"All the Liberals eggs are in one basket"

I think this sums up what just happened today pretty well.

From the Toronto Star's Chantal Hébert: "Take out the controversial carbon tax and the air goes out of the entire Liberal platform."

What's that hissing sound I hear?

Dion election platform built on carbon
Jun 20, 2008 04:30 AM
Chantal Hébert
National Affairs Writer

OTTAWA – With the Green Shift plan, Stéphane Dion and his party have crossed the Rubicon. As of now, there will be no turning back from a carbon tax scheme. Should it come to that, the Liberal campaign ship will sink with its captain.

Far more than a climate change strategy, the plan unveiled yesterday is really a gutsy, but risky substitute for the old Liberal Red Books. For better or for worse, it is the platform that the party will take into the next campaign.

While other promises will come to the fore between now and the election, Dion's main commitments, including his ambitious anti-poverty agenda, have already been rolled into yesterday's announcement.

The decision to put all the Liberal eggs into the Green Shift basket was largely inspired by necessity. The only way to overcome the negative optics of placing a new tax at the core of an election platform was to make the attendant tax relief significant. That was achieved by placing multi-billion-dollar tax cuts in the Liberal window.

Those cuts serve another, larger purpose. Under the guise of a revenue-neutral proposal, the Liberals have found a scheme to finance their priorities at a time of declining federal surpluses, by promising to shift not only the environmental balance but also significant amounts of tax money to lower-income Canadians and families.

Take out the controversial carbon tax and the air goes out of the entire Liberal platform.