For those trying to play up the Cons' assertion that they don't plan to run attack ads against Michael Ignatieff, let's turn back the clock to that long-ago era of January 2009.
That would be when Harper's party - in the midst of the current economic crisis - claimed that a series of anti-coalition spots were "response ads" rather than attack ads. This despite the fact that the ads the Cons were supposedly responding to didn't even hint at voting down the Harper government, and indeed only asked the Cons themselves to listen to suggestions for the budget.
Just so we're clear, then...
The Cons may be trying to present themselves as focused on the economy to the exclusion of running ad campaigns. But they've already proven the contrary through their actions.
Moreover, the Cons have already demonstrated their propensity for splitting hairs rather than acknowledging what their ads actually are. And they don't figure to have any more shame about labelling negative ads as, say "factual" than they did about labelling attack ads as "response ads".
Which means that pretending the Cons' latest leaks bear any resemblance to how they'll actually function serves only two purposes: to make the Libs overconfident about how what they can get away with before facing another advertising barrage, and to give the Cons a free pass for past actions which show just how empty the new words are. And it's hard to see how anybody but Harper benefits from either of those outcomes.
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