If not now, when? For the love of god, when?

So, as everyone by now knows, Stephane Dion has said, while this budget is "a mile wide and an inch deep" he's going to have the Liberals support it anyway, and let this government see another day. Or, at this rate, however many more days there are to the fixed election date in 2009.

Is it possible to be flabbergasted, and not be surprised, at the same time? Because that's my reaction. As much as I ridicule the NDP for deciding to vote against it before they've seen it, it seems clear the Liberals decided to vote for the budget before they'd even seen it. They were clearly signaling their intentions last week with the ridiculous "if it's not TOO bad for the economy" comment from Dion. So I'm not surprised, and yet, still, it boggles the imagination that, again, we're backing down and propping-up this government that doesn't deserve to be in power.

I could attempt to tow the party line and say there's nothing in this budget to get excited about, no big deal, let's just move on. And it is a rather bland, inoffensive document. It is, indeed, a mile wide and an inch deep. It has some positives and says some nice things, though it doesn't go near far enough in the right areas and goes too far in others.

I don't believe in that excuse, however. Because at this point in the life of this government we don't need a reason to bring it down. It needs to give us a reason to support it. And it has failed at doing that.

Canadians don't want an election, say the apologists. I'm not aware that they ever have. It's like going to the dentist: you'd rather not, but you don't want cavities so you go. There's nothing in here we could go to the people on, they continue. It's been my experience that two days into an election no one remembers how it was precipitated.

You want issues to go on though? How about squandering record surpluses with reckless spending over two years that has left us dangerously close to deficit? How about ignoring economic challenges in Ontario and Quebec? How about a billion-dollar softwood sellout? How about firing any bureaucrat or nuclear regulator that disagrees with the government? How about abandoning any action on decreasing wait times? How about taking no substantive action on the environment? How about abandoning the Kelowna Accord? How about doing nothing meaningful on childcare? And a million other reasons why this government, whose agenda is supported by only a minority of Canadians, should not be allowed to continue. How about hijacking the wheat board? It goes on and on and on...

There are plenty of good reasons to force an election. It seems however the Liberal Party is more interested in looking for reasons to not force one. My advice to Stephane Dion yesterday stands. This was an opportunity for leadership, and he surrendered. Why? I don't know, but it's a huge mistake, and I don't see how it recovers from it.

As for the majority of caucus that apparently was pushing him to lower our swords, what's their motivation? I don't know. Maybe Bob Rae's supporters thought Bob would be better positioned for his next leadership run if Bob was in caucus, and Michael Ignatieff's people wanted more time to get ready too, and pay off debts. Who knows. But its becoming abundantly clear that, whatever the agendas are, it has nothing do with what's best for the Liberal Party or, more importantly, what' s best for the people of Canada.

This is a caucus divided, and the only way Dion was ever going to force it to come together was to force them into an election. A common enemy, fighting for survival and what not. Now that's not going to happen, and the bullshit is only going to continue.

From this day forward, I'm going to find it very difficult to not laugh whenever the Liberals say something bad about the Harper government. I broke my no Mike Duffy rule tonight for 10 minutes, because it was budget day after all, and caught the end of his coverage. Liberal Steve MacKinnon was on a strategists panel, saying what he didn't like about the budget. And I said to myself who cares Steve, we're not opposing it.

How in the hell can we pretend any longer to have any credibility as the official opposition? Any time an MP or party official takes issue with something negative the government does, I'm just going to think yeah, but you still propped them up, so who gives a crap what you think. If you really cared, we wouldn't be here.

Two years ago I had such high hopes for my party. And again, I've come full circle. I blame Stephane Dion for not showing leadership and bringing the party together. I blame the party establishment and the caucus, for never moving past the leadership race and refusing to work with the leader we elected. There's lots of blame to go around.

And to those that say let's replace the leader, I say with who exactly? Soon the siren call will begin for another white knight, another savior to return the Liberal Party to glory. If only Iggy, if only Bob, if only Frank MacKenna or Justin Trudeau or Mr. Dressup, then everything would be peacky-keen.

It's bullshit. Stephane Dion failed to fix the problem, that's correct. But he didn't create the problem. We did, and papering it with a new leader won't change a thing.

The problem is, we rushed into a leadership race after the election defeat without ever really acknowledging the deep rot that has set into the Liberal Party, let alone doing anything to fix it. We created this rot, this sickness through years of Chretien/Martin civil war, preceded by years of Turner/Chretien civil war, going back who knows how many generations. A rot worsened by years of majority government with noses bellied-up to the trough, by self-important organizers that put winning and position before policy and what's right, by a deep sense of entitlement, by a bloated party machine dependent on big corporate donations.

Unless we ever get serious about reforming this party and returning (or, since they've never really had it, giving) power to the grassroots then it's hard to really care where we go from here. Dion will stay an indecisive yet willing captive to a divided caucus running its own multiple agendas until enough of those factions decide their interests warrant an election. We'll then finally have an election that, at this rate, we'll lose. We'll pin it all on the leader, he'll probably fall on his sword, and we'll have a leadership race. We'll look for the most messiah-like, crown them, the Conservatives will begin their predictable attack ads and the cycle will begin all over again. Remember, you read it here first.

As for me, I don't know. I'll keep commenting from afar, very afar, but I've lost my energy, and more importantly I've lost my passion. Right now baseball season can't start soon enough.

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