Same old story, non-cooperation edition

The Cons' budget was rightly shot down after arriving alongside this cynical sales pitch:

When Jim Flaherty stands up in the House of Commons, he is expected to unveil a financial plan that has taken a number of expensive ideas from the wish lists of other federal leaders, particularly the NDP’s Jack Layton.
...
Mr. Harper enjoys his job too much to risk losing it. The NDP leader will have to decide whether he has won enough little victories to justify propping up the Conservatives.

Fortunately, the NDP was smart enough not to buy the spin. And the Cons' play-acting at having any interest in listening to anybody outside their own party was exposed as entirely empty when the NDP's efforts to improve the budget were met with a flat refusal.

So Canadians are getting the chance to decide whether or not they want more Harper-style politics, where a smug, self-righteous government pretends that other parties should be satisfied with a pale imitation of their policy priorities.

Now, we'll have to hope that voters are similarly intelligent in dealing with the Libs' equally callous attempt to paint mentions of a couple of lifted platform planks as a substitute for meaningful cooperation:

The whole document is framed as an appeal to those who might be tempted to support other parties too -- take a look at the Green-friendly and NDP-friendly policies within it. Last year, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff said that his answer to all the coalition talk would be the reply: "Liberals *are* the coalition." This platform is his attempt to cast the party in that light, and should probably be measured that way.

But the takeaway isn't so much that the Libs are offering a meaningful form of cooperation, as that they're trying to put a slightly less adversarial face on the same lack of willingness to actually work with other parties. And so anybody looking for a real change - rather than another Harper government dressed in red - will need to look elsewhere.