You may remember that a while back, I re-evaluated the Tories’ anti-Ignatieff ads using the assumption that their target was not so much to convince voters as it was to put the Liberal leadership off-balance.

Now, we have some evidence from Susan Delacourt’s analysis that this particular “mission” has been — er — accomplished:

Ignatieff, on the other hand, seemed defensive from the outset of the past week. What’s even stranger is that it was an anticipated defence – a collection of comebacks at his Monday news conference to attacks that hadn’t happened yet.

Those who are praising Ignatieff’s performance are framing their plaudits, in part, to what his enemies are saying about him.

Rocco Rossi, the party’s executive director, says: “I think the biggest take away, as corny as it sounds, is that, despite what the Conservative ads try to say, Michael Ignatieff puts the country before the party and before any personal ambition.”

We also have this tidbit from the National Post’s John Ivison:

If some form of deal is cobbled together – and at time of writing, the two leaders were still talking – it will be in large part because Mr. Ignatieff has been unable to articulate a convincing reason for an election, beyond personal ambition.

Which happens to be exactly the theme of the anti-Ignatieff campaign.

I suspect that, if you were to poll people about words to describe Michael Ignatieff, the Top Gear slogan — “ambitious, but rubbish” — would be the most popular adjective phrase. In fact, how about we test that theory out?

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 21st, 2009 at 11:37 and is filed under Blogging Tory Challenges, Iggy Bops, Libranos, Media Watch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.