Two Grinnin' Grits on the Morning After

Despite victories in their home ridings, the 103 elected Liberals must feel bittersweet this morning after. Overall, the Grits didn't do all that bad, better than many polls predicted. Of course, critically, they held on to their Ontario plurality: that was a given. And they actually gained a seat in BC. As John Manley - who will not be the new leader - bespoke: "Well it's not just 2 seats" unsubtlely reminding us of the 1993 Tory humiliation. But still a night of somber sobriety it was ...except for two prominent Liberals who weren't even running.

One, of course, is Chretien whose enduring hatred for Paul Martin is a matter of record. He will be unconcealedly delighted with the ignonimous dumping of that persistently pesky pretender to his throne. Especial glee may come for Jean in contemplating that, whatever his own sullied "legacy", Martin's will inalterably be even lesser, a small piece added to the dusty miniature collection of prime ministers who never won a majority and, accordingly, didn't stay around long enough to have even back alleys named for them (e.g. Turner, Campbell).

The other Lib whose mirth may be really hard to contain in this pale blue dawn is the man who, I predict, in a surprisingly short time, will assure Stephen Harper's place amidst that same array of the soon-to-be-politically-forgotten: His Excellency, Frank McKenna. Methinks he'll quickly be winging home from Washington ready to inherit the mantle of Canada's Natural Ruling Party. Once the Liberals have reorchestrated under this glib New Brunswicker's baton, they will get busy undermining Harper's tenuous minority government -- which will not be all that hard to do. The strange and creepy fauna whom the Conservative election machine managed to gag for the past two months will come bobbing into public view from their customary abyss, readily giving the re-engineered McKenna Liberals more than enough ammunition to insure reclaiming their divine right of governance.