bjarvis | Didn't See These Coming...

Stephane Dion is the new leader of the federal Liberal Party of Canada. I'm amazed: I was certain that it wouldn't have been the cakewalk Michael Ignatieff hoped for --which suited me fine as I'm not an Iggy fan. Still, I thought Bob Rae would be in the fourth & final balloting run-off and Dion wold be knocked out in the first round. Go figure.

In a parallel contest in Alberta, Ed Stelmach came from the back of the pack to take the leadership of the Progressive-Conservative Party of Alberta and thus the new premier of the province. Jim Dinning had been campaigning for years and I thought he'd have locked up the campaign quickly. Dinning is an ardent financial neo-con: cut all gov't spending except the military and since the provincial gov't doesn't have a military... The other big competition was social hyper-conservative Tom Morton: abortion is murder, gays are evil, women should defer to their husbands, etc.. While neither Dinning and Morton represent the province's attitudes as a whole, they are the very embodiment of the core platform beliefs of the party. Yet Stelmach won over both. Alas, I've been unable to find much on Honest Ed: it seems the media didn't pay much attention to him either, writing him off as a historical footnote just as I had.

Now I'm wondering: are these truly unusual come-from-behind electoral upsets, or am I simply so far out of contact with the rest of Canada that I failed to see all the signals? I'm not losing much sleep on this, but it does make me wonder.