I notice that all conservatives have very short memories. When the conservatives won a majority they litterly destroyed the country both in the federal and the Ontario provincial elections . After Mulroney the conservatives had to go through a name change and a wait of many years for people to forget ( even the conservative voters ) they barely got any seats and we ended up with a liberal gov't for quite a few years . the same thing happened with the Harris gov't . it will be years before the public including the conservatives forget what he did.

Harper's campaign has been stuck in the starting gates since last week. The momentum is shifting toward the Liberals and I think it's in large part because Harper didn't really want this election. (insert partisan rhetoric here if you want, I don't really care, frankly.)

His heart isn't in it. No fire in the belly. His voice sounds flat and tired. Ignatieff hasn't even broken a sweat yet and I think we're going to see the polls swing sharply in favor of the Liberals over the next few days. It's early times, mind you, but for a party (the Tories) that is flush with cash and has been in permanent campaign mode since the last election, it tells me they've got nothing new to share with Canadians. This might be due to the top-down management style of Mr. Harper. It might be that Harper is surrounded by sycophants and is out of touch with even his members in caucus, who knows. All I can say at this point is that Harper looks like a man who actually wants to lose this election.

And this is week one! There's still five more to go! Fascinating. I feel like I'm watching a train wreck.

Harper has been such a political gamer, that I have a hard time believing he will not snap out of whatever is throwing him off his game now. However, so far, I am quite amazed at just how poorly he is campaigning.

I think he's just been spending way too much time surrounded by sycophants and inferior minds:

"Our first preference was a direct debate with the leader of the coalition," Harper said, highlighting a message he has been hammering since the election campaign kicked off.
"Mr. Ignatieff insisted that his first preference was to have his coalition partners there at the debate," he added.

You can almost hear him pause for the desk thumping and ragh-ragh of QP with every "coalition".

I remember Inkless writing or saying that Harper does best when he gets a long period of time off to go strategize. Could it be that Harper is losing it because he hasn't the time to do that?