A friendly reminder

It's understandable to a point that numerous Libs are eager to praise their new leader to the skies and credit him with singlehandedly knocking Deceivin' Stephen down a peg. But in deciding what comes next, let's not lose track of just who and what managed to throw Harper off his game and into panic mode.

Importantly, it wasn't any single leader, Lib, NDP or otherwise. Instead, it's the spectre of a coalition government taking office which forced the Cons onto the ropes - and the fact that Stephane Dion figured to be at the helm of the resulting government didn't affect the Cons' desperation one bit. Which is why it's a huge plus that Ignatieff is still making clear that the coalition is prepared to go forward if the Cons can't both deliver a budget that actually responds to the current economic crisis and rebuild three years worth of burnt bridges in Parliament over the next month.

But if the Libs do pass the Cons' budget, the all-too-likely result would be to take the possibility of a coalition off the table. And that's not just because a vote to prop up the Cons would create nothing but distrust among the other opposition parties: even if the opposition parties could again figure out a suitable arrangement on a future confidence vote, there's a serious danger that the Cons could far more credibly demand another election if they lose a confidence vote only after passing a major policy measure in the current Parliament and holding government for another couple of months.

Which means that if the Libs don't take their current opportunity to vote Harper down, then it's only a matter of time before Harper goes back to exactly the practices which the opposition parties otherwise seem so eager to put behind us: committees and the House of Commons alike shut down whenever they don't suit the Cons' purposes, constant confidence-vote brinksmanship, poison pills inserted into every vote to test the Libs' willingness to fight another election - and a multi-million dollar effort to brand the Libs' new leader with every show of weakness.

Of course, there's no doubt that the Libs will face plenty of pressure to go along with the Cons' budget regardless of what's included. But if the Libs have learned anything at all from the Cons' stay in power, it should be that they need to consider the consequences of their actions past the current media cycle. And if the Libs do decide to leave Harper in power based on the bare hope that Ignatieff's "attitude" is enough to overcome Harper, the Cons' message machine, and the weight of a federal government being used for nothing but partisan purposes, then both they and the country figure to suffer for the miscalculation.

Update: Jeff has more on how the current message from Ignatieff and Layton is exactly what's needed to place the coalition on the best possible footing next month.

(Edit: fixed wording.)