Whatever else may ail Stephen Harper’s government, it has some serious messaging issues.

On three occasions over about as many weeks, the Conservatives’ political instincts went missing in action in the heat of a parliamentary battle.

That was particularly striking this week as the government struggled without success to put allegations of vote-suppression in the 2011 campaign behind it.

On a matter that is — in political terms — more akin to a debilitating flu than to a passing cold, the Conservatives committed the cardinal sin of feeding the controversy by changing their tune virtually every day

The government kicked off the week by inviting the Liberals and the New Democrats to share whatever evidence of campaign dirty tricks they may have with Elections Canada. Harper said his party would do likewise. But he did not stick to that message.

By Wednesday, the Prime Minister had downgraded the issue to a smear campaign against his party; a day later, a fact-challenged Conservative narrative cast the Liberals as a party to the robo-call mess.

On vote suppression, one can at least argue that government strategists were blind-sided by a heady mix of media revelations and opposition allegations. In the social media era, stories gel extraordinarily quickly and the government was less than proactive in dealing with this one.

But the other two debates — hinging on pensions benefits and Internet surveillance — were fights the government initiated.

Harper launched the pension debate from afar and then allowed every possible party to the conversation, including the opposition, to fill in the many blanks of his sketchy pronouncement.

The Internet surveillance bill crashed on take-off under the weight of an overload of demagoguery. But the polarizing approach Public Safety minister Vic Toews adopted when he decreed that those who opposed Bill C-30 were on the side of child molesters was familiar to those who have covered Harper’s tenure.

In the past, the Prime Minister fended off queries on the Afghan detainees file and fought back against a Liberal-NDP coalition attempt by drawing similarly grotesque lines in the sand.

Stepping back from the day-to-day furors, three observations come to mind.

First, in all instances, the government’s strategy — if one can call it that — seemed to have been to go out on a limb and then try to figure out where to go from there.

Second, the Prime Minister did not control the damage to the government’s messaging. He inspired, initiated or compounded it.

Finally, given that they are shooting themselves in the foot in the face of a particularly weak opposition, one can only wonder how the Conservatives will fare when the Liberals and the New Democrats go after them with their leadership guns fully loaded.

If this was a rookie government, one would put the poor messaging down to inexperience. But Harper has been in office for six years.

It may be that acquiring a majority has lulled the governing party into a false sense of security as to its control of the agenda. It may have underestimated the willingness of an opposition that no longer fears plunging into a losing election to raise the rhetorical heat.

Spending the first 100 days of their majority mandate dealing with long-standing agenda items on which their speaking points have largely lost their shock value may have compounded the complacency of the Conservatives. The trouble started when they ventured unto less well-trodden and less predictable territory.

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But part of the problem may also lie with the profound disconnect that lies at the very core of this government.

It is hard to think of a time when the gap between the rock-solid loyalty of a steadily nurtured government base and the equally rock-solid mistrust of the majority of the electorate that does not support the governing party has been as wide. By all indications, the Harper government is a lot more attuned the former than sensitive to the latter.

The bunker-style Conservative approach to power may well account for its remarkably tin ear as the government clumsily nears what should normally be the defining stage of the Prime Minister’s tenure.

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