Layton wins the battle, Harper wins the war on the gun registry

If the NDP succeeds in prolonging the gun registry next week, it might give the Conservatives a shot at a majority government come election time.

After much political wrangling, Jack Layton announced yesterday that he’s managed to convince enough of his NDP MPs to change their minds and support the long-gun registry in the House of Commons next week. It looks like the anti-registry Conservatives are going to lose the vote. But that loss could mean a big win for them come next election.

“Deep in the bowels of Conservative party backrooms, gleeful laughter can be heard from a government celebrating a defeat,” writes the National Posts’s Don Martin. Because rural voters who voted for the NDP last time around hate the registry, the Conservatives have found “the perfect wedge, a … we-need-a-majority argument that could sway disgusted rural voters to their party without a corresponding seat reduction in urban areas.” Layton was able to convince his rural MPs to switch largely thanks “to a one-issue (Conservative) MP yahoo named Garry Breitkreuz who unleashed rabid registry overkill last month” which “made it increasingly difficult for New Democrat MPs to join the Conservatives in a registry take-down.”

You may recall Breitkreuz did said unleashing on The Mark. So we know at least the NDP is reading.

For the NDP “there never was an electorally bulletproof strategy to deal with the divisive registry issue,” writes Chantal Hébert in the Toronto Star. “had basically been reduced to choosing which of the pro-registry Liberals and Bloc Québécois or the anti-registry Conservatives get to take the first shots at his party over the issue in the next election.” She agrees with Martin that this “suits the prime minister just fine (because) … Harper has been laying out the case for a majority government, arguing that a possible alternative would be an unpredictable Bloc-supported Liberal/NDP coalition … a government defeat on the gun registry would bolster that narrative.”

But it may not be all bad for Layton. An editorial in the Guelph Mercury says he’s pulled off “a political masterstroke” by” saving the gun registry while sending the right conciliatory messages to his party’s crucial rural supporters.”