I watched the same speeches you all did, and I can't for the life of me see any way to interpret this as anything other than a big win for Martin. We'll wait and see the post-mortems and polls, but my hunch is that he's just saved his bacon.
The Liberals have shown again tonight why they are the best in the business. Right tone (full of contrition); right message (incredibly apologetic); right time (just when things couldn't get much worse.) Throw in a gutsy, unexpected move (election 30 days after the final Gomery report), and you've got the makings of a brilliant political play! Kudos to Team Martin: they did an even better job keeping a lid on this than even the GWB White House could. Brilliant.
Now, do I think this will stop the opposition from bringing down the government in a few weeks? Likely not. But they have a lot of thinking to do about whether enough voters are against having an election now to hold off a while longer.
# posted by Adam Daifallah : 10:11 PM
