I'll take out my teeth to make room for your words, AKA the Dion defense.

Ok, I was going to post later, but I have to say this now. I never said that the Liberals and NDP share policy. I think the most I've every said to that is that they tend to fall on similar sides of the issues. That said, the Liberals come up with proven, balanced and practice (real world, one might say) solutions, while the NDP come up with idealistic, one sided, shortsighted and infeasible ones (dream land, as it were). The party is even worse under Layton (he plays politics as dirty as Harper, just for the other team) as they are now muddling the ideals I could at least respect from a distance with feel good platitudes that serve no one but sound electable. What I was pointing out was that many of your arguments about why the coalition was an issue for western Canada, applied to the rest of Canada in reverse. While I would never advocate letting the NDP get a hold of any sort of a purse string, let alone any money that may (up until then) have been in the purse, I would (and do) trust the Liberals with every (red?) cent the country has. They are very different parties, and as a result I could never see a day when anything stronger then temporary coalitions form between them. (That said, the Alliance and PC parties were almost as different, and technically they merged (read: the PCs are no more, we now bow to our social conservative overlords).)

What I was saying, was that the idea of the two parties coming to some sort of terms to advance the issues they do agree on should not be overlooked. While I'm totally unsurprised (and would even have predicted) that there are many Liberals who would vote for the Conservatives over the NDP. (Given a reasonable non-social conservative at the helm, I would certainly consider it.) No, given that the Liberals are in the centre, it only makes sense that they draw from both sides. The point is simply that if some deal could be struck and sold, there are some places they could benefit. Also, your scenario is trite and unlikely for reasons beyond those you give. :P (I am supposing here that emoticons are considered formal English for the new generations.) I shall also point out again, that new polls really need to be taken, as much of the recoil form the coalition could have been for reasons unrelated to the coalition itself, and more to do with what they were trying to do with it and when, as I pointed out, just as I also said that the coalition would also risk the Liberals status as a party that could form government.

One thing that the current coalition can do (after the crisis is sorted out, read: force Harper to do something, and force an infrastructure spending bill through) is put pressure on Harper (read forcing) to out some solid environment plan through (ideally a carbon tax). This could even be helped along with economic stimulus through infrastructure spending. (Dear Santa, this year I want a sky train line to UBC, signed: Vancouver.) Currently, even though the big boys have gotten into the game, Canada is basically saying "We want to save money on sun destination vacations". I would be unsurprised if the Conservatives are blocking change as they consider global warming to be part of their economic stimulus package (Resolute = New Singapore), after all they put all the rest of their old spending in (to hide the lack of stimulus maybe).

Cause, in the end, without pressure from all three opposition parties (and it would help if the Greens gave up and joined real parties), I won't be the only thing without teeth.