Plan? What Plan?

"After four years of drift, four years of denial, four years of division and discord - Mr. Harper, your time is up. The Liberal party cannot support this government any further. We will hold Stephen Harper to account. We will oppose his government in Parliament." How strenuously self-righteous, how audaciously intemperate.

The first half of the first sentence appeared a description of the Liberal party; suddenly it was transformed to describe the Conservatives.

How very innovative; take those characteristics that best describe the discord, inertia, lack of public trust never quite recognized by the Liberal party, and neatly turn it around. But who will believe it? Certainly not the majority of Canadians, whom the most recent polls discover to have found the Liberals and their new leader somewhat wanting.

Those same voters who agree, perhaps reluctantly, that the Conservatives have administered quite well indeed.

Here is Michael Ignatieff suddenly resolute. Back when the Bloc Quebecois, the NDP and the Liberals formed a coalition of the 'just and the ready' (or was it the 'just-ready') to bring down the government over Stephen Harper's budget miscalculation, it was Mr. Ignatieff who exercised restraint from joining that inglorious trio, triumphant in the belief that they could divide and rule. (Rule divisively? Derisively?)

Now, when there is no good reason (not that there was formerly, a scant month post-election) to bring down the government, with the country on an economic upswing and the future unfolding as it should, it has become imperative to bring back the Liberals. Don't think so, chums.

And the leader of the NDP who so forcefully declared that despite what the new budget contains the NDP will veto it, suddenly finds that it will be inconvenient to support the Liberals. Who (along with the Greens) have taken votes from the NDP, those sneaky devils, leaving the NDP a very low voter-support percentile.

Liberal leader Ignatieff just got carried away and lost himself in an inchoate dream of achieving his goal to steer the country. To the great acclaim of the Liberal crowd, crowing "We can do better"! Heck, if Barak Obama could get elected despite heavy odds in the U.S. on the promise of "we can do it", why not the Liberals.

Even if it means the country will head into its fifth election in nine years at a cost of $300-million, even while Mr. Ignatieff decries the debt burden that the Conservatives have assented to, pushed by the opposition to DO SOMETHING! Hanging an election on the government's recalcitrance to beggar the country ever further through releasing a more generously-inclusive EI represents thin gruel.

This rash and headstrong declaration of intent is begging for an inglorious pratfall. It appears to have become a Liberal choreography, these past years. The Liberals don't have enough seats without the kindly assistance of the other opposition parties to bring off the government's downfall.

And according to the NDP's deputy leader they're not dreadfully interested in fighting an election at this time. "The only way there is going to be an election is if Mr. Harper provokes one. We in the NDP are saying we're going back to Parliament to try to make it work." What a truly novel idea.

Certainly Mr. Harper agrees whole-heartedly, and isn't shy about stating it. "I don't think anybody understands why less than a year after the previous election somebody would be wanting to roll the dice again to see if they can't change the results of that election. This is not the time for more political games."

Are you listening, you rash, impetuous, impudent, scholarly, egotistical wannabe?