On turning points

The current CW seems to be that the Cons' early-campaign rise got turned around based on two factors: Harper's crime and arts policies which have proved toxic in Quebec, and the rise of the economy as an issue in the rest of Canada. But I'm not sure the latter point tells the whole story about how the Cons painted themselves into a corner nationally.

Surprisingly, it's L. Ian MacDonald who provides a grain of truth about where the Cons' national campaign started to go sour:

In the early going, the Conservatives made it about Dion and his carbon tax. In the end game, the carbon tax forgotten, the Liberals and NDP are making it about Harper not having a plan for the economy.

But MacDonald doesn't point out exactly where that shift started. So let's take a spin in the wayback machine:

The Conservatives said Sunday they are refocusing their primary aim on the NDP and the Green party, citing them as a bigger threat to their reelection than the Liberals.

The Tories explained their dramatic shift in strategy, coming as the second week of the federal election begins, as being due to NDP Leader Jack Layton's rising popularity over that of Liberal Leader Stephane Dion -- Prime Minister Stephen Harper's main target last week.

But the Conservatives also said the NDP and Green party are making significant inroads, not only in British Columbia and parts of the Prairies but in northern and southwestern Ontario.

"They're beginning to challenge the Liberals as our primary opponent in a number of key areas," a senior Conservative campaign source said Sunday.

At the time, the theory was that sharing the spotlight between three different parties would dilute the Libs' ability to mount a direct challenge. But consider in retrospect how the shift also changed the Cons' messaging to put them in their current bind.

Before the Cons' strategy shift, they were able to focus their efforts on maintaining and cultivating the impressions of Dion and his carbon tax that they'd worked so hard (and spent so much) to develop in the first place. But the moment the Cons acknowledged that the New Democrats were a threat as well, they lost the ability to frame their message around those critiques.

In contrast, while the Cons couldn't lump the NDP in with the Libs (and Greens) on weak leadership or the carbon tax, they could relatively easily fit all three into a typical right-wing "tax and spend" frame. And so they've done ever since.

But the most obvious problem with that strategy is that Canadians don't seem to have been at all receptive to the Cons' argument that taxing and spending are necessarily evils where the spending is on important priorities like child care or prescription drugs. Which meant that while the Cons now had a consistent message to deal with all the obvious threats, they no longer had one which particularly resonated with the voters they were trying to reach.

What's more, having spent the bulk of the campaign slamming the very idea of government involvement in the economy, the Cons were broadsided by an economic downturn which led Canadians to expect their government to do something to secure their financial future. And that's where the Cons went from merely limiting themselves to arguments which lacked much public force, to trying to sell a do-nothing message which was the last one Canadians needed to hear in a time of crisis.

Now, the Cons find themselves trapped. With the economic crisis now in full swing, any effort to turn the focus back to Dion and the Green Shift seems likely only to make the Cons seem even more out of touch with Canadians generally, while having only a limited chance of success in changing impressions of the Libs back to what they were earlier in the campaign. What's more, with the NDP still within striking distance, even a successful attack on the Libs is far from sure to keep the Cons in power.

But then, the Cons seem to have recognized that they aren't going to win any ground with their anti-government ranting either. Which leaves them without any obvious strategy for the last week other than to put their head down and hope the economic crisis eases up just enough to ease public anger with Harper.

By way of comparison, consider what would have happened if the Cons hadn't had to shift their message to accommodate attacks on the NDP (and Greens). The economic crisis would still have hit in the middle of the campaign - but it would have done so at a time when the main ground of argument between the Cons and the Libs was a tax shift which could easily enough be argued to destabilize the economy even more. And if the Cons hadn't taken their focus off Dion, he likely wouldn't have been able to rehabilitate his image to the point of being seen as worth listening to on the economy.

All of which is to say that rather than serving to keep the Cons in power due to vote-splitting, the presence of multiple viable opposition parties may turn out to be the key factor in ultimately sinking Harper's government. And the presence of several parties exposing the Cons' weaknesses in the last week of the campaign can only help to cement that outcome.