Dr. Dawg

Lousy, dirty Liberal politics

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Outing an NDP candidate who stands a good chance of winning a seat in Quebec: Ignatieff’s Liberals abandon the high road.

The planted article in the pro-Liberal* Le Devoir is here. Former Liberal MP Françoise Boivin, running in Gatineau for the NDP, did not resign from the LPC four years ago because of a conflict of values, the Liberals now allege, but was fired for hiring her same-sex partner to work in her Parliament Hill office. And the article names her partner for good measure.

Note that this is not simply a dubious mid-campaign claim of ancient impropriety. It’s a classic dogwhistle: injecting Boivin’s sexual orientation into the news.

Classy last-minute move by the desperate Ignatieff Liberals, presently hemorrhaging votes in Quebec. Not the way to win the youth vote, as Norm Spector points out: let’s hope this one backfires, and badly.

[H/t Norman Spector]

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* Note:Chris Selley (in the comments) obviously has a point: Le Devoir, which had a Liberal founder and more recently a Liberal editor, has endorsed the Bloc in recent times, not the Liberals. The Bloc and the NDP are rivals in the current election—so enemy’s enemy, and all that. “Pro-Liberal” was plain wrong: mea culpa.

UPDATE: Boivin fights back. Layton: “A desperate attack by the Liberals.” Indeed.

UPPERDATE: And in English.

Le Devoir cited Liberal sources in reporting that Boivin did not leave the party for philosophical reasons, as she has stated, but was instead pushed out for hiring her partner to work in her parliamentary office.

She’s suing. Good.

[H/t reader sassy]

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This page contains a single entry by Dr. Dawg published on April 19, 2011 9:39 AM.

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