Friday, August 22, 2008

Heads I win, tails you lose

Cameron largely debunks the Libs' attempt to spin Jack Layton's comments on whether Deceivin' Stephen can legitimately call a fall election on his own. But let's look at this from another angle.

Much as I hate to see any discussion of policy give way to the usual Harper/Dion wrangling as to whether or not there will be an election soon, the reality is that Harper managed to push the question into the public eye with his threat to force an election. Which raises the obvious question of whether Harper could legitimately do so. And the issue only presents two possible answers on the part of Layton or anybody else: either Harper can legitimately ignore his own fixed elections date to force an early election without a non-confidence vote in Parliament, or he can't.

Now, consider what the Libs would have Layton say in response to Harper's latest gambit. Is there a Lib alive who would prefer to see Layton defend the idea that Harper would force an early election? And more to the point, is there a Lib alive who wouldn't have used such a response to try to revive the always-laughable claim that Layton is somehow in league with Harper?

Of course, the Libs need to spin reality for their own benefit too. Which offers some explanation, if not any justification, as to how they're now equating a statement that Parliament should be allowed to do its job with a party voting or holding fire over 40 times to prop up a government and its policies which they claim to oppose.

But if the best the Libs can do is to stretch the truth beyond recognition in order to pretend that Layton is anywhere near as useless as Dion, that should offer a strong signal as to who's rightly seen as the true opposition to the Cons.

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