Nice Catch Line, But Not Worth The Millions of CPC Donation Solicitations

The federal Conservatives, after releasing what might be one of the most disastrous budgets in recent history, has entered a phase wherein the most important reason to re-elect them is simply to keep the Liberals out. It’s not a reason without merit, but as the Red Tory establishment realized griped about for most of the last 20th century, it’s a flimsy reason that only works when the Liberals do something so disastrous, so corrupt that conservative voters see a clear reason why the latter justifies the former.

In this light, a government which has little defining policy left to bank on has to release an attack ad that goes after the opposition head on. The “Michael Ignatieff. Just Visiting.” line is a very clever bit that lives up to that of “Dalton McGuinty. Not up to the job.” from Mike Harris’ 1999 campaign, but it is sadly not enough to lift the ad to the level of professionalism and credibility that the Conservatives badly need it to be. Jerry Nicholls makes an interesting point on how the ad titled “Hypocrisy” is, well, very hypocritical in and of itself, although I think that the Conservatives have at least a decent plan in drawing attention to Iggypuff’s hiatus from our fair nation…so long as they intend to follow it up with a campaign highlighting that the Liberal leader spent those years away as an Ivory Tower academy wonk who, like too many in that world, is grossly out of touch with how the real world works. Getting right down to the voiceover work (which sounds like it was done by one of the new summer college interns), and the graphics of a sliding Iggy with a poorly timed video of the Liberal attack ads, the entire product comes across as amateur hour.

This, of course, wouldn’t be so insulting except for the fact that the political operations team in Ottawa is so obsessed with keeping their jobs that we among the Conservative base are continually being harassed to a) suck up the entire lack of substantive, truly constructive policy that has been the status quo since the last election and b)make sure the generous cheques are made out to the Conservative Fund of Canada. For all the money that the boys in poli-ops have been receiving, you’d think they’d be able to do better…much better!

Update: here is the Youtube version of the Conservative attack ad: