So I’ve had a couple of people ask me what I thought of Cherniak’s post where he basically thought Iggy should let Dion do the questioning of the PM, and he should do only questioning of specific ministers.. which has caused a few Libloggers heads to explode.
A) If Iggy is supposed to stop questioning Harper.. then the rest of Dion’s front-bench are going to have to do the same.. because I’ve seen many of the front-benchers like Robillard and so on directly question the PM.
B) It doesnt make much sense to me if you’re emphasizing the Liberal “Team” as opposed to Harper’s persona of 1-man total control of his Cabinet that you shut down Iggy or anyone else.
C) Iggy is the Deputy Leader and without portfolio.. his job is to follow up Dion’s questions with his own… and where he targets the question is due to the particular issue of the day. He can also be used as Dion’s attack dog, since Dion doesnt have the temperament for that.
In short, I think Jason is way off-base (on this point anyhow. He has good suggestions about getting the Liberal blogosphere more involved and such.. but that single assertion overshadowed everything else that was useful to debate).
I agree. Muffling Iggy is not going to work. Dion needs a back up man and Iggy is best suited for it. Dion today spoke at the Toronto summit Alliance, which is good and we need to get him to do more speaking.