I’m biased – full disclosure, I’ve done and do comms work for the Ontario Liberal caucus – but this Tweet from the Globe’s Queen’s Park analyst is noteworthy:

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That was my initial reaction when I heard about the firm that came up with this doozy:

I was skeptical for a few reasons.  One, I hadn’t heard of Abacus before.  Two, it was a bit out of whack with what others have been reporting in recent months.  Three – if true – it means we are heading into a Spring election, but nobody’s body language (currently) suggests that is in any way possible.  Four, if the NDP is that close to the federal Liberals – and, frankly, after Bob Rae’s disastrous Afghanistan decision, I wouldn’t be surprised to see our left-flank vote collapse – we could be seeing the beginning of some truly historic changes at the federal level.  Five, the Liberal Party of Canada slipping below 25 per cent – the lowest of the low – is a full-on, five-alarm disaster.

However, as my Sun Media colleague David Akin has reported, Abacus is no bucket shop (despite the fact that they are seemingly fronted by Doogie Howser, Pollster).  Abacus is affiliated with Summa, which is one of the most reputable G.R. shops in the country (and, full disclosure, with which my own firm has happily worked in the past).  Messrs. Powers, Armour et al. are top-notch, and serious players, to boot.  So Abacus, by extension, needs to be taken seriously.

The numbers themselves are, as I say, a bit inconsistent with recent voter intention surveys.  But, as the brainy Calgary Grit points out in his regular poll round-up (in which he includes Abacus as the “new kid on the block,” and which I only noticed just now) they’re not so inconsistent as you might think.  Add a little to the blue side, trim a little off the red side, and: presto! Unmitigated disaster (from my perspective, anyway).

The fact that Nanos was postulating something similar on Monday does little to improve my now-gloomy holiday mood.  In his expert view (but for different reasons), a majority is indeed within Harper’s reach.

Yikes.

The solution?  Well, it’s not getting rid of the leader, for starters.  The moment such a move is made in earnest, the Reformatories will concoct a pretext for an immediate election.  Ignatieff has earned the right to lead the party in the next election, notwithstanding what I (and many others) think about his senior staff’s acumen, or the total absence of a ballot question.  Or policy.  Or, or.

So what to do? What dost thou thinkest, gentle readers?  Is there a ballot question – or a strategy – left that the federal Liberals can grasp onto?  Something that will forestall Armageddon, or even (somehow) carve out a minority government?

Comments are open.

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“Thinkers at the University of Toronto’s Mowatt Centre think-tank have determined Canada has the greatest amount of electoral inequality of pretty much any federation on the planet. That’s right: In the whole world, we’re the absolute worst at ensuring that every vote is equal. America does best; we’re at the bottom.

Says Matthew Mendelsohn, director of the Mowat Centre: “Our research finds that compared to similar federations, Canada is now way (out) of step internationally in violating the principle of voter equality.”

The three guys who had or have seats in the three fastest-growing provinces are Messrs. Harper, Ignatieff and Layton. You’d think they’d be working overtime to fix this problem, because they potentially have the most to gain. Most of those new seats would go to them.

But, um, no.”

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What documents should be disclosed, when, and by whom?  What’s a free press, and what’s a reckless media?

The question I struggle with – and not in the abstract, either – is this: if a political opponent, or a media person started digging around around in your personal medical records, or your family’s past, or some divorce files, or whatever, would you be mollified by their pious claims that people have a “right to know”?  Or would you be outraged enough to want to sue them until their teeth bleed, or worse, to protect those you love?

Interesting questions.  I suspect we’ll be coming back to them, in the WikiWeeks ahead.

Monte falls asleep as I attempt to demonstrate how to tackle Mr. Assange. Linkage at 1:45 or something.

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I may have an interesting announcement to make on CBC’s Power and Politics tonight.

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Fourteen reasons we need gun control in this country:

• Geneviève Bergeron (born 1968), civil engineering student
• Hélène Colgan (born 1966), mechanical engineering student
• Nathalie Croteau (born 1966), mechanical engineering student
• Barbara Daigneault (born 1967), mechanical engineering student
• Anne-Marie Edward (born 1968), chemical engineering student
• Maud Haviernick (born 1960), materials engineering student
• Maryse Laganière (born 1964), budget clerk in the École Polytechnique’s finance department
• Maryse Leclair (born 1966), materials engineering student
• Anne-Marie Lemay (born 1967), mechanical engineering student
• Sonia Pelletier (born 1961), mechanical engineering student
• Michèle Richard (born 1968), materials engineering student
• Annie St-Arneault (born 1966), mechanical engineering student
• Annie Turcotte (born 1969), materials engineering student
• Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz (born 1958), nursing student

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“…The end result gave Ms. Javier a paltry 1,647 votes, which NDP MP Pat Martin (Winnipeg Centre, Man.) says came largely from a diehard knot of Filipino Conservative supporters who supported the tough-on-crime agenda Prime Minister Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) drew attention to on his only low-profile visit to the riding. Had Mr. Larkin been the Conservative candidate, after having won 5,033 votes and 22 per cent of the vote in the 2008 election, Liberal candidate Kevin Lamoureux, who resigned his provincial legislative assembly seat to contest the byelection, would have lost, the senior Conservative said.

It appears that despite allegations the Conservatives put up Ms. Javier to draw votes from the Liberals, the opposite was the case—Prime Minister Harper and the Conservatives wanted Mr. Lamoureux to win.

Party insiders say there is one main reason: They want Mr. Ignatieff to be leading the Liberal Party into the next general election. Mr. Ignatieff has the lowest personal voter support ratings on the federal scene, perhaps since Brian Mulroney, although not for the same reasons, and he has been unable to bring the party’s support above the 30-per-cent threshold in public opinion polls. Critics say he has no political instincts and makes mistakes. For example, last week he got the Dauphin-Swan River-Marquette riding wrong when he was addressing his caucus.

“If they lost all three, the knives would have been out,” the Conservative said. Another told The Hill Times in an earlier interview after the byelections: “We’re happy Iggy is staying.”

Get that?  Clear?  They wanted to lose, because by losing, they end up winning, despite the fact that they lost, badly.  Understood?

In other news, we have obtained an exclusive photograph of a Senior Conservative Party strategist, hard at work in the party’s war room bunker:

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“As a charter member of the Alberta diaspora, I admit I was rankled by the way the Conservative and Liberal parties – and the central Canadian media, too – seemingly ignored the two Manitoba contests over the one in Ontario. For example, Ignatieff sent his election “A Team” into Vaughan (including senior members of his personal staff), and they got clearly out-hustled. The rag-tag Grit gang in Winnipeg’s North End, meanwhile, received proportionately far less support from headquarters – but delivered on the ground, big time.

The Conservatives, too, appeared much more preoccupied with the one Ontario faceoff over the two in Manitoba. While the Cons were never in any trouble in the rural riding of Dauphin-Swan River-Marquette, their decision to drop an extremely weak candidate in Winnipeg North – and if you saw the same interview I did on CPAC, “weak” doesn’t even begin to describe her – helped pave the way for a Liberal victory.“

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Our circle of Calgary punks secretly (and not so secretly) adored Cheap Trick.  The Nasties, accordingly, played Cheap Trick tunes, and this one in particular.

Tonight, it seems quite appropriate.  Besides, you’ve gotta love Robin’s outfit.

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• Toronto Star: “Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak is striving to suppress an insurrection by rural elements within his party. Hudak was forced to act after critical comments by one of his most respected MPPs appeared in the Ottawa Citizen. MPP Norm Sterling (Carleton-Mississippi Mills), a 33-year member and former cabinet minister, is outraged that MPP Randy Hillier (Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington) is trying to usurp his Ottawa-area seat. Hillier’s close friend, Jack MacLaren, a former president of the Ontario Landowners Association, wants to topple Sterling in a nomination meeting expected next spring.“
• Globe and Mail: “But as they choose their candidates for next year’s provincial election, the Tories’ inability to control Mr. Hillier is starting to look like a much bigger problem for them. Although he cultivates an image as an enlightened bumpkin – a guy who enjoys quoting John Locke and shooting deer in equal measure – Mr. Hillier has proven himself a shrewd political operator. And as the most visible face of the Ontario Landowners Association, a hard-line libertarian organization of which he was formerly president, he appears to be at the forefront of a Progressive Conservative civil war breaking out in the eastern part of the province.“
• CTV: “Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak is trying to quell concerns that a big rift is developing in the Tory ranks. Conservative Norm Sterling is apparently fuming about his caucus colleague Randy Hillier, and blames the rural activist for a failed effort to steal his Ottawa-area riding association.“
• Post Media: “The provincial Progressive Conservative party is struggling with an insurrection of rural libertarians with a “very narrow and right-wing agenda,” says west-side MPP Norm Sterling, who is blaming fellow Ottawa-area Tory Randy Hillier for a failed bid to steal his riding association out from under him.“

…and all of that doesn’t even begin to address the problems associated with Hudak letting in extremists like Ed Kennedy to serve on Ontario Progressive Conservative Party executives, who writes things like:  “Typical n****r behavior. Concealed carry would have made the outcome much different. Note if the perpetrators had been White, they would have all got the death penalty for a hate crime against n*****s. And the lieberals wonder why a large segment of Whites hate blacks and distrust them. I am surprised the black bastards did not try to rape them, that is standard fare for n*****s.“

Tim Hudak’s Conservatives: they’re ready for something, but becoming government isn’t one of them.

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