Dion has to be insane - what's he thinking!?

94 Liberals didn't bother to show up for the "mini-budget" vote in the House of Commons today. Why? They couldn't vote FOR it - that would just be wrong for Liberals to do that, right? They also couldn't vote AGAINST it either, because doing so would set off a sequence of events that would immediately lead to a general election.

Stephane Dion doesn't want to fight an election now because: a) his party can't afford it, and b) he knows he can't win. He is in over his head and is fighting for his political life, so if that's the case, why make the idiotic statement today that, if elected, the Liberals would consider repealing the cuts that the Harper minority government have made to the much maligned and hated Goods and Services Tax?

Nobody likes the GST. If Dion thinks that launching some kind of idiotic debate on the merits of raising taxes is going to help his party rise from the ashes, he's living in some fantasy world. If he seriously thinks that Canadians from coast to coast might embrace the idea of electing a party that promises to consider hiking taxes, he must believe that Jack Layton is one heck of a threat to his political career. Canadians will elect Layton's New Democratic Party before they elect a "Dion-led Liberal Party of Canada that might hike taxes" to government.

We all know that will never happen.

I don't know what the Liberals were thinking when they selected Mr. Kyoto as leader. They had to know he wasn't marketable in each and every corner of this country. They had to see he lacked the charisma to make up for whatever he lacks in political smarts and experience and needs to be an effective party leader and Prime Minister in waiting. So why pick him in the first place?!

What do these Liberal delegates think now as they look to the horizon, fearing the inevitable conclusion of the yet-to-be contested general election? Do they seriously think that giving Stephen Harper a majority government and six years or more in power is just what their party needs? What's it going to take? A leader almost nobody likes is proposing tax hikes before the writ is dropped. I supposed that's better than promising no tax hikes and then later implementing one of the largest tax increases in Ontario history (a la McGuinty back in 2003), but why make getting elected even more remotely possible than it already is?

Mr. Dion, if you have any aspirations whatsoever, fire your PR team and fire your policy hacks that can't seem to forsee the massive chasms you seem to be so prone to gleefully leap into.

They say that no publicity is bad publicity. Promising to consider raising taxes at this stage in your career is NOT what you should be doing right now. Think about it for five minutes and try to convice the press you were taken out of context or didn't quite get the words out right. They might buy it and you might still possibly be forgiven before you further damage your chances.

This is your last chance. You can still save yourself... I think...