[LINK] "The economy is in good shape, so why is support for the Conservatives slumping?"

[rfmcdonald]

Building from Éric Grenier's latest metapoll at Three Hundred Eight predicting that, all things being equal, the Conservatives' low of 29% support would mean that a federal election would easily result in a Liberal minority government, Andrew Coyne in the National Post argues that the exceptional unpopularity of the Conservative Party has to do with its style of governance.

If today both Mr. Harper and the party he leads are actively disliked by more than seven voters in 10, it may be because they have gone out of their way to alienate them in every conceivable way — not by their policies, or even their record, but simply by their style of governing, as over-bearing as it is under-handed, and that on a good day.

When they are not refusing to disclose what they are doing, they are giving out false information; when they allow dissenting opinions to be voiced, they smear them as unpatriotic or worse; when they open their own mouths to speak, it is to read the same moronic talking points over and over, however these may conflict with the facts, common courtesy, or their own most solemn promises.

Secretive, controlling, manipulative, crude, autocratic, vicious, unprincipled, untrustworthy, paranoid … Even by the standards of Canadian politics, it’s quite the performance. We’ve had some thuggish or dishonest governments in the past, even some corrupt ones, but never one quite so determined to arouse the public’s hostility, to so little apparent purpose. Their policy legacy may prove short-lived, but it will be hard to erase the stamp of the Nasty Party.

Go read the whole thing.