{"id":1344,"date":"2007-03-28T16:11:00","date_gmt":"2007-03-28T20:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=1344"},"modified":"2007-03-28T16:11:00","modified_gmt":"2007-03-28T20:11:00","slug":"the-morning-after-the-morning-after","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=1344","title":{"rendered":"The morning after the morning after"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jean Charest<\/span><\/strong>: It could<\/em> have been worse for him but the man is certainly vulnerable, which means there will be intense pressure from within his own party to resign or, at the very least, rebrand<\/span>. Minority governments are dicey in even the most stable political places and Quebec politics is the antithesis of stability so it\u2019s really hard to predict how he\u2019ll fare or if the PLQ<\/span> can afford a leadership race before the next election. Because of that, I\u2019ll predict he stays around until the next vote.<\/p>\n

Andre Boisclair<\/span><\/strong>: The PQ<\/span> will be having a leadership review vote this June. Given that the party has been known to knife even their most successful leaders, I can\u2019t for the life of me imagine Boisclair<\/span> surviving the vote. The timing of the vote certainly opens the door for Duceppe<\/span> to jump provincially should the PQ<\/span> dump Boisclair<\/span> but I can\u2019t really see why anyone would want to lead the PQ<\/span> these days and, we should remember, he already turned the job down once under far better circumstances. Regardless of who their leader is, the PQ<\/span> has a real identity crisis on their hands now and might not even promise a referendum in their next campaign platform.<\/p>\n

Mario Dumont<\/span><\/strong>: Usually in minority governments, the Premier is the man under the microscope but I think it\u2019s fair to say all eyes will be on Mario Dumont<\/span>. He\u2019s going to have to borrow a few muzzles from his buddy Steve to keep the wing nuts who were elected in check. He\u2019ll also have to show that his party is credible and ready to govern. If he performs well as opposition leader, the next election is his to lose\u2026but on the flip side, if he stumbles, the ADQ<\/span> could fall back to fringe status next time since he doesn<\/span>\u2019t have the entrenched voter loyalty the other two parties command. It will be very interesting to see how much pressure he puts on Charest<\/span>, in particular with respect to demanding more \u201cautonomy\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Bloc Quebecois<\/strong>: Is in serious trouble next election. I\u2019ll go into this a bit more as we lead up to the election since it\u2019s not directly tied to the provincial vote but, for now, is there anyone out there who can name one issue they have to attract voters? Because I don’t think an anti-scab law is going to exactly capture the imagination of the Quebecois<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Stephen Harper<\/strong>: I don\u2019t necessarily buy the argument that what happens provincially translates federally\u2026if anything provincial governments usually counter their federal counterparts. However, what the strength of the ADQ<\/span> has shown is that Harper certainly has the potential to gain votes in Quebec. It shows there are Quebecers<\/span> willing to vote for a party with conservative values under the right circumstances. Now, no one really knows how much of the vote was a protest vote, how much was anti-Montreal, how much was about reasonable accommodation, how much was about Dumont<\/span>\u2019s personal popularity, and how much was about Charest<\/span> and Boiclair<\/span> being universally hated. But the potential<\/em> is there for a Quebec breakthrough.<\/p>\n

That said, outside of Quebec, I don\u2019t see this as a great victory for Harper. The man burned through a wad lot of political capital (and monetary capital too) to get Jean Charest<\/span> re-elected and the end result was anything but a resounding victory for Harper\u2019s ally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jean Charest: It could have been worse for him but the man is certainly vulnerable, which means there will be intense pressure from within his own party to resign or, at the very least, rebrand. Minority governments are dicey in even the most stable political places and Quebec politics is the antithesis of stability so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1344\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}