Gimbol's diatribe and screed

The national media's past time - election watch

Before everyone gets gung ho about an election, I'd like to make one or two meager points.

The commons hasn't even sat, and the politicians will be wanting to test drive their narrative during QP. I fully expect Iggy to do some grandstanding, however if he's not careful Harper will end up giving him a wedgie.

Second point. To have an election, the liberals have to have the Bloc and the NDP on side. Two issues now make that more difficult for him to do that. Some of hte NDP and Bloc MP's may still be po'd at Iggy for dissing the coalition after they stuck their neck out, just as well there may be some lib MP's that will have a hard time holding their seat because they like Iggy went along with the rest of the lemmings and signed the damned thing. But I digress....if the NDP can manage to come away with something better than a blue ribbon panel on EI, Jack can stand before the microphones and say he got parliament to work. Iggy will be able to say he didn't back down, and the government keeps on.
Lets throw out another scenario. What if Jack and Gilles don't back down and tell canadians that though they never wanted an election, they don't want to support the government.
Then there's the other scenario, Harper chooses the hill on which his government will fall with a piece of legislation that the opposition has a hard time justifying voting against....like the reno credit. The liberals must then make some very tough choices, vote it down to save the rep of their leader, or vote in favour and watch Iggy get painted a wimp. Of course if the liberals say they can do better than this, its very hard to expect a leap of faith from voters when they force an election because they don't want a conservative government giving out tax breaks.
The conservatives need only remind voters about the track record of how many tax cuts the liberals promised to follow through on and the ones that Harper did follow through on.

Here's my prediction:
Harper is going to table a confidence motion before the liberals get to test run their talking points. Iggy will be pressured by just about anyone in the liberal braintrust and his MP's to back down on the election threat.
If he does, he loses any momentum he may have garnered and he also gets to wear the wimp moniker.
Busybodies, killjoys, and nancyboys

Labels: beer and popcorn

posted by gimbol @ 3:54 PM