Beating a Dead Horse

Stephane Dion, go directly to an election, do not pass Go, do not collect $200, do not abstain from confidence motions. A mediocre budget, Cadscam, Brodiegate, what does it take? Does Stephen Harper need to defecate on the flag in the middle of the House of Commons while giving the finger to a Mountie? What? The Bloc and the NDP are ready, your own people have grown impatient. You can bring down the government, Stephane, as Rob Schneider says, you can do it! I've sort of sat on a progressive fence for a long time now, but damn it, I'm so tempted to explicitly join the NDP or the Greens in large part to register my dissatisfaction with this foot-dragging and equivocation.

What Keen's Firing Says About Harper's Tories

I think the most straightforward lesson to take away from the tarring of Linda Keen as a Liberal hack and her subsequent firing is that we have yet another example of how the Conservatives view everything as a partisan opportunity. This is the Karl Rove strategy perfected in the US.

What I'm going to suggest to the Liberals and the NDP and the Greens is that, by Harper's rules, everything is fair game. Every time you can score partisan points, recognize that, if Harper was in your position, he would not hesitate. I don't know that this is the most tasteful way that politics is done, but you've got give as good as you get, right?

Perhaps May can win?

Greg Morrow of democraticSPACE crunches some numbers and shows a way that Elizabeth May could actually make a play for Central Nova. My instincts (such as they are) make me skeptical about this (more so than Scott is at least), but it is at least plausible. Put another way, right now, I'd still put money on MacKay, much as I'd prefer he'd lose.

One wonders though, how much money the Greens will have to spend in Nova Scotia that they might have spent in those BC ridings where we are always told they might make a breakthrough.

Desperate hook-ups and the sad man with the dog

Well, he of the sad dog is probably staying put. I hope he's not pouting for photo-ops today. Stephane Dion and Elizabeth May (it's everywhere in the Canadian blogosphere, I'm too lazy to link to it) have forged a little alliance against MacKay but I doubt it will unseat him. (Go to the results and do the math yourself.)

I can't help but feel as though the Dion-May thing was set up like a last-call one-night stand, all bets are off after the next election I suppose. That's not to say that such an agreement couldn't work - it just comes off as, I don't know, a tad desperate for both of them. I doubt it will have the longevity of the Harper-MacKay shotgun wedding of a few years back (an up-and-comer married into a storied old family for some respectability - and connections), and I'm not sure what, if any, results it will produce for either party at the ballot box.

In extending all these relationship metaphors, the NDP is playing the part of the sanctimonious single type - disgusted by its skanky acquaintances but secretly really REALLY hurt that no one asked it to roll in the hay. Even if it would have totally said "no" such an offer.