Out of harmony

Last week, I theorized that if each of the opposition parties stuck to its most obvious line of attack on the HST, then the Cons could find themselves losing votes from all sides. But my fears have been confirmed that the Libs would undermine that possibility as they have every other chance to mount a solid attack on Harper by trying to sell conflicting messages in the two provinces which the Cons have bought off:

While leader Michael Ignatieff has said little about the HST for national consumption, it's clear from the party material that Liberals are opposing introduction of an HST in B.C. -- which could be embarrassing given that their provincial cousins are behind it.

Their federal candidates have been instructed to refer to the tax as the "Harper Sales Tax" and to assert an HST won't work for B.C.'s economy, instead hurting growing sectors, specifically the service industry and tourism.
...
Should voters ask what federal Liberals themselves would do, candidates have been asked to tell voters that an Ignatieff government would not use a cookie-cutter approach to the HST. "We would be far more flexible in applying harmonization."

Candidates also have been told not to comment on comparisons with Ontario -- which announced its intention to harmonize its sales taxes last March -- because "they have different industries."

In other words, rather than taking any coherent stance whatsoever either for or against the HST, the B.C. Libs are taking up the line that they'd carry out harmonization differently without saying how, and pretending that the issue is somehow radically different between the two provinces which have gone through the exact same process this year. Which makes the Libs themselves look even sillier than the Cons with their "don't blame us, we just spent $6 billion to make it happen" stance to the extent the issue does get discussed.

But more importantly, the Libs' internally conflicting position will mean that both they and the Cons will have a strong incentive not to talk about the HST during the course of a campaign. And that in turn will all too likely ensure that one of the issues with the strongest potential to raise public ire against the Harper government (even among its core supporters) will be kept out of the headlines - which figures to hurt the Libs' interest as least as much it does the other opposition parties.