Leadership 2009 Links

A couple more links worth pointing out on the Saskatchewan NDP leadership race and related issues...

First, Stephen Larose theorizes that the Sask Party's cabinet shuffle reflects an attempt to get more partisan members into battle in preparation for a Lingenfelter win:

Probably the best way to look at Brad Wall’s recent cabinet shuffle (Government of Saskatchewan) is to put it in context of the NDP leadership race. Wall thinks (correctly,) that Dwain Lingenfelter is going to win in a walk, so Wall prepared a wartime cabinet.

That’s the main reason why Wall has removed three people (Sask. Party website) who (for Sask. Party politicians, anyway) were doing not that bad a job, and replaced them with three hard-core ideologues (Sask Party website). Wall is expecting that the next months in the Legislature will resemble trench warfare in the First World War – massive expenditures of manpower, time, money and effort for little or no gain.

Then again, I’m sure Wall would rather see Link as NDP leader than anybody else, for the same reason why the Pentagon would rather fight a conventional war than a war of counter-insurgency. It’s what they know; it’s what they think they’re good at.

It's definitely an interesting theory, though there might be similar logic at play no matter who wins the leadership race. With the main question over the next year-plus figuring to be how the NDP leader gets branded going into the next provincial election, Wall may well have figured he's better off promoting Yogi Huyghebaert to shriek about an impending red menace than putting somebody more reasonable in front of the cameras.

But if so, that would make for a sad commentary on Wall's view of government. And if the political scene is indeed headed to a war footing, one consequence figures to be an end to the undeserved free pass Wall has received from the media so far during his term in office.

Meanwhile, the Southwest News picks up on one noteworthy comment from Deb Higgins:

Saskatchewan NDP Leadership candidate, Deb Higgins attended Wednesday's meeting in Swift Current and hopes a referendum is held on the Nuclear issue. Higgins states the future of Uranium in Saskatchewan is a crucial issue and cannot be decided over a 10 week period alone.

Of course, I'd have to agree with the latter point. But as with Ryan Meili's call for a redesigned consultation process, any demand for a referendum which essentially legitimizes a debate where nuclear generation is placed ahead of all other options figures to make for a more difficult position to defend than a consistent message that nuclear power doesn't deserve the focus in the first place.