Oh, Come on, You knew this would happen:

David Orchard Mulling run at Liberal Leadership.

So let's look at this rationally. First thing to ask David: Why?

Because there are no symetrical, centralist, federalist, NAFTA skeptics running, who put their money where their mouth is wheen it comes to issues of sustainability. I don't even know if there are any symetrical federalists running.

Why now? Why not Months ago when you had an organisation to get together?

David is very lucky in this respect. He has an organisation of former PC's who were already inclined to support the Liberals over the Conservatives. By waiting he's lost some to the NDP, Conservatives, PCs, and Greens, but given the polling numbers he would probably have about 6,000 of his previous 10,000 activists who would have no compunction about joining the Liberals and in addition those other 4000 might have to think hard about making the switch too.

Who inside the existing party would support him?

Red Tories who already made the switch, Turner Liberals, Modernists, who are often seen as the party's soft social conservative wing, Hard Quebec Federalists, who are willing to combat as opposed to accomodate separatists, Neo-Trudeauites. Finally his conversations with Pierre Trudeau about which party to join would come in handy as opposed to making him look like a fish out of water. Let's not forget that the country was intitially ruled by a liberal-conservative coalition.

Which camps, and factions could David Orchard draw support from before the convention?

Get David Orchard up on a platform debating Belinda Stronach, Scott Brison, and Michael Ignatief and we could see David serve as a lightning rod for the party's nationalists.

If Orchard comes to convention with a sizeable chunk of support, won't he run out of growing room?

This assumes that the Liberals are of one mind on NAFTA. He softwood dispute has brushed away the veil on how the Americans respect agreements and Liberals realise that it probably wouldn't cost much to pull out of or at least renegotiate NAFTA and it would probably be beneficial to the Canadian economy to get the muscle of the WTO back behind it. David Orchard is seen as a refugee, not a pariah in this party.

So what sequence of events could actually cause an Orchard victory at convention?

1. Ignatief loses a lot of uncommitted delegates with a lackluster speech that reads well, but confuses, or even worse, alienates quite a few Liberal insiders who were backing Ignatief based on his saleability not his ideas.

2. Bob Rae's campaign fizzles in Ontario, the NDP keeps their activists away from his campaign in the West, and Ken Dryden, or better yet, John Godfrey picks a fight with Rae over his record.

3. Brison's campaign picks up the Bay Street right of the party, but doesn't retain a lot of PCs.

So what would David have to do on the first ballot?

Beat Dryden + Godfrey, and take 20 percent. David doesn't have to outrun the bear, he just has to outrun one of his opponents on the perceived 'left' of the party.

What happens next?

Godfrey drops out and moves to DrydenDryden drops off, and his supporters go to David. Then Rae's supporters find that Orchard is a better bet than Stronach to achieve their policy ends so they break heaviliy for Orchard.

Does this remind you of anyone?

Yeah.