Leadership 2012: The Week In Quotes

A few quotes worth noting from both candidates and non-candidates alike - feel free to suggest more in comments.

Thomas Mulcair on his considerations in deciding whether to run:

There's an old saying that before you take the plunge, you have to make sure there's enough water in the pool, and it's filling up nicely. We've got a lot of support, of course, amongst our Quebec caucus. And now we're working very hard to get that type of support in the rest of Canada before coming to any final decision.

Brian Topp on what the NDP needs to plan for during the leadership race and beyond:

Mr. Topp said the party’s next leader must focus on “bulking up” the party to ensure it wins a majority of seats in the next election and building a plan for its first mandate.

“We must not repeat, for example, the mistakes of Bob Rae, who was elected in the early 1990s and it turned out with a distressingly vague notion of what he was going to do in office,” he said of the interim Liberal leader who served as Ontario’s first NDP premier.

“We have to carefully think through what we would do with our first mandate. We need to be seen to be doing so and once elected, we need to have an excellent first term if we want to continue to be contenders for office.”

Paul Dewar on the means of building the NDP over the next four years:

It's very simple. It's a lot of work but it's simple analysis. Keep what we have in Quebec and grow outside of Quebec. That requires being able to go and connect with people who are looking at us now very seriously. And say, 'Are you in line with the priorities of everyday people?,' and show that you are.

Paul Moist shutting down media speculation about whether a choice not to implement a weighted voting system would be seen as distancing the NDP from organized labour:

Moist then said that media commentators have gone beyond talking about the weighted voting system and framed the question as “whether a modern NDP can afford the relationship with labour” at all, a discussion he dismissed as “playing the ‘union bogeyman’ card”.

“The pundits, the editorial writers and indeed the candidates-in-waiting are all, quite simply put, wrong,” wrote Moist. “There is no issue over this question.”"

And finally, Charlie Angus commenting on his reasons for not running:

The process of choosing a replacement for Jack Layton will come during our first term as official opposition. Canadians are looking to us to continue our work of holding the Stephen Harper government to account. We are facing the most militant and divisive government in Canadian history. They have no intention of giving us time to grieve or rebuild. We will need experienced MPs willing to take the fight to the right wing agenda. This will free up other MPs to participate in the leadership race.

To this end, I have pledged my full support to interim leader Nycole Turmel and her team to play whatever role is needed to support the caucus through this upcoming session of Parliament.

[Edit: fixed typo.]