[Catholic Canadian]

Oh, I truly believe that he did calculatingly back them into a corner. He knew the opposition were planning this. Rather than have them do it after the budget at the end of January, he pulled this stunt now. This incensed them to this childish action, a mere 6 weeks after Canadians voted them in, and they did this over essentially nothing - except when you factor in that the Liberals are basically bankrupt to the tune of 40+ million dollars, and barely made the last payment on their loan.

Dion is personally in debt over $600,000, so you can be he's crapping himself. Because Harper forced their hand so soon after he was elected democratically, Canadians are now viewing this as a) a naked power grab and b) treasonous seeing as the Libs were so desparate that they turned to the separatists, their sworn enemy, for support.

This is just one more thing to incense Canadians, who were already fed up with the Liberals endless stream of scandals.

Harper is coming out of this looking like a real leader people can trust, his enemies look like second rate losers throwing temper tantrums in parliament and displaying their complete ineptitude.

Harper is a genius!

[JSDude1]

I hope your conservatives can top 60+%.

Man, I am a political junkie, and We need a new Harper in the USA, not McCain& Co.

[StAnDeliver]

"Except when you factor in that the Liberals are basically bankrupt to the tune of 40+ million dollars, and barely made the last payment on their loan. Dion is personally in debt over $600,000, so you can be he's crapping himself."

You'll never hear it in the MSM...

[Sam Gamgee]

I am starting to think you may be right - Harper's chief problem has always been the media that holds the public captive. For Americans here they need to understand that while only 17% of Americans have total faith in the MSM, something like 40% of Canadians take what their media says as gospel. Which is even more dangerous since TV media is absolutely dominated by leftist liberals, print media enjoy one national left of centre paper, the rest are far left of centre.

Harper needed a work around the media to get his message to the public. The message was that the Liberals/NDP/Bloc are the ones with the so called hidden agenda. They are the ones to fear and hold with suspicion. And he achieved that. There is very little change of an election - the coalition does not want the public a chance to give Harper a mandate. Most likely they will back down and vote in the budget. There is still an outside chance they try to steal power, but doing so will hurt the Liberal brand forever.