CTV's Partisan panel

I was on Mike Duffy's partisan panel again today. I don't think I was particularly strong, but it was still fun to hold up the Conservative end of the argument. I was on the show last week and it was a lot spicier -- I'm going to try to find that clip and post it, too. In the meantime, here's today's.

I've been talking with friends in the PMO for months, and they are genuinely surprised that Stephane Dion hasn't pulled the plug on the government yet. Well, surprised probably isn't the word for it -- Dion's indecision no longer surprises them. A more accurate way of phrasing it would be that the Conservatives were fully engrossed in planning an election -- first for April, then for June. I've joked before that if the government hadn't passed a law setting a fixed election date, Stephen Harper's minority government would last forever.

And, in a way, why should Dion bring down the government? Because Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae want him to do so?

On what issue would he run? Afghanistan has been neutralized as a campaign issue; the Liberals have consented to Conservative criminal justice reforms; with economic worries growing, costly Kyoto proposals are less resonant than ever with the public. So what would it be? One of the inside-the-beltway mini-scandals of the week -- from Karlheinz Schrieber to Cadscam to Elections Canada -- each of which falls apart under scrutiny, and none of which has animated anyone off of Parliament Hill?

And then there's the buzz around Ottawa that more criminal charges are set to follow those filed against Benoit Corbeil, the head of the Liberal Party's Quebec wing. I understand that a number of quite senior Liberals have been "invited" to meet with the RCMP in the past week; I wonder if Corbeil has cut some sort of deal. Triggering an election -- only to have charges announced against another half-dozen Liberal bosses in the midst of a campaign -- is not a risk that Dion wants to take, nor should Ignatieff or Rae for that matter.

No, I think being the aimless captain of a drifting ship with a slow-burning mutiny is a preferable scenario for Dion than going to the polls. Let's watch Rick Mercer's beautiful song and dance on the subject one more time.