Has Michael Ignatieff finally fired Warren Kinsella?

It's been a rough go for Michael Ignatieff lately: he's lagging in the polls; his party came in third in the byelections this week and Denis Coderre has announced his intention to lead the Liberals, even though there isn't a leadership race on now.

So Ignatieff has hit the reset button, hard. He sacked his chief of staff, Ian Davey, and his communications director, Jill Fairbrother. Gone, too, is principal secretary Dan Brock and two other staffers, Alexis Levine and Mark Sakamoto. And tonight, the Toronto Star's Susan Delacourt reports that nine more staff in the Office of the Leader of the Opposition were sacked today alone.

Was one of them Warren Kinsella?

It's a pretty obvious question; Kinsella's war room has misfired repeatedly this year, emphasizing frat-boy antics that crowded out Ignatieff's occasional policy announcements. When even the CBC is mocking Kinsella's tactics, you know things are rough.

Kinsella's tactics were the pushiest thing in Ignatieff's rudderless office, and so they dominated by default. But tactics -- or, more accurately, just the same gimmicky tactic over and over again -- make for bad strategy. Kinsella made no secret of the fact that he lusted for an election this year, repeatedly calling for it on his blog. Does anyone doubt that Ignatieff's comically bellicose utterances this year -- "if you mess with me, I will mess with you until I'm done... don't trifle with me. Don't try this rough stuff with me" and "your time is up!" -- were encouraged, if not written word-for-word by Kinsella, the self-described ass-kicker?

Ignatieff's rhetorical overreach certainly follows Kinsella's personal modus operandi: attempts at intimidation that must sound impressive to the one saying them, but cause giggles in most everyone else.

And all of that merely goes to Kinsella's role as a backroom operator. But Kinsella has never been able to simply work in a campaign -- he has a genetic need to boast about it, with some embroidery from time to time. I know of no other campaign strategist who also maintains a blog in which he discusses in public what he is supposed to be doing in private -- and adds in all sorts of other colour commentary, such as his views on how Chinese restaurants serve cat meat or that a woman's place is in the kitchen. It's that tendency for Kinsella to have public melt-downs that led one Liberal colleague to describe Kinsella as a "human shrapnel machine" and even for Ignatieff himself to say "I hope, joking aside, that we maintain basic decency in politics and that there are some things you just don’t do, and that also applies to Mr. Kinsella. Nobody who works for me should be taking cheap shots, and if they take cheap shots, they won’t be working for me for very long."

So, seriously: do you really think that everyone from the chief of staff down to the copy boy has been fired from the OLO, but that Kinsella remains unscathed?

Jay Currie asked Kinsella directly tonight, and was met with insults and a threat. I've never known Kinsella to be modest before, nor restrained, so it's reasonable to assume that Kinsella, too, has been fired -- or at least neutered.

That's the one thing about sacking Kinsella: he has a nasty track-record of smearing people with whom he's parted ways. Whether it's the Toronto Star, the National Post, Navigator Ltd., Steve Paikin, the Canada-Israel Committee, or John Tory, Kinsella has turned on former friends and colleagues with a vicious vengeance if he feels slighted by them. No doubt Davey, Fairbrother and the rest of the newly unemployed OLO staff have hurt feelings, but they will likely keep their grumbling to themselves, if not out of a sense of professionalism, then out of loyalty to the larger party. Kinsella, by contrast, is governed neither by such professionalism nor party loyalty, as shown by his spectacularly public and extended trashing of the Liberal Party as soon as it was led by Paul Martin.

So the question is: will Kinsella turn on Ignatieff, as he has turned on so many others?

It's not hard to imagine; it wasn't long ago that Kinsella was publicly smearing Ignatieff using language that would make a Tory war-roomer blush. Here's just a small excerpt of Kinsella's take on Ignatieff:

I objected to the fact that he mocked Canada during the three decades he was abroad, and that he likened Israeli policy to the fascism of apartheid. I objected to what I perceived to be breathtaking arrogance – calling Canada a "herbivorian boy scout" one day, then jetting up here to run it the next.

That's pretty tough stuff -- and it was written before Ignatieff did anything to him. What could Kinsella do to Ignatieff that's worse than insulting him? Oh, plenty. Given how Kinsella fights with other former allies, one could expect to see quite a few embarrassing internal e-mails splashed on the Internet.

We'll find out Kinsella's status soon enough -- as his reply to Jay shows, Kinsella just hasn't found the right spin yet.

But there is one last reason why firing Kinsella could well be the smartest thing Ignatieff does this year. Nearly a year ago, in a fit of partisan pique, Kinsella slapped me with a $5-million nuisance lawsuit, because I wrote about his involvement with Adscam, and pointed out that Justice Gomery made a legal finding that Kinsella conducted himself in a "highly inappropriate" manner -- a finding that Kinsella never appealled.

Kinsella hated that I mentioned his role in Adscam, and in typical over-the-top, volcano-rage mode, he sued me, surely thinking that I'd be scared. Instead, I laughed, filed a statement of defence, and asked for him to disclose his Adscam documents, as he is required to do under the rules of court.

Not surprisingly, Kinsella has delayed again and again. It's hilarious reading excuse after excuse from his lawyer (when he bothers to reply). Clearly Kinsella never meant for there to actually be a trial about his behaviour in Adscam -- but I can't think of anything that would be more vindicating to me, devastating to Kinsella, and fascinating to the Parliamentary Press Gallery. If I don't get Kinsella's Adscam documents soon, I'm going to have to apply to a court to have him ordered to turn them over. It's just like Ignatieff's election bluffs -- he looked ridiculous when his bluff was called, and he backed down. Kinsella's lawsuit bluff is about to be called, too. It's now a tug of war between Kinsella's pride: does he embarrass himself by dropping the suit against me and paying my costs to date, or does he embarrass himself through a lengthy, meticulous, public inspection of his actions in Adscam?

Either way, do you think Ignatieff wants to be anywhere near that spectacle?

We'll find out soon enough -- I'm guessing by tomorrow morning.