said what the people hiring them wanted them to say, not by any strength of debate or desire for academic curiosity. The real tragedy is that students today are being taught ideology and dogma, not arts and sciences, and that, sadly, won’t be changing until all of the iggy’s are pushed out and a new generation of professors who dare to debate instead of revile a student who expresses a different point of view or wants to explore the other side of a subject.
I do think that Harvard is becoming out of touch with the world. How much mischief have Harvard grads done in Bambi’s administration?
As for Liberal party leaders, I would suggest that their problem is nothing more nor less than stupidity.
“John”‘s note above is spot on.
Rumors going round in Liberal circles (unsubstantiated, of course) are that this song will accompany the crowning of King Harper next week. True?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZAnknH6zgg&feature=fvst
Yeeee-Haw!
With Bob Rae and Justin Trudeau licking their lips at the prospect of being the next Liberal leader the Harvard elite’s mood is not going to improve any time soon.I meant licking their own lips by the way.
““If Ignatieff had been a professor at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople, would the ad have been as powerful?” he wrote.”
Ya,us ice fishing, beer drinking rube hicks would still figure it out.
We might not be “progressive”, but we are smart peons.
The same percentage of Canadians said they’d want their daughter to marry Ignatieff as Elizabeth May.
There’s really nothing more to say.
Lord of the Fleas asked: “BTW, where is Southern North Dakota?”
Its a few miles north of Northern South Dakota.