I Agree With Wendy Camp: The Values Held by the Red Tories are Alive and Well in the Leader of the Liberal Party

Wendy Camp, widow of the late Dalton Camp has written a wonderful column for the Mark News recently about Michael Ignatieff being a Progressive Conservative.

I couldn't agree more. He embraces the best of the Liberals and PCs. Both parties that governed from the centre.

In 1993, I voted for Kingston's PC candidate, Barry Gordon, a local auctioneer. I remember the campaign was quite heated between he and Peter Milliken, and as we know, Milliken won and the PCs were reduced to two seats.
In 2001, just days after Peter Milliken was named Speaker of the House, I attended a Gordons auction and noticed that Milliken's sister was in the audience. Barry's wife Alicia, also an auctioneer, announced before beginning the sale, Milliken's appointment.

She pointed his sister out to the audience and stated that we should all be proud and what an honour this was for Kingston. There was a round of applause. That's what politics are supposed to be about. Not this hyper-partisan blood letting that we wittiness today. At some point the discourse must be about what's good for the country and what's good for the Canadian people. But we never have those discussions anymore.

"Just visiting", "elites", "university types". Simple messages to dummy us down.

As Wendy Camp says:

There’s a man out there who has created a deep pool of experience from which we can all draw, through a lifetime spent teaching, observing, and living in the world. He has come home to us and this summer, he has travelled this country talking to whoever will listen. He’s said he has a big red tent in which we can all meet to talk about what we can do for each other and the planet. And under which there is shelter from the storm.

His name is Michael Ignatieff. It just happens he’s a Liberal. I feel he’s being true to himself and by being true to himself, he assures me that he will be true to the people of this country. I am comfortable with the way he thinks, his intelligence, the way he speaks to us and with us across the country, across party lines, in both official languages. I think he’d make a good prime minister. That’s just my opinion.

There’ll be people in the old Progressive Conservative party who’ll say: “Oh my god, she’s gone and turned Grit.” Well, you know what? It’s not about that. It’s about finding the person who best demonstrates the empathy and skills necessary to improve this country and the world beyond it, who best exemplifies those values once embodied by the Progressive Conservatives. That person, I believe, is Michael Ignatieff.

When I first told my friends that I was joining the Liberal Party and supporting Michael Ignatieff, they thought I'd gone nuts. Despite the fact that my parents were always die-hard Liberals, I had become die-hard PC, inspired by a local MP, Flora McDonald.

But I had accepted that the PCs were gone, and flailed about looking for someone to make me believe in politics again. I didn't know much about Michael Ignatieff then, so I read his The Rights Revolution and Blood and Belonging, and I was hooked.

And you know what? I think Dalton Camp would approve. Just ask his wife.

Michael Ignatieff Finds More Canadian Roots

It's quite a joke really that Michael Ignatieff is "Just Visiting" and that he's not Canadian enough.

I think he represents who Canadians are. The son of immigrants on his father's side and United Empire Loyalists on his mother's.

His great-grandfather even played an imminent role in Confederation. "Just Visiting" indeed.

The federal Liberal leader, who's on a cross-country tour to meet ordinary Canadians, was eager to walk through the front door of Fisher House on Sunday. The house is one of 30 properties located at the award-winning
living history village west of Fredericton that depicts rural life in 19th century New Brunswick.

The house was once owned by Peter Fisher, a Fredericton blacksmith, merchant and historian who's a great-great-great-great-grandfather to Ignatieff. While Ignatieff's namesake ancestors were noblemen who served in czarist Russia, his mother's family roots link him to United Empire Loyalists in Fredericton. "It's been very emotional for me to see where it all starts in New Brunswick," Ignatieff said after touring the ground-floor of the two-storey shingled-siding house.

The Liberal website is looking very good and the cross-country tour is a success.

Stop the Presses! Stop the Presses! The National Post Praises Michael Ignatieff

Am I being punked? Should I be frightened?

The National Post actually published a fairly flattering piece on Michael Ignatieff and his summer pre-victory tour.

The wheels have not come off the Liberal Express bus, prone to breakdown though it may be. If he loses the next election, the Liberal leader may yet return to the ivory tower, but for now he is showing a stamina and resilience that has even surprised his political opponents.

On the evidence of day two of his summer tour around the barbecue circuit, this is a much more humble Michael Ignatieff than the man who came back to Canada after three decades away and presumed to tell Canadians how the country should be run. He may still believe that to know him is to love him but at least he now pays lip-service to the belief that "it's not just about me."

He has spent the day telling small groups of Liberals along the shores of the St. Lawrence River why the time is right for a "responsible, compassionate, progressive government ... a positive vision, a hopeful vision" as an alternative to Stephen Harper's "politics of the grudge." For the first time since watching him at his nomination meeting in Etobicoke-Lakeshore in the winter of 2005, I get the sense that he now understands in his bones why he is back in Canada -- that there is a purpose, other than because being prime minister would be the crowning achievement on an already storied resume.

And in a crazy kind of parallel universe, the Toronto Star got a dressing down for resorting to mindless gossip. Not that the Star are pro-Michael. They are usually fairly balanced. But they published an article without one single source.

And Dan Gardner brings up an interesting point. The Reformers are constantly belittling Michael Ignatieff because he taught (headed up his department) at Harvard, and yet praise the new GG because he attended.

When Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced his pick for governor general would be David Johnston, Conservatives did not mock Johnston for having attended Harvard University. Indeed, some mentioned this fact respectfully. As
if it's a good thing. This is remarkable because, as Aaron Wherry of Maclean's documented with a long list of quotations, the Conservatives have for several years been incapable of saying the word "Harvard" without sneering.

Of course the explanation for this change of heart is a change of circumstances. The Conservatives have cast Michael Ignatieff as an elitist intellectual who spent most of his working life outside Canada and the fact that he was, before returning to Canada, a Harvard professor, made sneering references to "Harvard" -- always with curled lip, occasionally with raised pinky -- the perfect summation of this charge. But as Stephen Harper's pick, David Johnston must be, ipso facto, a man of accomplishment and distinction. And so what is ridiculous for Ignatieff is praiseworthy for Johnston.

.... That is all too normal, unfortunately. The power of cognitive dissonance, and the capacity of people to fool themselves, should never be underestimated. I am confident Conservatives sincerely believe David Johnston and Mark Carney are supremely qualified but Michael Ignatieff is hopelessly unfit. And I am sure they have an exquisite rationalizations for why this is so. Please send them to the e-mail below. I assure you I will read them. And smile.

Follow the Liberal blog that chronicles their tour. It's like adrenaline for the soul.

For me, I'm going back to bed. This National Post thing has me completely frazzled.

T-Shirts. Get Your Michael Ignatieff T-Shirts

Nadine Lumley has created this T-shirt that all Michael Ignatieff supporters should have.

You can purchase them at the 'I'm Voting for Michael Ignatieff Shop'. There are a great many other items available that are just a commitment to unseating the destructive Harper's NeoCon party.

You don't have to be a Liberal supporter because she has a nice selection. But if you're not a Liberal supporter, you and I should talk. (my bad)

I've decided that it's not good enough to simply expose the Reform-Conservatives, but that I also must start to work toward promoting their replacement.

I am still a fan of both Jack Layton and Elizabeth May, and Libby Davies remains my favourite MP; but this next election we can't afford to split the vote. When Michael Ignatieff is prime minister, he won't get a free ride. I will keep him on his toes.

And remember in the summer of 2005, Mike Harris began a 'Dump Harper' campaign hoping to replace him with Tony Clement, while Nicole Eaton was having parties for Jim Flaherty, hoping that he would replace the hapless Harper, who despite having combined the two right-wing parties, was sitting at 23% in the polls with a 14% approval rating.

We can do this by working together for positive change. Four more years of Stephen Harper is not an option.