“…we’d love to run against pretty much any of [the Liberal leadership candidates]. I can’ see Gerard Kennedy or Michael Ignatieff or Bob Rae or Stephane Dion — all smart, decent people — selling with a forty-yeard-old plumber in Peterborough who makes forty grand. The spectrum o ffirst-tier leadership candidates there reads like the perfect list of attendees at a cocktail party in gthe Annex or Cabbagetown. It’s not Main Street. It’s not the kind of slate that can connect with a broad middle-class constituency.
We were joking this morning. What’s Ignatieff’s wife’s name again? [Ignatieff is married to Zsuzsanna] Exactly. So in the next election it’s Steve and Laureen vs. Count Michael and What’s-Her-Name. It’s almost a dream for us.”
– Jason Kenney, parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, quoted in Right Side Up, by Paul Wells, p. 265