Thanks Iain. As you suspect, it's not quite as cut-and-dry as those left-leaning sources would suggest. It's true that the Conservatives were found in contempt of Parliament - by a vote of the three opposition parties. That's not a criminal conviction, of course, and nothing the Conservatives did was a violation of any criminal law (or any civil law, for that matter). Rather, the House of Commons determined that the government had acted with contempt. It's up to the House to regulate its own affairs, not the courts; and the punishment that the House meted in this instance was to vote down the government and trigger an election. Query whether that was, in fact, punishment.

With regard to campaigning on election day, it's also not at all clear cut. The charge, as I understand it, is that Harper was made available for radio interviews on e-day. But while the Elections Act does prohibit certain forms of paid advertising on e-day, and specifically paid advertising that promotes a particular party or candidate, there's nothing in the act that bars a candidate, or party leader, from making statements more generally. There was a lot of discussion of this on twitter after many MPs announced that they would be suspending their twitter accounts for the day at the suggestion of certain Elections Canada officials. Reporters - and especially the CBC's Kady O'Malley - spent much of the day trying to get a clear ruling or explanation from Elections Canada, but received contradictory messages from different Elections Canada officials.

The point is, the Elections Act is pretty vague, and a lot depends on how you interpret words like "advertise." But it's important to note that even if the Tories did violate some part of the Elections Act, that wouldn't be a criminal offense, and it certainly wouldn't make them ineligible to hold office. (The same is true with respect to the so-called "In and Out" affair, in which the Conservatives took advantage of a loophole in election finance laws which Elections Canada subsequently determined to be a violation.)

No indeed, and it'll present an interesting test for the Tories over the next few days. Assuming this interests the PPG enough to get them to stop asking questions about Facebook, they'll presumably put it to the Tories that these numbers suggest real cuts beyond fat-trimming; if the opposition parties pick up on it, they'll start harping on a "hidden cuts" agenda. Then it'll be up to the Tories to get particular, or face the same sort of "hidden agenda" innuendo they tried so hard to escape in the early aughts. (A hidden cuts agenda is probably easier to ride out than a hidden social-consevative agenda.)

Incidentally, while I know our collective respect for the Tories' strategery has declined in recent years, it is worth consideringn whether the Tories are anticipating a "hidden agenda" line of attack, which would after all give them the opportunity to command the narrative for a few days through detailed policy proposals. Of course that would turn the election into a referendum on their policies, rather than a referendum on Ignatieff, which appears to have been their strategy to date.

See that's fair. And I should note, for what it's worth, that the conservative Conservatives I know seem quite pleased with the budget. I sense a "hidden agenda" narrative on the horizon...

I should note in fairness that PW does appear to be going through the budget (on twitter); I'm confindent he'll let us know if the savings are simply conjured as you suggest (and, from his tone certainly, he appears to believe).

I believe they're proposing to reduce the operational cost of the government by, inter alia, imposing what amounts to a total hiring freeze on the federal public service and taking advantage of the resulting attrition. Will the NDP be supporting that in the next budget?

I concede that attrition won't save $8 billion. I presume there are other spending cuts in the platform; if I'm wrong, I'm wrong, though I'm afraid I'm going to need something more authoritative than "that's the only difference" to convince me. My point is that the mere fact that spending forecasts differ between the March budget and the Tory platform is no evidence, itself, of deceit or of any other kind of shenanigans.

Remember how shocked everyone was - this includes PW - when Jack announced he wouldn't support the budget? And how everyone said the budget was, all in all, pretty middle of the road and clearly designed to attract opposition votes? Remember?

So tell me: which of the opposition parties would support this platform?

Now I haven't costed the entire platform and compared it to the budget - I suspect none of y'all have either - so it's certainly possible that the Tories have just snapped their fingers and conjured more savings.

But the more plausible explanation - and really the more obvious one, I'd think - is that the platform accounts for net spending reductions that the opposition parties could not and would not support in a budget. No?

Desiderantes meliorem patriam. Or at least gubernum.

You know, I see a lot of snark here, and a lot of condescension, but I don't see a lot of persuasive argument that a familiarity with the topics of these questions - Nascar, MMA, the military, country music, and agriculture - (a) is relatively common among Americans who live outside of the Northeast, the West Coast, and the big urban areas of the rust belt and midwest and (b) is relatively uncommon among Americans who live in those regions, nor that (c) the folks in those two broadly-defined regions have broadly contrary political views. In other words: 2008 aside, there is a 'red' America and a 'blue' America, which is generally coterminous with the urban/rural divide, and folks in red America are more likely than those in blue America to know about red America's past-times and activities (i.e. Nascar, the military, agriculture). This isn't earth-shattering stuff.

Now Frum and Savage and the rest of y'all may be right that 'elite' is hardly an appropriate label for the folks in blue America, nor an inappropriate one for the folks in red America. But if that's the case, then isn't this all semantics? Murray's basic point appears to be that the folks in one part of America are fed up with the attitudes (and politics) of the folks in another part of America, and that this fed-uppiness accounts for the apparent success of the Tea Party. We'll find out in a week or so but by most metrics that appears to be true; and whether you call that divide "regular v. elite" or "red v. blue" or "rural v. urban" or "republican v. democrat" seems pretty much entirely beside the point, no?

Well put (except for the Tea Party barb, which I'll just add to my list of Canadian pundits fundamentally misunderstanding the United States). I'd only quibble with the suggestion that the guiding ideology of the anti-ideologues is anti-Americanism. I think that's certainly a motivating factor; but the simple quest for power seems to account for much of it as well. As you say, by affirmatively eschewing ideology, the Canadian politician frees himself from any external rubric by which his or her performance might be evaluated; indeed, breaking promises comes to be seen as a good thing, a sign of 'pragmatism.' That gives the politician the freedom to take whatever measures necessary, politically, to ensure a stable (if shifting) base of support. If the broadest base is anti-American, then anti-Americanism will certainly work; if pro-free trade, then so be it.

It makes a farce of Parliamentary democracy, of course, but hey: it creates a lot of Parliamentary pensions.

Bravo.