Go for broke

Abandoning their careful recognition of the public mistrust of the Conservative brand, Harper and the Tories plan to explicitly campaign for a majority in the next election.

The Conservatives have 143 seats in the House of Commons, only 12 seats away from a clear majority in the 308-seat chamber.

Conservative Party officials said it would simply not make sense to call for a "stronger mandate," as Mr. Harper did in the last campaign, which the Conservatives started at 127 seats.

While he broke his promise for fixed-date elections last year, Mr. Harper is now actively campaigning against a fall election and emphasized last week that this is not the time for political instability.

"The last thing Canadians want is a Liberal government propped up by the NDP and the Bloc Québécois," Mr. Harper said at the event in Mr. Calandra's riding.

The last thing Canadians want? In fact in election after election that seems to be exactly what about 7 out of 10 Canadians want.

I think the Conservatives should be encouraged to follow this strategy. It doesn't help that the Liberals have only stood up to their agenda once, when a direct attack on their party financing made it personal, but it would still be easy, and true, to argue that there's stuff that the Conservatives haven't even tried to ram through in a minority that would be on the order paper in a month in a majority.

I can't think of a better election strategy to remind Canadians about everything they they don't like or trust about the Conservatives.