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New Democratic Party leader Thomas Mulcair poses no great threat appearance-wise, in the sense of political horseflesh, no disrespect intended. He is a middle-aged man with a beard. He scores well in category No. 2, the appearance of intellect and force of character. But here, the Conservatives believe — not without some justification — that their ace in the hole is the content of his speech, or platform. The scale and scope of Mulcair’s spending promises, and the fuzziness that has emerged in his arithmetic around tax hikes, will form the core of a Tory attack campaign. The talking point “dangerous ideas and vacuous thinking,” the former directed at Mulcair and the latter at Trudeau, was coined and road-tested by Harper two summers ago.

But to return to the crux, which from a Tory standpoint is the PM himself: The perception among Conservatives I hear from is that his brand is more broadly appealing than coverage from the Ottawa bubble would indicate, for the simple reason that he scores solidly, in his own way, on both the key image-based markers referred to above.

On TV Harper typically looks and sounds measured, solid, as he did Thursday in Toronto, with enough white in his hair to denote experience; and everyone knows he has the wherewithal to run a Group of Seven country because he’s been doing it for nearly a decade. Conservatives will also point to the fact that, despite the controversies stemming from the PM’s take-no-prisoners partisanship, despite the unfolding mess in the Senate, he has managed 10 years in power without being tainted with a perception of either personal dishonesty, or stupidity.

All of which may explain why, even now, 10 years in, with the Orange Wave supposedly poised to crest and the Liberals storming the Bastille to restore democracy, Harper is projected, based on current polls, to win this fall, albeit with a minority. He long ago tore a leaf from Jean Chrétien’s book — stability, no surprises, keep out of people’s faces — and made it his own. It still works.

National Post

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