Prime Minister Stephen Harper has three options to avoid his political Waterloo and the defeat of the Conservative government in a confidence motion on Monday (December 8):

1. He can prorogue Parliament, which basically means shut it down just after it started, and resume in January with a speech from the throne.

2. He can ask Governor General Jean to call an election and hope she agrees.

3. He can step down as Conservative leader to make way for a more moderate replacement, such as Jim Prentice or Peter MacKay, and hope that this is sufficient to cause the Liberals and NDP to abandon their plans to form a coalition government.

The opposition parties are doing this in part because Harper has repeatedly demonstrated that he doesn't always play by the same rules as other politicians.

The Conservatives under Harper took attack ads to new heights when the bought time on television and radio long before an election to ridicule Liberal Leader Stephane Dion.

The Conservatives also falsely described the carbon tax as a "gas tax" on radio ads during the election campaign, even though the Liberals explicitly stated that it didn't apply to retail gasoline.

Harper claimed that the revenue-neutral carbon tax—which was really a tax shift accompanied by large tax cuts—was going to "screw everybody".

He shouldn't be surprised to see the opposition leaders ganging up on him now. It's payback time.