Electing Liberals will imperill "...the future of the country."

From the Ottawa Citizen:

"If anybody in the rest of the country sends a signal that they are prepared to tolerate corruption, they are, quite frankly, imperilling the future of the country. Because the reaction to that in Quebec, and quite frankly not just Quebec, in Alberta and other places, is going to be outrage that I think will lead to lasting damage to this country..."
...
"There's no doubt in my mind that if the Liberals are re-elected, this country will move backwards and we will be a long time recovering from the consequences of that kind of election result."
...
"The decision would have been more difficult if we were talking about the timing around the corruption issue, but now it's been simplified," Mr. Harper said. "There's no way we can support an NDP budget. It's got nothing to do with the polls. We wouldn't have any credibility."

This is just the beginning of the rhetoric being cranked up. The most interesting part of all this is that we are effectively already in an election. Really this is a two month election campaign at best, and at worst a 10 month election campaign. This country used to have 60 day elections. That was changed 20 years ago to 30 day election campaigns.

I've always found it a little scary that Canadians are expected to have a debate on things like healthcare in a 30 day period. It's impossible to have an intelligent debate on any of these issues in 30 days. The US electoral system with fixed election dates means literally that the real campaigning begins months in advance. Although there are some abuses I've noticed that issues get an airing in the US that they wouldn't if the campaigning was restricted to 30 days as it is in this country.

Who does this benefit? I hope the Tories. I think with longer election campaigns it's harder to demonize someone like the Liberals did to the Tories the last time around. You can only spin issues so many times before people start to really pay attention and realize you're full of crap. And also when certain people make comments about policy that are their own personal opinions, and not those of the party, the longer you give the electorate to understand that the better.