Angry in the Great White North

You ever get the feeling Garth Turner talks too much? Like Liberals were screaming at the television for Garth Turner to shut up, as if somehow a wormhole would open up in front of the screen and take their shouts back in time to when Garth Turner was taped talking to a reporter in the halls of outside the House of Commons?

I wonder that, when all the Liberal Party messaging was about how Canadians didn't want an election, and how the Liberals were reluctantly allowing the Throne Speech to pass, and how Stephane Dion would lead his party to examine each of the government bills one at a time, regardless of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's promise to treat each major bill as a confidence measure.

Apparently that plan has gone out the window. Instead of avoiding an election or being forced to bring down the government on a bill that is absolutely unacceptable, the Liberals are going to spontaneously force an this unwanted election for no good reason at all, other than that they can:

Tory-turned-Grit [Garth] Turner let slip a bombshell that's leading many to wonder whether we're safe from a fall vote after all. "We have an opposition day next week," he reveals. "We have the opportunity of putting forward a motion that will call into question the confidence in the government. We have that possibility. And so I think right now we're trying to determine if this is the right thing to do."

Does he think it is? His answer speaks volumes. "I still believe that we are going to have an election in the next few weeks."

OK, so let's get this straight:

• Canadians don't want an election
• The Liberals want Parliament to work
• The Liberals don't want to play chicken with the Conservatives
• The Liberals have said they will allow the Throne Speech to pass
• The Liberals are not planning to force an election on the crime bill either

And now:

• The Liberals are going to bring down the government...just because.

See, this is why you don't tell Garth Turner stuff. Something about a camera just causes him to blurt stuff out.

Unless this is his plan and his plan only.

Michael Ignatieff's response is only slightly enlightening:

"I'm the deputy leader," answers Michael Ignatieff. "I have to have heard of it. No, we're considering our strategy. We're not here to roll over, let me tell you."

He has to have heard of it? What sort of answer is that? But did he hear of it?

Michael Ignatieff's answer is one of those I'm not answering because the answer is obvious answers, which is a dodge in order to avoid answering the question. Michael Ignatieff is not actually on record saying that he had indeed heard of the plan Garth Turner was laying out for all to see.

Maybe Garth Turner was trying to make the Conservatives feel nervous or apprehensive. All he's managed to do, though, is make reporters, political observers, and regular Canadians wonder just who is running the Liberal ship.

Sometimes it seems like the Liberal Party is suffering from sort of institutional dementia. The confusion, the self-inflicted wounds, the delusions of grandeur, the incoherent babbling -- if we saw all these traits in a person, we'd wonder if he was insane.

Quem deus vult perdere, dementat prius. (Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.) Euripides

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Stephane Dion, Garth Turner, Michael Ignatieff, Liberal Party, Stephen Harper, Conservative Party, Loki, Euripides, election, Throne Speech