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Running against “the media” is a permanent axiom of the Conservative party; it works, as a tactic; and it is bound to keep working, because the media resist conscious regimentation as passionately as members of Parliament rush toward it. “The media” has no means of acting in concert to restore the trust once enjoyed, as an unearned legacy, by two TV talking heads and four newspaper columnists.

In the case of the Conservatives it must also be considered that the party is substantially a creation of its leader: in a real sense he is its God. The party’s post-Harper fate is unclear, but the chance of schism is obvious. And if it can hold together, the possibility of falling into a deep bog of mediocrity is equally obvious. So what does Harper represent to a Conservative partisan? He is everything. He is the horse on which the farm is already bet. Before he came, the conservative world, or perhaps more properly the anti-Liberal world, was without form and void. He is the worker of miracles. (If you had told anybody in 1990 what he would eventually accomplish, could they disagree with that description?)

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But there is he on TV, complaining that the other candidates want to make things personal and that they would rather talk about him than about their policies. It is an all but explicit appeal to voters who like what I sometimes think of as the Martin-Harper version of Canada, but who are tired of Harper and his callow Prime Minister’s Office myrmidons. The Conservatives had left behind the Mike Duffy trial, with its unsavoury revelations about PMO power, but now hints of PMO involvement with Syrian refugee applications have created an uncomfortable echo of the earlier difficulties.

The CPC has held back vast amounts of money for the final days of the campaign, and its chieftains do not pass wind without doing a focus group. The party was meant to be ready to strike with overwhelming advertising power at whatever front might seem most useful in a three-way battle. And they are investing in … defence! I never would have believed it if it hadn’t been for the ballgame.

National Post

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