STRIKE THREE, STEPHANE, YOU'RE OUT
For the love of bob, when will the threadbare Liberal Party wake up and smell the Bourque Newswatch Special Blend percolating on the front burner ?

First, the Party bootstraps itself to the unlilkely leadership of Stephane Dion, untested in virtually every political way, except for his ability to surf on the coat-tails of Jean Chretien's Clarity Act.

A political party, stunned into passiveness, proceeds to abdicate its duties to the Crown as Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition by essentially boycotting every important decision on the legislative agenda. They agitate by verbal vitriol, then skip the actual vote, hoping nobody outside the Parliamentary bubble will notice.

Second, the man who would be green (he hosts a montreal shmoozer and proclaims himself the saviour of the planet) canoodles with Green Party honcho Liz May and gives birth to the Green Shift, a 'tax on everything that moves' under the guise that it alone will temper global warming and patch up the ozone hole, so hated across the land it essentially condemns the Party and its hapless leader to its worst showing at the polls ever. The fella doesn't even have the good grace to apologize, resign on election night, and disappear from the public conscience.

Third, seemingly out of nowhere, a last gasp spitball coalition with arch-rival Jack Layton and his merry band of NDPers, backed by the devil itself, a party who's sole existence is premised on the destruction of Canada.

Try as they may to defend it, the so-called "Three Stooges" coalition, a flaccid force, led by His Ineptness himself, succeeds at nothing more than capturing the wrath of just about every sane federalist from sea to sea to sea.

Worse, in a festive seasonal gesture, the ghost of separatists past, Jacques Parizeau himself, rises from his political grave to cackle a 'Job well done, lad', noting that Dion's acquiescence to the Bloc's veto power virtually ensures that "Quebec sovereingty is once again the order of the day".

Then, Wednesday night, an embarrassing display of miscommunication during Dion's rebuttal to the PM's admittedly lost opportunity to explain himself to an incredulous nation for plunging everyone into such a political nightmare mere weeks after winning the election. Yet Dion fails to rise to the occasion, he barely shows up for that matter.

And the rest is history: prologue-turned-prorogue.

Now, to the task at hand. The immediate and unconditional cutting of whatever umbilical cord that continues to tie this abject failure of a leader to the Liberal Party.

Who among you, hopeful Liberal leadership pretenders, will stand up and call this failure out. The logical choice would seem to be Michael Ignatieff, likely anxious to show even a modicum of leadership in these turbulent times, but perhaps it would be too bald an act of ambition on his part. So, with the bombastic Bob Rae too shellshocked to see that the sideshow is over in all but name, the task should likely fall to that media banana Dominic Leblanc on behalf of us all.

Dom, baby, cue Scott Reid's right hand, pull on a sock, start flapping the gums, and mouth whatever Scott can sound-bite for you. Your moment has arrived. The party, and the nation, awaits.

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