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30 May 2005

National Conservative Lunacy

As the House heads back after a weeklong break, everyone who thought the confidence games were over in the Commons is finding out that the Connies intended to keep up their tactics.

The finance committee intends to stall the budget.

But for what purpose?

It is one thing to exercise power, but merely to become sand in the gears of government makes a political party look pretty lame. Their message is: "We want an election and we are prepared to pour crazy glue in every lock in the building to get our way. Oh yeah and we want to be the government, too."

Sounds like a winning strategy to me.

Then you have to look at the latest poll, this one by Decima.

Decima confirms other polls that show the Liberals decisively in front of the Connies nationally and in the battleground in Ontario.

The Decima poll also shows that almost half the sample have switched their vote choice in the past month. Look closely though, the biggest group of switchers are low-income women and they are moving between Liberals and NDP - NOT the Connies.

Decima concludes this is good for the Connies.

Only in the minds of the Connie game theorists. That level of volatility is hard to manage, but more importantly, it is highly vulnerable to the kind of messaging that normally causes the NDP vote to collapse and for those voters to stream to the polling booths in order to keep Stephen Harper out of 24 Sussex.

No matter how much low income women may find difficulty with Liberals, they have a much harder time living with Connies.