Listen Up NDP: NO DEALS WITH hARPERCON SCUM

Far and Wide talks about how, in the face of Ignatieff's apparent eagerness to force an election, the harpercons are cuddling up to the NDP. Far and Wide's take on it is that it's surprising, given all the stuff about Ignatieff's unpopularity and the Liberals' moribund polling, that it's the harpercons who are desperately thrashing about (courting the "socialists" of the evil axis of separatists and socialists) to avoid an election.

My position is that if Ignatieff is showing the same absence of political acumen as he did in August 2009, coming off of a parliamentary break making election threats out of nowhere, then things are a little tricky. That having been said however, I would have to say that the NDP would disgrace itself by making a tawdry deal with the harpercons.

In the fall of 2009 I said that Ignatieff's out-of-the-blue election call would have produced a disaster but that the NDP asked for too little from the harpercons (and they didn't get it anyway).

Layton and the NDP should have done all they could to make harper literally grovel to stay in power. As it is, the repulsive fool has had to show himself (to anyone too unaware to have realized it before) that he's a hypocrite with all his "socialists and separatists" talk. If this all turns out to have been a combined effort by the entire opposition to simply manouvere harper into such a compromising position I'll take back my criticism, but somehow I'm pretty sure that things are as they seem. To whit: Ignatieff has belatedly found his spine (or has exploded in a fit of petulance) and the NDP, realizing that an election would be disastrous for them as well, have now scrambled to do what the Liberals have always been roundly condemned for, hiding pathetically from the electorate. harper, meanwhile, has once again shown himself to be a cowardly bully, who, when his back is to the wall, will do ANYTHING to hold onto power.

...

Two things are for certain though. This craziness has managed to make everyone (except the Bloc, I guess) look bad and everyone (except for harper) look good. harper looks bad because it's always been his stubborn arrogance that's made Parliament dysfunctional the whole time. Now, he's reduced to negotiating with the same "socialists and separatists" he hypocritically trashed the Liberals for courting. Layton looks cynical and hypocritical. Ignatieff looks like a petulant doofus.

At the same time, Layton is once again a player. If he extracts genuine concessions he can say that he knows how to bargain with harper as opposed to the Liberals' panic and embarrassed anger. Ignatieff can say that Layton wouldn't have had the opportunity without the Liberals' election threats. Personally, I'm hoping that harper's concessions won't be enough and Layton allows Ignatieff to force this election.

I say the same thing again. The NDP should ask that the harpercons deliver the exact sort of budget that a Liberal-NDP coalition government would have. If they do, then okay. If they don't, then fuck 'em. harper is a monster. He's a disgrace. He's a failure. He spits on our system of government. He spits on Canadian values. He despises us and he (ridiculously) thinks he's smarter than us. Defeat him.

The Liberals and the NDP should campaign against all the other parties, including each other. But when the smoke clears, Ignatieff and Layton must admit to themselves that they are going to have to work with one another.