Election Watch '06: It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like an Election

You’ll pardon me if I start talking politics now, but the federal government has fallen today and an election will be called tomorrow. So there won’t be just one turkey at your house over Christmas, whole flocks of turkeys will be knocking on your door and begging for your votes.
For once, I have to agree with Ralph Klein. I don’t see any outcome other than a Liberal minority. I think the Bloc will do very well in Québec, and that will pretty much put the kibosh on the chances of any party forming a majority.
And Klein’s point that Conservative leader Stephen Harper is seen by voters as too right wing to form a government is dead on. Ontario will never vote for a Western right-wing rump party, and that’s exactly what the Tories became when they joined forces with Reform, or the Alliance or whatever the hell they were calling themselves.
And if Harper can’t win running in a second election against Paul Martin’s Liberal Bozo Brigade, that will spell the end of Harper’s leadership. The long knives will be out. And a minority won’t do: Harper has to win a majority or he’s badly burnt toast. A Tory minority will not last long as Harper has no other party willing to team up with him. The Bloc might, and Harper might be dumb enough and power-hungry enough to accept a Tory-Bloc alliance, but that will backfire as much as Mulroney’s courting of Québec sovereignists did in the 1980s. Remember how well that turned out? No, if Harper’s Tories don’t get a majority, he’ll become this year’s Stockwell Day, an embarrassing reminder of how this country’s right-wing consistently shoots itself in the foot.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.