You try to be nice to a guy and what do you get? You get the brush-off. That is what you get. In writing about New Democrat Leader ‘Hapless’ Jack recently, we have tried to be polite and caring. After all, if you invite the guy to become a member of the Liberal Party, you hardly want to disrespect him too much.
That is unless he so rudely rejects your caring blandishments. And he is. Not only did he say that there would be no getting in bed with the Liberal Party on his watch but he has been seen meeting with Prime Minister Harper. They can be up to no good.
The relationship between the conservative and socialist voters has always puzzled political apparatchiks and researchers. You have to be a liberal to understand it. It is the hatred these hardened voters have for liberals. We used to see it in the poorer, less educated voters in some areas of Toronto. They would swing between the Tories and the CCF/NDP. They never stopped at the liberal way stations. They had grown up as confirmed liberal haters and believed firmly that the enemy of my enemy is my friend,. It seems to matter little that the philosophical gulf between the two parties is a mile wide and a mile deep.
In British Columbia and Ontario in the coming federal election, the NDP are going to be bystanders at an all-out assault on getting Harper his majority. Another minority will be considered a failure for Harper. The NDP will just be road kill on the way to a majority.
It is obvious that Jack Layton has done the math. He knows that an election in early May is not going to benefit him or the NDP. He and his party can only lose. If he helps the Bloc and the Liberals to savage the upcoming Harper budget, he will end up with fewer seats in the House of Commons than he started with. That is a no-brainer. By making what looks like some kind of deal with Harper, he kisses off the Bloc and the Liberals and keeps a happier and larger caucus on Parliament Hill.
This is also a win-win for old Harper. Whatever Layton claims Harper has done for him, Harper still gets the credit. The only thing Harper might do to please Layton is to raise the qualifying amount for the Guaranteed Income Supplement for seniors but that is small change compared to the corporate tax cuts that Harper intends.
What a suspended election really does for Harper is to leave Liberal Leader Ignatieff stewing and unable to get the platforms that would be his in an election campaign. As you can imagine, this will be something for the talking heads to be blathering about for the rest of the year!
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