Harper has taken a minority government and, by exploiting weaknesses in the Opposition, managed to turn it into a functional majority and gained complete control over a Liberal dominated Senate in the process - his strategy for getting what he wants done done, and making the Liberals look foolish in the process has, so far been spot on…. so why the deviation now?

Is this the big force the election regardless of what the Liberals want bid?

I think this will only hurt the CPoC if the election takes place sometime within the next few months. If the election takes place next October, this will unfortunately be ancient history.

And that’s fine. It’s symptomatic of ideological control freaks that their messages are directed to their own true believers. The more they do to alienate the Crown Corporations, the federal agencies, the bureaucracy, the media, and all the other sectors they’ve decided are their enemies, the more true their self-fulfilling paranoia will become.

There’s no doubt that the Bloc knew this motion put Harper and crew between a rock and a hard place given current events, but the CPoC made the wrong choice in their reaction. The better course of action would have been to vote in favour of the motion, tout their confidence in the courts and Elections Canada to ultimately sort the mess out in an acceptable manner, and then continue going through the motions in the House when asked about the search warrant and seizure of documents.

Everyone knows they feel persecuted, everyone knows or suspects that something went on inside election financing, and people are (rightly IMO) questioning the whole accountability and transparency of the party based on their campaign promises, but keeping the charade going would have allowed them to wait it out until everyone went on summer vacation - after all, most reasonable people (ie. not rabidly partisan) are really more more concerned riht now about the state of our economy as it is being affected by our southern brethren’s problems than they are in the scheming of politicians and parties they already basically consider dishonest, to hold on to this for too long.

Harper’s personal credibility, and the credibility of the party, has been hurt by this and it will play a prominent role in the next election.