Canadian Politics and Astrology

Strange signs are in the air.
Recebtly we had a total eclipse of the moon. One minute a full bright moon, the next in the centre of the sky an ominous red disk.
It could be a signal that global warming is going cosmic and that the great apocalypse some of its more excited partisans have propounded is dawning.
More likely it's a kind of Shakespearean signal, an astrological cue, that the House of Clinton, once ascendant is now in decline, and that planet Obama has emerged from the cusp of Platitude and entered constellation Oprah.
And if that doesn't make you shiver, well up here we have a Budget next week. The budget may not portend a new age, but it may be a crossroads moment in Canadian politics.
Stephane Dion is facing a really big choice.
Mr. Dion has not had a happy run of it since he became Liberal leader. His leadership has been in a long spluttering stall since a few days after he won it.
The Tories have dive-bombed him with attack commercials, he's sometimes outperformed in the House both by Mr. Harper and his own lieutenant and chief rival, Mr. Ignatieff, and the NDP have taken to tagging him as enabling a Harper majority. The Harper-Dion coalition.
This is a tag he can't afford to wear. He cannot keep decrying the harsh, secretive, bullying, misguided "little America" Harper government, and remain, effectively, its prop in the House of Commons.
On Afghanistan, because it is so sensitive and complex an issue, some compromise is not only expected. It's wise. Maybe on the Crime Bill, something less than a vote to bring down the government may be explained as well.
But there does come a point when an Opposition opposes, when the rhetoric of its critics and its leader has to be substantiated in an actual vote. Last fall when the Tories brought in what we were pleased to call their Mini-budget - with its GST cut - the Liberals decried it, said it was a misguided policy, in effect condemned it, and then abstained.
Battles are not won with abstentions. Stirring speeches followed by a courageous sitting on one's hand when the vote is called will not inspire either his party or the country. So, next week when the Budget comes down what is Mr. Dion to do? I do not think he can continue to bridge the Harper minority's hold on power, and simultaneously warn the country of its many mischiefs and deficiencies.
The old saying "fish or cut bait" and some others that are less elegant come to mind.
Mr. Dion has variously warned that he will bring down the Harper government if he thinks that it is in the interests of the Canadian people to do so. Those warnings dwindle in force every time a fresh one is uttered. I expect the Liberals and Mr. Dion are only too keenly aware of that consideration.
Hence, even if the most recent poll offers no great comfort to the Liberals, next week's budget - whatever the order of the heavens or the state of the moon - will be a critical moment in deciding whether, to the frosts of this bleak February, we will add the glooms of a winter election.
And they said astrology was a decayed science.

My thanks to Rex Murphy, CBC