Courtesy of Greg Locke is a picture for the history books.It was taken on Sunday 04 December 05 in Holyrood as Fabian Manning announced his candidacy for the Conservatives in the Avalon riding.
Back to the camera is provincial finance minister Loyola "Rain Man" Sullivan, Fabe's mentor, as it were. Thankfully Fabe never picked up Rain Man's annoying tendency to cite statistics, numbers and decimals with a fetishistic fervour worthy of the most kinky accountant around.
Given the polls, Manning is likely to be out of work in the New Year, but hey, he is taking a shot.
One of the historic things about this whole change of direction for Fabe is that running for the federal Conservatives was one of the things Danny Williams cited in his heavy-handed effort to boot Fabe from the provincial Tory caucus. That's heavy handed as in having one of his political staffers sit in on the meeting - unheard of in other caucuses - to make sure the
The problem was the Premier got the wrong Manning at the time. Fabe's mistake at the time was not only challenging the Premier on his crab fishery management scheme but calling a local radio station to point out that the Premier had made a major league mistake about Fabe and his federal impulses.
Ya just don't do that to He Who Is Never Wrong.
The other historic thing about this shot is that it includes Elizabeth Marshall. She was Williams' star candidate in 2003 but fell from grace rather quickly as she had the temerity to disagree with the Premier.
Repeatedly.
She resented his making decisions within her department just because he could.
Repeatedly.
She finally got fed up and handed Danny her resignation.
He reportedly jumped for joy.
How quickly the stars fade.
Anyway, here's a picture of two former provincial Progressive Conservative stars who fell afoul of Danny Williams and paid the price for it.
One of them is looking to take up a new job.
Let's see what happens.