This blog has followed with interest the Toronto CBC cocktail circuit crowd's amazing embrace of Bob Rae for almost a year. As I wrote last July of Rae:
Since his conversion to third way politics (he jettisoned socialism sometime back in the 1990s) he has become the toast of Toronto. Now that crowd wants to see their new star rise to the top. They're doing a great job positioning him for it...
It has now basically been confirmed that Rae will be in the race for Liberal leader, setting up a battle between himself and Michael Ignatieff, Belinda Stronach, Denis Coderre and a bunch of others with no chance. I am told by Liberals that the reason Martin Cauchon is not running is because the PowerCorp money has been promised to Bob Rae. (No surprise there, Bob's brother John is a senior executive at Power and a long-time Liberal heavyweight.)
This will make the Liberal race pretty neat to watch. It caps a truly remarkable transformation for Bob Rae, who left the Ontario premiership in 1995 after wreaking havoc on the province's economy, nearly driving it into bankruptcy. (I note that if the Liberals want to rebuild their base in Ontario, electing him will seem like an odd way to do it.) Nevertheless, Rae has spent the last decade reinventing himself as a centrist (he regularly publicly bashes the NDP) and as a selfless public servant with his work on everything from the Air India bombing to reforming post-secondary education to bringing peace to Sri Lanka. He will bring some interesting ideas to the race.
Rae is also probably the only man on Earth to go from being arrested for trying to stop logging to becoming a lobbyist for the lumber industry. But hey, people change. I respect the man and look forward to his candidacy.
# posted by Adam Daifallah : 12:59 AM
