If you still need proof that Australian miracle worker Lynton Crosby is firmly in charge of the Conservative campaign, look no further than what you haven’t seen in the past two weeks: any evidence of Jenni Byrne’s continued presence on the planet, or any further snafus from the hyperactive social media campaign kids.

Everything is transpiring according to the playbook, and Crosby — who probably can’t believe his luck in landing so soon on one wedge issue in the niqab controversy — is actively looking for other flashpoints to divide the voters.

But he must think he has landed in a parallel universe. Even in an age of turgid talking points, staged photo-ops and painfully banal tweets, 2015 proves that a federal election can still generate an aura of suspense. But this campaign has turned Canadian politics upside-down.

This isn’t just the longest campaign in modern Canadian politics — it’s also one of the most bizarre. We have the NDP campaigning on balanced budgets, hiring more police officers and retaining the much-maligned F-35 joint strike fighter for the RCAF. We have the Liberals talking up the advisability of deficits and supporting the Conservatives’ security bill. And then there are the Conservatives themselves, pitching for a renewed mandate for the Stephen Harper Corporation — even though that corporation has appeared at times to be one of the most incompetently run and unethical organizations ever to walk the political stage.

It must seem slightly miraculous to the Tory team that, with less than three weeks to go, the Harper Party remains in a first-place tie with the competition. Harper walked through the Mike Duffy trial like a somnambulist; even when he was the target of Tom Mulcair’s withering cross-examination, the PM focused on the weather — or whatever else he could find to talk about. His staffers somehow appeared both evasive and disconnected from both their jobs and reality; Harper merely moved on.

If one trial wasn’t enough, Bruce Carson had his day in court too. Carson, easily the oldest man in a PMO dominated by twenty-somethings, may have brought some much-needed experience to Harper’s inner circle; turns out it wasn’t the sort of life experience that the job called for. Still, Carson has had little or no impact on the campaign.

The Conservative campaign has gone from desperate to confident in two weeks. The biggest loser so far has been Mulcair and the NDP. The Conservative campaign has gone from desperate to confident in two weeks. The biggest loser so far has been Mulcair and the NDP.

Lynton Crosby, on the other hand, has had an immense influence. No sooner was the Aussie wedge-worker on the scene than the Supreme Court decided to make things easier for him by handing Harper the gift of the niqab — more of a hammer than a wedge, really.

Talk about making a visitor feel at home. All Harper had to do was feign outrage, insist that he would reintroduce legislation to ban the niqab during citizenship ceremonies and wait for the NDP to come to the defence of embattled minorities everywhere.

The Conservative campaign has gone from desperate to confident in two weeks, bolstered by Harper’s dull but reassuring performances in the economic and foreign policy debates that were competing with Wheel of Fortune reruns for viewer attention.

The biggest loser so far has been Mulcair and the NDP. In some ways, you can’t help but admire Mulcair’s courage — his serene confidence in fiscal responsibility and those wonderful balanced budgets that he promises to uphold, the stolid support he offers for the military after all those years when those of us in uniform used to joke about NDP standing for ‘No Defence Policy’. It’s all suggests this is a guy who is determined to take his party kicking and screaming to the next horizon — even if he ends up outraging his own base beyond belief. Many rank and file Dippers must be wondering if he isn’t really Harper’s bearded twin.

But he really wandered into no-man’s land the other night when he dropped into the weeds of the October Crisis. Say what you will about Quebec politics — the province, as its license plates remind us, is profoundly aware of its own history. When Mulcair condemned Pierre Trudeau’s decision to invoke the War Measures Act in October 1970, he handed Justin Trudeau an excuse to bask in the reflected glow of PET’s time-distorted legacy. And by reaching back that far for a stick with which to beat Trudeau, Mulcair only made Harper look stronger on the security front.

It’s never wise to take aim at a dead prime minister during an election campaign, especially if you’re running against his kid. At any rate, Mulcair is now bleeding support in Quebec over the niqab and terrorism — and if he can’t repeat the 2011 sweep, he hasn’t a hope of forming a government.

So, with just over two weeks to go, this campaign is on the cusp of breaking. Harper, with wedge issues in tow, will begin to move within striking distance of a majority government. Left-centre voters — who can’t understand how Harper could possibly be winning, and who will do anything at all to prevent him from winning — will start to line up behind the most viable option.

Right now, the viable option looks like the guy who seemed like he had run out of gas and glitter at the beginning of this campaign. I’ll paraphrase an immortal Bette Davis line from the movie All About Eve: “Fasten your seat belts … it’s going to be a bumpy two weeks.”

David Krayden was raised on Vancouver Island and has written extensively on Western political issues over the years. He was a columnist for the Calgary Herald and host of Calgary’s Liberty Today radio program; more recently he worked as an editor for Sun News. Krayden was a public affairs officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force and spent almost a decade on Parliament Hill as a communications staffer. @DavidKrayden

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.