On broken links

So far, the Cons have stayed remarkably quiet about the NDP's national surge, following up on their first weak response with a single ad attacking the NDP only as a secondary part of the usual "higher taxes" line against the Ignatieff Libs. But while the Libs' responses look to have failed mostly because they come out of nowhere, the biggest problem for the Cons may be that their attack on the NDP is so similar to an existing message linked to the Libs.

Obviously the Cons are well aware that an attack needs some time to sink in, and that it only figures to work if voters link a particular leader they might be considering to the attack when they vote. (Otherwise, their years of direct shots at the Libs' leaders would figure to have been a waste of money.)

But having so deliberately branded Michael Ignatieff with the "higher taxes" label over a period of years in the general public, the Cons figure to have an awfully tough time suddenly transferring that same label to Layton in the last week of the campaign. Which may reflect another area where the Cons' bubble might have caused them to miss what's happening in the country at large: while they've used the "higher taxes line as a talking point dealing with the NDP in what might be seen as inside-baseball conversations in Parliament and on talk shows, they haven't done anything to reach a broader audience.

And what's more, the job is made all the more difficult by the fact that they're still trying to include Ignatieff in their ads, serving only to dilute the message even more. Which means that the chances of the Cons being able to suddenly attach a negative to a leader whose reputation has been carefully built over nearly a decade look to be rather slim.

Of course, the Cons are presumably hoping that some combination of "coalition" messaging and general visual association between Layton and Ignatieff will be enough to make the charge stick. But there's a real possibility that the Cons have indeed been too cute by half in hoping that relentless attacks on the Libs would clear the field entirely - and we're just now starting to see panic set in on their side as well now that the orange wave is submerging their hopes for a majority.