One thing can be said about our dearly departed, wannabe Liberal MP Garth Turner. He certainly has a flourish for the grand exit.

Mr. Turner recently withdrew his candidacy to be the federal Liberal candidate in Dufferin-Caledon, apparently upset that the party didn't call a nomination meeting in the summer when he was the lone man in the race.

In his blog, The Greater Fool, he wrote: "My reason was simple, and I stated it truthfully: an unexplained refusal by the federal Libs to allow me to become the candidate, by preventing a local nomination meeting, sent a clear message. Get lost.

"I presumed this was because of my policy views, at odds with the leader over things like the HST and the need to be honest about rising taxes and falling spending. I knew this would end in a mess, or an embarrassment, and probably both. So, I walked."

First of all, for the uninitiated, let us explain how the nominations process works. A prospect in the Dufferin-Caledon riding files his papers, (submits his application), to the Liberal Party of Canada Ontario (LPCO).

The LPCO decides whether the applicant meets the basic criteria for nomination. If all is kosher, he is "green lit" to seek the nomination. The deadline for applying for the nomination is the riding association's nomination meeting which, incidentally, is scheduled by the LPCO.

This is where the Turner camp cried foul.

The LPCO said that, before it would call a nomination meeting, the riding association would need enough members to equal two per cent of the total vote the candidate garnered in the last election. That meant 170 memberships would be needed and the Dufferin Caledon Federal Liberal Association had 161.

The Turner associates pointed out that only 1.5 per cent was necessary and that the threshold of 127 members was already surpassed.

While the wording of the LPCO's nomination rules appears ambiguous, the body does make it rather clear that the scheduling of a nomination meeting is up to the LPCO's discretion.

"Even a threshold of two per cent is a very low target," explained LPCO executive director Judi Longfield in a correspondence to the Dufferin Caledon Federal Liberal Association (DCFLA), "and would not necessarily guarantee a nomination date; particularly given that there has been no effort on the part of the green light candidate to build a membership base."

In his blog, Mr. Turner pointed out that his lack of official candidate status "made it impossible to either campaign or effectively raise funds in an unwinnable Conservative bastion.

"Meanwhile, since I was the only nominee, there was no further need to rope new people into memberships for a vote which would not occur."

Rope new people into memberships? Hardly an endorsement of the party or the riding association, I must say. As for the impossibility of effecting raising funds, how come nomination candidate Bill Prout was able, even before he was greenlit, to pedal close to 40 memberships in less than a week?

It also raises doubts as to how Garth Turner was going to sell the Liberal party in a Tory stronghold, when he didn't have the wherewithal to sell 20 or so $10 party memberships and make the membership threshold argument moot.

Mr. Turner's statements raise suspicions that he wasn't seeking a nomination in Dufferin-Caledon. It looks like he really wanted a coronation.

In a press release, he lambasted DCFLA president Jeff May and membership chair Janet Rosenstock for their supposed role in torpedoing his messianic mission to lead the local Liberals out of the political wilderness.

"It's become clear that local Liberal executives Janet Rosenstock, Jeff May and others at LPCO have tried hard in the media and with Conservative bloggers to 'prove' I resigned because I was afraid to face another unknown candidate," he wrote, "or since we failed to sign up required new members. As you know, these things are untrue."

The attack on Mr. May was unfair. Whether he liked Mr. Turner or not, Mr. May was fulfilling his role as riding association president and relaying the directives of the national party executive.

As for Ms. Rosenstock — whom Mr. Turner publicly referred to as a "quixotic and combative octogenarian romance author" — she liked Mr. Turner not one bit and let her feelings out for all to see.

In fact, she has since resigned her membership chair position to help Mr. Prout's nomination bid.

If one is upset at the image of Mr. Turner tearing into an elderly woman, one need not worry. Janet Rosenstock is one tough cookie who, with her self-deprecating wit, refers to herself as "the Liberal Crone." (By the way, since she's still in her 70s she isn't an octogenarian).

An American who moved to Canada over 40 years ago, Ms. Rosenstock has been in the political wringer since her teens. At 16, in California, she worked on the senate campaign of Helen Gahagen Douglas against one of the most ruthless politicians in modern history, a guy named Richard Nixon. She also squared off against the segregationists during the civil rights era.

Somehow, I can't see her being fazed by anything that Garth Turner has to say.

What this whole episode boils down to is that Mr. Turner was never told by the Liberals that he couldn't be the nominee. With the call for more membership activity and the introduction of Bill Prout into the race, they implied that he would have to work for it.

Instead, he left with the parting remark: "I truly hope our little adventure will help remind our party of a principle called democracy."

Gee, and here I was thinking that the right to both disagree and choose was what democracy was all about.