A Liberal dose of confusion

Robert has been nicely tracking Stephane Dion's ever-shifting position as to whether or not he wants to lead the Libs into an election this spring. But based on today's CP report, it looks like the rest of the Libs aren't helping Dion to make up his mind:

"Given this government's track record, including the hocus pocus that was in the last budget and all of the broken promises and, in some cases, outright lies that we've seen since then, I would think Liberals would be hard pressed to find a budget that would be satisfactory," said Liberal House leader Ralph Goodale...

Amid all the signs of election fever, Montreal MP Denis Coderre sounded a note of caution, warning it would be folly to force a federal election at the same time as a provincial election.

Quebec is likely to hold a provincial election in March or April - about the same time as the budget is expected to be brought down - and voters in Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador may also head to the polls this year.

"There's a convention . . . we can not have an election at the same time," Coderre said. "That's obvious."

Still, former rival Scott Brison said the party can't allow fear of a premature election to guide its decision on something as crucial as the budget.

"I don't think we should fear doing the right thing that is consistent with the interests of Canadians and the values that we stand for," he said. "That's going to be the litmus test."

Deputy leader Michael Ignatieff said Liberals "are here to oppose" the government.

"If they offer us junk on the budget, we vote it down," he said. "If they offer stuff that seems to be in the interests of citizens of this country, we'll take another view."

So, to sum up: Coderre doesn't want an election. Brison and Ignatieff want to measure the budget against fuzzy standards which will likely have more to do with polls than the actual contents of the bill. And Goodale thinks it's all up to Layton to decide whether the budget will fall (since in his world the Bloc has apparently ceased to exist).

No wonder Dion doesn't know where he stands from one day to the next. But compared to the NDP's consistent position (both from day to day and member to member) that it'll evaluate the budget against a set of fair criteria which are now being rolled out in the public eye, the Libs' confusion can only make Dion and his entourage look like they have no idea what they're doing. And if that begins to show through in the polls, then the Libs may not have much choice about where their position goes next.