Harper bets voters will look past talking heads to embrace a popular GST reduction

Stephen Harper obviously feels that chipping away at the most hated piece of the Mulroney legacy will do more for the Conservative Party in this election than tearing the Liberal record to shreds. The two-point cut to the GST he promised last week is the biggest item in the Conservative election platform. It was rushed on to the scene at the very start of Harper's first campaign foray on the crucial battleground of Ontario, packaged very much as a Christmas infomercial rather than as the pronouncement of a leader who trained as an economist. Voters for instance will have to wait to find out exactly where the GST cut fits in the larger Conservative picture and what trade-offs it would involve. On that score, the so-called backgrounder handed out by the party yesterday gave sketchiness a new meaning. But that also means there was very little for the other parties to use to move the focus away from Harper's core announcement. In any event, Harper's GST promise will ultimately stand or fall not on its policy merits but on its populist appeal. There is little that the Conservative leader could say to outweigh the impressive body of economic analysis that finds little or no policy value to a cut in the GST. But he is betting that voters will look past the talking heads to embrace a popular reduction in the tax they most love to hate. Once a Tory nemesis, the sheer visibility of the GST is the Conservatives' biggest asset in their quest to score popularity points by cutting it. Harper is also betting that the Liberals whose own credibility on the GST is questionable will not be overly keen to poke at his biggest promise. To do so would be to court the boomerang effect of reminding voters of their own controversial retreat from the GST front a decade ago. For now, the promise has allowed Harper to seize the initiative in the campaign. The other two national party leaders spent last week dancing to the tune of the Conservative GST announcement. Stephen Harper obviously feels that chipping away at the most hated piece of the Mulroney legacy will do more for the Conservative Party in this election than tearing the Liberal record to shreds. The two-point cut to the GST he promised last week is the biggest item in the Conservative election platform. It was rushed on to the scene at the very start of Harper's first campaign foray on the crucial battleground of Ontario, packaged very much as a Christmas infomercial rather than as the pronouncement of a leader who trained as an economist. Voters for instance will have to wait to find out exactly where the GST cut fits in the larger Conservative picture and what trade-offs it would involve. On that score, the so-called backgrounder handed out by the party yesterday gave sketchiness a new meaning. But that also means there was very little for the other parties to use to move the focus away from Harper's core announcement. In any event, Harper's GST promise will ultimately stand or fall not on its policy merits but on its populist appeal. There is little that the Conservative leader could say to outweigh the impressive body of economic analysis that finds little or no policy value to a cut in the GST. But he is betting that voters will look past the talking heads to embrace a popular reduction in the tax they most love to hate. Once a Tory nemesis, the sheer visibility of the GST is the Conservatives' biggest asset in their quest to score popularity points by cutting it. Harper is also betting that the Liberals whose own credibility on the GST is questionable will not be overly keen to poke at his biggest promise. To do so would be to court the boomerang effect of reminding voters of their own controversial retreat from the GST front a decade ago. For now, the promise has allowed Harper to seize the initiative in the campaign. The other two national party leaders spent last week dancing to the tune of the Conservative GST announcement. In fact, for better but also for worse, Harper has largely set the agenda of the first week of the campaign. For worse because many Tories groaned in despair at the sight of his headline-grabbing first-day foray into the same-sex marriage minefield. Arguably it was an early bonus to the Liberals, a reminder straight from the horse's mouth of the social conservative credentials that have curtailed the party's growth in central Canada. But if Harper had not taken the samesex bull by the horns, his opponents would have red-flagged the issue sooner rather than later and he then would have looked like he was running away from his record. As it happens, the Conservatives have taken the strategic decision to run on their agenda rather than on the Liberal record and it does include revisiting same-sex marriage. By the same token, they seem to have found a rather radical remedy to the footin-mouth disease that cost the party so many campaign days in the last election. Last week the Conservatives put a virtual one-man show on the road. Last Wednesday, Harper treated his Quebec City candidates as mere props for a policy announcement, not even bothering to introduce them by name. At a time when many doubt his capacity to elect a single MP in Quebec he forewent a rare opportunity to showcase one or two who could have a fighting chance of winning a seat on Jan. 23. Deputy leader Peter MacKay - who ironically is more versed in justice matters than his leader, be it only because of his past as a Crown attorney - was clearly out of the loop on the promise to appoint a special federal prosecutor to oversee future investigations into allegations of federal wrongdoing. Last Wednesday, leader and deputy leader offered contrary interpretations of the promise. Then last Thursday in Mississauga, the GST cut was unveiled with the local Conservative candidate in attendance but in the absence of the finance heavyweights of the Tory caucus. In the last election the Conservatives had trouble singing from the same hymnbook.This year, it is Harper's determination to sing solo that may cause false notes to surface. Chantal Hebert is a columnist for The Toronto Star. This column was released on Dec. 2. The Hill Times

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