An excellent question

Apropos of the Quebec election, nottawa asks:

What's the difference between:
(a) a federalist liberal from Quebec who storms out of a Liberal party convention, throws a hissy fit in the early 1990s, quits and starts another party; and
(b) a federalist liberal from Quebec who storms out of a Liberal party convention, throws a hissy fit in the early 1990s, quits and starts another party?

In other words, why are the very same Tories, (some) Liberals, and journalists who took great glee in referring to Jean Lapierre as a separatist going to such great lengths today to call Mario Dumont federalist? Especially given that Dumont has been giving interviews in French all day adamantly declaring otherwise?

To declare this a victory for the federalists seems so wrong it makes my head hurt. Whether or not Dumont is an outspoken separatist now -- he was once -- it's clear that his party is an easy refuge for the ethnic nationalism and racism from which too much of the separatist impulse flows. Any election where the ADQ does well is an election the separatists -- if not the PQ -- can smile about.