It's safe to say that nobody, even those who voted for the NDP in Quebec, ever expected what happened, to actually happen.
And so the morning after the federal election, Quebeckers woke up and found themselves full of regret, like a debauchee in bed with a complete stranger after a drunken night of revelry, someone who looks over across the pillow and groans shamefully at the pig they bought home.
While 'Smiling Jack' and 'Uncle Tom' try to paint the newly elected placeholders as ready, willing and able to serve, they cannot hide the fact that these merry men and women are neophytes and political zeros, a group that has as much chance of making a political impact as your dog or cat.
In other words- bobbleheads.
The Quebec Press and the the self-proclaimed intellectuals have been making mincemeat out of the public for electing these bobbleheads, but what the election actually proved, is that voters really do vote for the party and that the local candidate is not even an afterthought.
Quebeckers, both English and French were caught in the great Ndp swindle when they awoke to find that those who they elected were woefully under-qualified and equally unprepared.
Voters in the largely Anglo riding of NDG in Montreal were as shocked as voters in Berthier-Maskinongé when they discovered that they elected a unilingual candidate who couldn't communicate with most people in the riding! It's been suggested, rather tongue in cheek, that the French only speaking member for NDG swap ridings with the English only representative of Berthier-Maskinongé, the height of absurdity!
These Layton bobbleheads will serve as a four year humiliation and the Quebec press is in no mind to be generous about it.
For twenty years, the Bloc Quebecois benefited from a docile and somewhat fawning press. Quebec journos are mostly sovereignists and as such gave Gilles Duceppe and his minions a free pass.
Like the intellectuals, the Press is convinced that Layton perpetrated a fraud on Quebec voters and so, if the Ndp think they'll get the same gentle treatment as the Bloc, they are sadly mistaken.
In the press corps, Layton is now actually more hated than Harper and they are already out for his hide. They've already tripped him up and caught him in a blunder in which he was forced to do a quick 180° reversal over his position on the 50%+1 referendum question. Link
The whole question was an amateur trap that Layton fell into stupidly, something an experienced handler like the Prime Minister, would have dealt with expeditiously.
Instead of responding to the referendum question, Layton could have turned the whole thing around by declaring that it isn't his policy to respond to hypothetical questions, but telling the Press as well, that if Madame Marois were to publicly commit to a referendum in the next potential PQ government, he'd be happy to respond. CHECKMATE!
Mr Layton, like Gilles Duceppe has been accustomed to an accommodating press his whole career. As a leader of a small opposition party there wasn't much sense beating him up, it wouldn't be sporting or well-received.
But everything's changed. Layton, Mulcair and the bobbleheads are now fair game and a vengeful Press is out for blood. The aw shucks, "Smiling Jack" persona that got him elected will not work on these hardened and spiteful journalists who are determined to expose the Ndp as a fraud.
Layton has reacted by ramping up his support of Quebec nationalism, hoping to appease these journalists who are pursuing him as relentlessly as dogs on an English fox hunt. Link
Such appeasement will not work.
If Layton doesn't learn how to stare down the beast, he will be toast by Christmas.
