“Dion is toast”; “The Party of Toronto”; “We gotta change the sheets” – these are just some of the damning comments heard from inside the Liberal Party in the aftermath of the election on Tuesday. One party insider even suggested that if Liberal leader Stéphane Dion refuses to resign, the party should start moving the furniture out of his office. In the blogosphere new blogs have been started in support of future leadership candidates, such as Frank McKenna.

The “natural governing party” was the only party in Tuesday’s election to see its votes and support plummet, with Toronto being the last remaining holdout still beholden to the former Big Red Machine. Under Mr. Dion’s leadership the party moved to the far left and ignored the crucial centre ground. As Canada’s national newspaper The Globe and Mail puts it, “Liberals need to revive that nearly extinct animal, the blue Liberal.”

Blue Liberal, Red Tory – six of one and half a dozen of another. In the increasingly splintered political landscape today, the only way to obtain a majority, or a strong minority, leads right through the centre, the middle ground occupied by Blue Liberals and Red Tories. Red Liberals and Blue Tories really do not stand a chance in Canada, as either one is anathema to the vast majority of Canadian voters.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has therefore gone the route of incrementalism, moving from a once-deep-blue Tory to a pinkish-looking Tory – going by his liberal spending habits. Mr. Dion, by contrast, went in the opposite direction, painting himself as a crimson-red Liberal. This is why Mr. Harper is back on the job, while Mr. Dion is facing calls from his own party to resign.

Mr. Dion is known for his stubbornness, which will make it difficult to remove him from the helm of the party. In fact, the very act of removing him, with his arms and legs spread out so as to avoid being pushed out the door and leaving deep scratch marks in the door jamb, will probably add to the party’s unending string of embarrassments.

But go he must, as most Liberals agree, and so the process of recruiting a new leader must begin. Their search will most likely start with the “leftovers” of the previous leadership contest: Michael Ignatieff, Bob Rae, Martha Hall-Findlay and Gerard Kennedy. Since election night, the names of John Manley and Frank McKenna have also been added to the list.

There is no doubt about Mr. Ignatieff’s Liberal credentials. But apart from being perfectly bilingual and generally quite coherent, he would merely be a slightly improved upgrade from Mr. Dion. Both are Ivory Tower shut-ins with an underdeveloped sense of reality. As was true of Mr. Dion, so it must also be assumed that Mr. Ignatieff would view his position as prime minister as a social experiment, with Canadians acting as his lab rats, which would provide ample material for a new political science paper or book years later. This academic approach to active politics and government is usually quite dangerous and should be discouraged at all cost.

Mr. Rae is still haunted by his time as Ontario premier and the economic havoc wrought under his government. In addition, too many Liberals still eye him with suspicion, because they do not really believe that he has left his NDP past (and ideology) entirely behind him. Like Mr. Ignatieff, Mr. Rae, too, is seen as “damaged goods”, because he failed to win the leadership the last time. After the ordeal Liberals have just been through with Mr. Dion, the party will probably want to play it safe with fresh blood, rather than warming up last night’s dinner.

The “king-maker” of the last leadership vote, Mr. Kennedy, is no longer the star he was two years ago. Since conceding to Mr. Dion too early on in the leadership election, he has kept an extremely low profile both in and outside the party. What is more, many Liberals hold him personally responsible for the disaster that was Mr. Dion’s leadership, and if there is one thing people know about the Liberal Party, it is that Liberals can bear a grudge like no other.

Ms. Hall-Findlay’s chances are possibly the best of all the former leadership candidates. Having seen Hillary Clinton’s run for the presidency in the United States, Liberals may find it “cool” to replicate the experiment of putting a woman in charge of the party. However, Ms. Hall-Findlay was the first contender to be eliminated from the leadership vote at the Montréal convention, which leaves considerable doubt as to the potential support she may be able to obtain as party leader.

This is where John Manley and Frank McKenna come in. Both are brilliant politicians, who also happen to have a keen sense for all things financial and economic. Both are Blue Liberals who could help the party regain the all-important political centre.

Mr. Manley, a former finance minister, wrote an article for the Globe and Mail over a year ago that proved that he understands how the economy works – or should work. In it he chastened the manufacturing sector of Ontario for its lack of productivity and innovation. According to Mr. Manley, the entire sector had been relying for their profits solely on a low Canadian dollar, instead of building up their strength for the future. He concluded his piece by saying that, with the Canadian dollar reaching par with the U.S. dollar, Ontario manufacturers should not cry him a river and ask for government assistance when they had squandered plenty of opportunities to become more innovative and productive.

A former, long-serving provincial premier, Mr. McKenna enjoys great popularity in Liberal circles and across the country. Currently heading up one of Canada’s main banks, he also acted as ambassador to the United States. With him leading the Liberal Party, it is believed, the party could, indeed, become the Big Red Machine all over again.

Interestingly enough, both Mr. Manley and Mr. McKenna were asked to run in the 2006 leadership race, but declined. Within the first 24 hours of the Liberal defeat on Tuesday, however, both gentlemen intimated that, this time, they may be available to give it a go. The Liberals had better hope that this is true, because from the current short list, only these two stand a chance of rebuilding the party and making it electable again outside the Toronto city limits.