To hear Liberal Party president Mike Eizenga tell it, his struggling party has

"a great crop of candidates" who will be seeking to take over from the failed Paul Martin come the leadership convention Dec. 2 in Montreal.

It is to laugh.

The Liberals certainly appear to have a surfeit of candidates for the job. But unlike most Liberal leadership contests throughout Canadian history, none are exactly household names. Or, if they are, they're essentially known for the wrong reasons.

Take Bob Rae, for example. The former Ontario NDP premier is rumored to be contemplating a run at the job. He's certainly a smart guy, fluently bilingual, and relatively well known. But he's also the guy who, in a disastrous four-year stint as Ontario premier, almost bankrupted the province and what's more, managed to make himself the most hated man in town by the public service unions, the very group who normally would be cheering on the NDP.

Then, of course, there's celebrated turncoat Belinda Stronach, the former Conservative MP and leadership contender who set aside what she said were her political principles in return for direct entry into Martin's cabinet. Money certainly won't be an issue for her. But the fact she was a Tory and, even more to the point, is not fluently bilingual, won't help her chances.

Another Tory turncoat, New Brunswick's Scott Brison, also appears to have fallen on his own sword by sending his now infamous e-mail to a friendly banker Brison was a money man in real life and should have known all about disclosure rules appearing to tip off his buddy about a major government announcement. He at first denied even sending the e-mails and then weakly allowed that well, yes, he'd sent them, but being a cabinet minister he couldn't really have been expected to know what his fellow ministers were up to. Huh?

And then, after this rather lackluster bunch, it goes downhill.

Imagine, the party that historically has seen itself as Canada's "natural governing party" doesn't have a contender out there to strike fear in the hearts of Stephen Harper's minority Tories, let alone anybody else.

Pick a name: John Godfrey, Martha Hall Findlay, Denis Coderre, Joe Fontnana, even Michael Ignatieff the wannabee Trudeau incarnated and you have to ask yourself: 'who are these people, and what makes them think they could be prime minister?'

Indeed, the big winner in all this seems to be Harper himself.

There is no doubt that Harper did not get off to a good start as prime minister. His stupid decision to add a Liberal turncoat and an unelected Quebecer who he then made a senator to his first cabinet offended more of his friends than his enemies.

Mind you, his sudden visit to our troops in Afghanistan was by far his best move to date, but he's still got significant challenges ahead.

But the biggest challenge for anybody leading a minority government is the daily struggle to keep the opposition parties from ganging up and bringing your government down.

Now, thanks to the Liberals, he's pretty much guaranteed to have a free reign until at least early in 2007, since the now leaderless Liberals will not be in any mood to bring on a snap election.

That allows Harper considerable time to establish himself as prime minister, and build on his party's growing strengths in Quebec and Ontario and, who knows, maybe even make some gains in Atlantic Canada while he's at it.

The fact that all the socalled Liberal "star" candidates e.g. Brian Tobin, John Manley, Frank McKenna have chosen not to seek the leadership pretty well tells you that they understand that the next Liberal leader could possibly become the first Liberal leader ever not to become Canada's prime minister at some point.

Candidates will have 12 weeks beginning April 7 Martin's formal resignation date to sign up new members for the party. Then, on the so-called "super weekend" of Sept. 29-Oct. 1 riding associations will choose their representatives to the convention itself.

The one positive aspect of the December leadership convention apart from it being in the snow belt in December is that the party has lowered the entry fee to $50,000 and put stricter limits on overall spending a maximum of $3.4 million, a fraction of what Martin spent to buy his leadership bid all of which will make it more attractive to more candidates. Unlike the last time, it won't be a coronation.

Unfortunately, none of the potential and/or announced candidates, at this point anyway, are particularly attractive to the public at large.

Somewhere in Ottawa Stephen Harper must be smiling. And he will be smiling for some time to come.