Jack Layton Winning the War Over the War

The unholy Liberal-Conservative alliance on the unpopular extension of the Afghan mission has the NDP leader twitching his whiskers with delight.

The National Post’s senior mustache analyst John Ivison looks to party leaders’ upper lips for signs of their political fortunes, and finds that Jack Layton is winning. “Bob Rae’s upper lip facial hair … looked wispy and in danger of blowing off in a stiff breeze, as the Liberal foreign affairs critic tried to reason why he supports the Conservative government’s decision” to extend the Afghan mission. That decision is a boon for Layton, writes a bizarrely whisker-obsessed Ivison. “The NDP leader enjoyed himself hugely during Question Period, mustache bristling magnificently,” as he basked in the fact that he is now the most vocal critic against an extension of the mission, and can expect to pick up some votes from the millions of Canadians who want the troops home in 2011. Ivison observes that the Liberals choice to side with the Conservatives “seems to have been … taken with the same foresight with which the Light Brigade charged into the Valley of Death,” which, for you non-Crimean War scholars out there, did not end well.

The Liberals are in a tough spot, but Sun Media’s Michael Den Tandt wonders if they ever had a choice, or if this is only the latest example of Stephen Harper’s ability to manipulate his rivals. “Could this be an ultra-devious … plot to unleash the surging Dippers on the ever-hapless Grits?” he writes. Den Tandt says the extension has been inevitable for some time, but that Harper backed the Liberals into a corner by letting them call for an extension first, and then reversing his promise not to extend the mission. Now the Liberals and Conservatives are partners on an unpopular policy, and the NDP will make gains, but “the converts will come to Layton, not from the Conservatives, who are too far removed ideologically, but from the Liberals.” Opponents underestimate Harper’s tactical genius at their peril, but even he probably isn’t as capable of engineering such a complex sequence of events as Den Tandt suggests. The columnist’s ultimate conclusion that “dumb luck” played a role is more convincing.