Plotting the death of the Liberal beast?

He's playing chess my friends... playing chess indeed.

A former chief of staff to Harper suggests there's more to this seemingly self-evident, benign response than meets the eye.

Tom Flanagan, a political scientist at the University of Calgary, believes Harper would be satisfied to return with a strengthened minority -- a result that would throw the Liberals into chaos, thereby advancing the prime minister's longterm strategy of destroying Canada's so-called natural governing party.

"I don't think Harper has to be thinking about a majority at all," Flanagan said in an interview.

"Strategically, this is sort of a prolonged war of attrition."

As Flanagan sees it, the first major battle in this incremental war occurred in 2004, when Harper managed to reduce Paul Martin's Liberals to a minority. In the second clash in 2006, Harper won his own Conservative minority.

The third skirmish, which Harper appears set to launch next week, likely won't kill what Flanagan jokingly refers to as "the evil empire." But, if the Tories can win a few more seats at the Liberals' expense -- an outcome Flanagan considers realistic given Harper's superior campaign skills and the Tories' fatter war chest -- he predicted that would be enough to throw the Grits into a longterm tailspin that could eventually lead to their demise.

"You can fight a war with some objective less than total victory," he said of the coming campaign.

I've long said that Canada won't be able to reach it's full potential until the Liberal Party of Canada is either ripped appart, or is forced into realignment. Once that occurs, there will be a realignment within all the other parties as well, potentially carving them up into three main players, each with more or less equaul support levels, along with two or three other smaller parties who will hold the balance of power in a minority situation.

In my opinion, it's the only sort of electoral reform that will work in this country, and will allow for coalition governments of various stripes, which will allow Canadians voices to be better heard in Ottawa, and better reflected in the House of Commons.

Who knows... it may even allow the NDP (or it's lefist sucessor) to one day form Government.

h/t to Warren