The very scared Bloc Quebecois

In the last desperate weeks of the 2006 campaign and in the last desperate week of the current campaign the Liberal Party of Canada has reached for a favourite — and often effective — bogeyman: Charges that Stephen Harper and the Conservatives secretly harbour an anti-abortion agenda.

The Bloc Quebecois have never, in a federal election, been in the desperate straits that the Liberals are in now and were in in 2006. But they have reacted in a similar fashion, reaching for a favourite — and often effective scare tactic: Falling back to the tribal “divide-and-conquer” politics in which the Bloc frames the election as “a struggle” between Canada or Quebec.

The aide who writes Gilles Duceppe's tweets has said earlier on Twitter that even though Duceppe himself may not actually write and post the tweets, he has signed off on all that go out under his name. With Jack Layton and the NDP now more popular than Duceppe and the BQ, this is what went out on Twitter this morning under Duceppe's name:

@GillesDuceppe: élection n’est pas lutte gauche-droite mais lutte entre fédéralistes-souverainistes, entre le Canada et le Québec

Minutes later, after many on Twitter reacted in disgust to the suggestion, the “struggle”  tweet was deleted and replaced with:

And than tweeted out this kicker:

Which prompted Maclean's national editor Andrew Coyne to tweet:

and:

Meanwhile, just as the Liberals have called in Jean Chretien to help Michael Ignatieff out on the campaign trail in the upcoming week, the BQ have Jacques Parizeau set to give a speech to the BQ faithful tomorrow in St. Lambert.

For the Bloc, this is all about the threat from — in Duceppe's phrase – “The NDP of Canada!” (cue bogeyman music here):