It was Belinda in the Dinning Room with the Candlestick...

"...But won't appointing a blatantly opportunistic turncoat, the Prime Minister asks, spark wide public outrage? Sure, says a savvy backroom boy, but that's the beauty part -- naming Emerson will generate so much resentment around floor-crossing that it'll foul up any chance Belinda Stronach has of winning the Liberal leadership."(link)(via)

What a conspiracy theory this is. Although I think what makes this story so appealing is the morcel of flatulating truth it points to.

Belinda Stronach is a threat. It's as pure and simple as that. And, in the course of strategic meanderings and navel gazing in the PMO, it wouldn't surprise me if at some point or another that thought hadn't crossed the mind of at least one bucko.

Though it forgets one important point. Belinda is a threat - but she's also a liability.

When Belinda first ran for the leadership, I disagreed with her on social issues, but that was not the foremost concern I had about her managing a 711 let alone a federal party.

Belinda Stronach just didn't have the political experience. It spoke volumes when I felt I could deliver a better response to press questions than she could... Brother, most young PC's could offer better awnsers to policy questions than she could.

Belinda as a leader, would have had to have been educated pure and simple. That's not a slight against her, that's just the reality that Belinda was starting from a 0 point IQ politically. She embarassed herself too often. She would have embarassed the party as well.

The only thing she has is ambition. She doesn't have a principle that I can name except for her own ambition. That became clear in the Conservative leadership race when she failed really to give a single reason why she decided to enter federal politics. If she really had the "political bug" so to speak, why hadn't she been involved otherwise?

She's as much of a liability to the Liberal Party as she is a threat to the Conservative Party. Belinda as leader of the Liberal Party could very well be a gift to Stephen Harper.