The Great ReformaTory

Remember when Harper was campaigning in 2006?

Remember him promising fixed election dates to end the gamesmanship around precisely when an election would be called?

Do you remember his government introducing Bill C-16, which created a fiction about fixed election dates?

I thought you might.

So, then. Why is Stephen Harper trying to trigger an election? The news on CBC this morning hinted that Harper could decide to trigger a general election instead of just allowing the current lot of byelections to finish.

I can think of lots of reasons - the most fundamental of which is that he has run out of script, and the longer his party is off script, the greater the probability that they'll say something that Canadians don't want in their government. Of course, the longer that the Ethics committee hearings into the Conservative In-and-Out campaign funding scam go on, the worse it's going to look for them - especially with their obvious attempts to subvert the process.