Tuesday, September 06, 2005

On being careful what one wishes for

Harper responds to another wave of bad press by demanding a chance to go to the polls:
A spring and summer of firings and resignations in Stephen Harper's office peaked Tuesday with a fall clearout of staff.

But the Conservative leader dismissed the half dozen or so layoffs as nothing startling and concentrated instead on challenging Prime Minister Paul Martin to test Liberal popularity by calling an election...

"The Liberal party thinks they've got great polls? Call the election - we've got the money, we've got the candidates, so ask them what the problem is."

In fairness to Harper, its sounds like there are reasonable explanations for the staff clearout. But even if the staff cuts were planned, the Cons would have been much better off keeping around some differing opinions on today's response.

Instead of putting the focus on the reasonable explanation, Harper went with the Macho Steve act - and we know how well that went over in Campaign '04. A couple more outbursts like this, and PMPM may just take Harper up on his offer, laughing all the way to a majority.

(As an aside, a research assignment for any entrprising readers. Harper claims in the article that that he never discusses his office staff; this might be worth comparing to his historical record, particularly at the time when people were hired. I'll take a look later on tonight, but any input is welcome.)

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