Yesterday Harper unleashed his long awaited attack on the NDP’s Mulcair. It was a rather predictable piece of boiler plate and clearly the boy wonders of the Tory War Room don’t have their heart in the fight. They might need to take some lessons from Not Jack’s Party an Anti-Mulcair Pro-Pot entity that has a website, a Twitter Feed, a FaceBook page and a YouTube channel. I’ve posted a couple of their better efforts below. The technique they employ appeals to the heart strings, comparing and contrasting the approach to politics taken by the much beloved Jack Layton with the leader of the NDP. This meme of Mulcair betraying the party that Jack built emerged during the NDP leadership race but has not gained much traction with the membership who are riding as high as their poll numbers.
While Conservative fear mongering over time will likely erode support for Mulcair in some quarters, the real threat to any party is the one you don’t see coming, the enemy within. The forces of dissatisfaction can be kept at bay only as long as high poll numbers hold fast. We’re three years from an election. That’s plenty of time for anything to happen. So you can understand why Harper might be content to merely bat lightly at Mulcair for the time being, saving the good stuff for later. That’s how any self-respecting cat plays with a mouse. What Mulcair has to do to survive is avoid the jaws of the Harper War Room, keep poll numbers high and keep the NDP troops happy.
So far he’s doing a pretty good job and the NDP doesn’t seem to mind too much that it’s not Jack’s Party anymore.
