Reports of Liberals in disarray... all part of the plan?

My goodness, was this all part of the gambit?

Liberal MPs were locked in meetings Thursday night, struggling to determine what to do in the lead-up to a vote on the package on Monday that could topple the government. Their options are to fight another election mere weeks after the last one with a lame duck leader, or join forces with the New Democratic Party in an attempt to form a coalition government.

However, sources say that NDP Leader Jack Layton would not participate in a coalition government with Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion as prime minister. Similarly, the Liberal caucus does not want to fight an election with Mr. Dion at the helm.

The Liberal Party's constitution gives Mr. Dion the authority to decide what his parliamentary caucus will do. Pressure was growing on Mr. Dion Thursday night to be open to coalition talks, with threats of a party coup if he resisted.

In fact, Liberal MPs and party strategists in their meetings Thursday night found themselves confronting a deeper turmoil.

The party almost certainly would refuse to go into another election under Mr. Dion, with the likely result that the mantle of interim leadership would fall on Michael Ignatieff, who has the most support from the parliamentary caucus and influential backroom Liberals.

But that would upset supporters of MPs Bob Rae and Dominic LeBlanc, who are campaigning for the Liberal leadership and who were outraged Thursday when key Ignatieff organizer Steven MacKinnon used the proposed Harper legislation to send out an e-mail fundraising appeal for Mr. Ignatieff under the heading “Save Canada's Democracy – Stephen Harper is trying to undermine Canada's fair and open political system. Take action now!”

The Liberals held an emergency caucus Thursday and Mr. Layton Thursday morning cancelled a trip to British Columbia as talk grew of defeating the government.

Okay, let's summariaze for everyone...

- Libs & NDP talking about governing together
- Libs say Bloc won't be part of any new government, but require their support to govern
- NDP says they won't work with Libs if Dion is PM
- Libs now talking of pre-empting their leadership race, which will only further split the Party
- Rae supporters already attacking Iggy's camp for fundraising e-mail sent out in the midst of crisis

I see four possible outcomes to all of this...

1) We get defeated, and we go to the polls
2) We get defeated, and the Liberal/NDP take over
3) The Liberals blink, and allow it to pass with severe reservation
4) Mr. Harper makes his next move checkmating the Opposition... he commits to putting together a package by the first or second week of January. All of a sudden, the main plank of the Opposition's argument falls appart. As such, they won't risk a public backlash for toppling the Government, and we get our public party subsidy cut.

I'm thinking it's going to be door #4... did I mention I really like this Harper guy?