Nakagawa Shoichi, the finance minister under Aso Taro who, becoming infamous worldwide for his behavior at a G7 meeting in Rome in February, was forced to resign and then lost his seat in the August general election, was found dead at his home in Tokyo's Setagaya ward Sunday morning. Yomiuri notes an absence of external …
Tag: 2009 LDP leadership election
Practical politics, symbolic conservatism, and the decline of the LDP
The LDP's presidential race is in full swing, and Tanigaki Sadakazu appears to be in command of the race against Kono Taro and Nishimura Yasutoshi. Polls of LDP Diet members suggest that Tanigaki enjoys the support of roughly a majority of the party's 199 Diet members; Yomiuri has Tanigaki with 102 votes, Nishimura with 30, …
Continue reading Practical politics, symbolic conservatism, and the decline of the LDP
The LDP race begins
The race to succeed Aso Taro as LDP president begins today, with three candidates vying for the unenviable task of fixing a broken Liberal Democratic Party.Surprisingly the race includes none of the candidates who Aso defeated to win the job last year: Ishiba Shigeru, despite being perhaps the most enthusiastic of the potential candidates, backed …
Tanigaki as the compromise candidate
For the second time in three months, an effort by younger LDP members to lead the party in a different direction has run out of steam not long after getting started.Ishihara Nobuteru (52), the last hope of the LDP's younger members, bowed out of the upcoming LDP presidential election on Saturday, clearing the way for …
Who will lead the LDP?
Masuzoe Yoichi, the upper house member who I recently listed as the obvious front runner in the race to replace Aso Taro as LDP president, said Wednesday that he would not seek the position.Masuzoe cited his responsibility as a member of the ruling cabinet for the party's defeat as his reason for not seeking the …
The LDP has an election date
Aso Taro has resigned his post as party president and the LDP has scheduled its party leadership for four weeks from today, 28 September. The campaign for the party presidency will officially begin ten days earlier, on 18 September, giving the candidates just over two weeks to make their intentions known and then begin traveling …
The path to a New Liberal Democratic Party
Fresh after barely escaping with his political life, Nakagawa Hidenao — who you will recall failed to unseat Aso Taro as LDP leader in July and then stressed that the DPJ would destroy Japan and had to be stopped — has announced that he wants to stand in the election to succeed Aso as LDP …
Tobias S. Harris 