Harper and elections

All the signs are there, a massive wave of attack ads, John Baird and the rest of the Conservative caucus denying it, Stephen Harper desperately wants an election sooner than later. He can't be seen as wanting one of course so the question is how is he going to do it? The reasons he wants a quick election are obvious. First the stimulus money has run out meaning that those areas that were depending on it to get through these tough economic times could be on the skids again by summer. This is generally considered something that loses a government votes so Harper needs the election to come down before the effects are felt.

Second, in order to reign in the budget deficit and provide corporate tax cuts and provide billions in funding for new prisons and provide billions in funding for new fighter jets Harper will need to do some massive cutting. Really the only place he has to do this cutting is program spending. This of course has been his plan all along, but massive cuts to federal transfers to the provinces for health care and education are also not big vote getters. So Harper has to go to the polls before the budget comes down or he could be fighting an election on massive cuts to social programs.

Third Harper is riding about as high in the polls as he's going to get. Time is not his friend as the longer he's in power, the more likely more scandal will break and they can't keep Rob Anders under a rock and away from a live microphone forever. This also points to Harper wanting to go to the polls sooner than later.

So with pressing reasons to go to the polls, Harper has to come up with a way for that to happen. Naturally as PM he can have parliament dissolved whenever, but given the uproar over prorogation Harper can't be seen to do that simply because it's politically expedient. His ultra-core base will approve, but not many others will and it would cost him votes. So he has to come up with something. His problem here is that he's bullied the opposition parties into submission so there's no good way to blame them for the election. Worse for Harper there's a good chance the budget will actually pass. So expect to see more attack ads in the next couple of weeks from the Conservatives blaming the opposition for tying up parliament. Harper desperately needs this narrative to sink into the minds of Canadians or else it will just look like he's calling an election because he can, and by the narrative around elections the Tories have been throwing around out there, the last thing Harper needs is to have people think the needless election the Tories have been warning about is his fault.