I thought after Martin had left, that maybe we’d get some advisers with some political savvy to advise the new leader, but at least one of them has proven me wrong.
Jamie Carroll is a carbon-copy of Scott Reid, and that in my opinion is not a good thing.
I’m not going to dive off the deep end like a certain other blogger has been doing, and not that I have much influence in Liberal political circles, but for what little my opinion is worth, it’s time to dump Mr. Carroll and get someone else with a modicum of common political sense in there. I question some of the decisions that seems to have been coming out of the OLO of late, and if this attitude of Carroll’s is any indication, then it’s been time to let him go for awhile.
As far as I’m concerned, musing about whether giving out olive branches to leadership rivals is the right strategy or not and then telling everyone publicly your paranoia about supposed plots, + this latest episode more then tops the “beer and popcorn” comment Reid made for sheer political inanity.
UPDATE @ 9:58pm: A colleague of mine close to the action has read what I had to say and tells me the remarks supposedly made by Carroll attributed to him in the Star article are not what was reported, and that people in the meeting which this all took place would confirm that. I see they’ve now issued a release from Mr. Carroll saying his remarks were misconstrued. If that’s the case, I’m willing to be fair about it, but something was obviously said up there that didn’t go over well; when you’re getting a direct quote to the media from different Liberal sources (Pablo Rodriguez asking for a resignation, as an example), and others doing direct quotes in the paper, Mr. Carroll is obviously at the very least a lightning rod of controversy right now - something this party doesn’t need on top of everything else going on Quebec way.
UPDATE 2: H/T to my deep-end diving associate blogger Steve V, who mentioned in user comments that Andrew Coyne has said that the public statements were just an excuse to articulate a deeper frustration with the leader, and that Mr. Carroll is a lightning rod for other things they are unhappy about.
The story here isn’t Carroll’s remarks, it’s that all these Liberals left a private meeting and ran to the press about the remarks. It wasn’t because they were offended, it was because their knives are out, and they’re out for Dion. The party is self-destructing, fast, it’s getting painful to watch, and if Dion has any power at all to make these people hurt worse than they ever imagined as a warning to anyone else thinking of turning on him, he’d better exercise it ASAP, or it’s over - if it’s not already. I can’t imagine hordes of party members sabotaging Layton, Harper, Martin, Chretien, or even May in the way Dion is right now.
The LPC, especially its Quebec wing, need to band together and stop all this backstabbing, or it’s going to be a decimation, and Layton will become Opposition (not that that would be bad at all, I’m just saying). Party unity is flogged by Cherniak-types to the point of idiocy, but there *is* a need for public unity, and I’ve never in my life seen a better example of why it’s needed than I have this week. It’s getting agonizing to behold.