Pinch your nose fellas, politics is a stinky business.

I am glad we have a first-past-the-post system in Canada. It usually means I can vote for a local candidate I like without endorsing the party's leader directly. Not that I can vote of course, but you get my point.

I haven't read the Fraser institute analysis of the stimulus spending, and the pitiful effect it had on the Canadian economy. I am sure their basis is solid and their methods sound. I tend to believe think-tanks rather than politicians, mostly because it is in a politician's short-term interest to lie or play ignorant.

By slamming the Fraser Institute's findings, the PM does pure politics. He has to defend the enormous deficit to his party and Parliament, which is no small task if you don't believe your stimulus either. It is hard to fathom why, otherwise, would he unsheath his rhetorical sword against a reputable sympathetic think-tank so publicly and so violently. 

Yet there is a monumental difference between politely rejecting what is politically inconvenient and making a philosophical counter-argument. Stephen Harper could have just as easily said his advisers disagreed, or been cocky as befits a person of power and simply dismissed the report as a mere opinion which he, and the economy apparently, disagreed with.

Instead he openly advocated for a government role in assigning funds to the economy without even the slightest reference to a politician's fallibility in such great matters. No humble concession that such measures should only be a desperate last resort. 

Some bloggers reacted by withdrawing their support for the PM. I am tempted, but will refrain from doing so. The reasoning is simple. Would we be in power today without the stimulus being passed? We would currently reside under a coalition government with a deficit three times the size of today's and a Quebec gobbling up our chances of ever turning a surplus again. In the event the coalition collapsed, we'd still need to deal with a disastrous Budget left by the predecessors. It isn't a good prospect.

An admission of having wasted taxpayer dollars, which acceptance of the Fraser report would amount to, is nothing short of political suicide. We would be drubbed at the polls, and the Liberals wanted no better opportunity to call an election.

I like to think of myself as a fiscal conservative, and the PM has disappointed me. Yet I contemplate the alternative and, for the time being, pinch my nose and sign off my monthly contribution to the Conservative fund. Harper is a smart politician, he knows what he's doing. I solely hope he wins back the wavering fiscal conservatives before they mount a leadership challenge.