New Session

Well, parliament resumes tomorrow, and the Conservatives have decided to go on the attack. Basically, since the Conservatives actually have a war chest, they're going to try to hammer home on Dion. This has to mark the earliest that a party has gone on the attack, maybe even a year before the election.

Now, we knew the Cons had to go negative at some point, since they haven't had nearly enough positive to run on. I can definitely see their logic: they try to define the fact that Dion hasn't had a good record on the environment now, so that when Dion tries to run on it later, he won't have the credibility. It's not a terrible plan, but I think we'll see it backfire.

Going negative early doesn't make people like the conservatives more, and it keeps stuff in the news. By releasing these now, the Liberals have lots of time to respond, and while it's going on, it just reminds people that conservatives have been even worse. I would have thought that they would wait until Dion is even more committed to the environment as his #1 priority in an election campaign, and then tear it down, without leaving the Liberals enough time to recover.

And it's an interesting note to have it go right before we start this session. With the chance of an election at any moment, hard to say what will go down. Should be interesting to watch.