MONTRÉAL—With attacks ads on Justin Trudeau, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives are focusing on the consequences rather than the root causes of their drop in popularity.

They are assuming that undermining the credibility of yet another Liberal leader will necessarily shore up their own. That assumption turned out to be valid in the cases of Trudeau’s two immediate predecessors. But two years into Harper’s third mandate, it rests on shakier ground than in the lead-up to the last general election.

Independent of leadership developments within the opposition parties, the Conservatives’ own standing has steadily deteriorated since their 2011 majority victory.

If anything the anti-Conservative core vote has become more solid while core support for the governing party has become softer.

From the religious right to libertarians and fiscal conservatives, the key constituencies that make up Harper’s coalition are finding that majority rule is not what it was cracked up to be.

But judging from the slump in Conservative fortunes, the centrist voters who bridged the gap between a minority and a governing majority two years ago feel that Harper’s government is not living up to their expectations.

With every passing month it is becoming harder to address the frustrations of the former without alienating more of the latter, and vice-versa.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that at least some of the voters who say they would switch or return to the Trudeau-led Liberals in an election are doing so with their eyes open.

It is not that they are blind to his potential shortcomings but that they are increasingly willing to overlook them to take the Conservatives out of government.

If the Conservative black ops against Trudeau succeed, a significant chunk of those voters could be as likely if not more to turn to a centrist-led NDP as to want to help Harper secure a fourth mandate.

That trend is not based strictly on a cyclical tide for change.

At this juncture an overwhelming majority of Canadians — around 70 per cent — agree as to the prime minister that they do not want, even if it means replacing Harper with an untested Liberal leader or an untried federal NDP.

Harper’s predicament is more akin to a multiplication of slow leaks than a major puncture. That could make it harder to fix.

To reduce the current battle to a personality contest that can be won with attack ads is to miss the central point that it is also unfolding on the field of values.

Polls suggest that despite sustained Conservative efforts, Canadians are more likely to identify with Liberal- or NPD-inspired policies such as the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and medicare than with the favoured icons of the Canadian right.

Trudeau’s core strength rests in the fact that many voters project their fundamental political values onto his leadership, while Harper often comes across to them as a threat.

The attack ads are as likely to cement an already strong anti-Conservative resolve as to chip at Liberal support. And many Conservative supporters would rather be defending solid government policy than partisan ads.

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For that to happen, the government would have to work itself out of an ongoing mid-life malaise. That should presumably start with a mid-term cabinet shuffle this summer. But in a government whose ministers have been expected to be faceless, does it matter who is sitting where at the cabinet table?

And then governments are like big ships. They do not turn on a dime or on a 20-page throne speech. On climate change, on foreign affairs, on health care, on the economy the Conservative course is set and could not be easily altered even if the current crew wanted to.

Last week a senior Ontario Conservative suggested that the only viable path to another Harper majority victory involved putting a kind face on a consistent Conservative agenda. On both scores we agreed that it is becoming a tall order.

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