Angry in the Great White North

In my last posting, I mused about whether Jack Layton, in his fury, would open up against Michael Ignatieff.  I thought there was a pretty good chance that Jack Layton would vigourously attack Michael Ignatieff, and spare Stephen Harper.  I guess I was right, as the NDP is showcasing two new radio ads:

Strong Enough:

Let me ask you a question.  Are you worried about the economy, about protecting your job and your retirement?  My family is.  That's why we were counting on Michael Ignatieff to take a stand and put average families first.  Instead, he's propping up Stephen Harper!  Michael Ignatieff failed his first test as Liberal leader.  Jack Layton's the only leader strong enough to stand up to Harper and get us through this economic crisis.  Learn more at NewDemocratOpposition.ca.

Change:

Some things just don't change.  Another Conservative budget rubberstamped by another Liberal leader.  It's official.  Michael Ignatieff failed his first big test as Liberal leader.  He's thrown his lot in with Stephen Harper, a person average families can't trust to look out for them.  Jack Layton's the only leader strong enough to stand up to Harper and create the change that'll get us through this economic crisis.  Learn more at NewDemocratOpposition.ca.

NewDemocratOpposition.ca just redirects you to the standard NDP website.  The donation page focuses on the bid to get air time, but just as likely the money goes into the general NDP pot.

To be clear, all the negativity is aimed at Michael Ignatieff.  Stephen Harper is in the background.  By default, Harper is a bad person, but no effort is made to convince people of that.  It's taken as a given, which tells me that this ad is not aimed at Conservatives, but at Liberal supporters.  To these Liberals, the message is that Michael Ignatieff "failed" and that's he's just "another Liberal leader [like Stephane Dion]" and it was a mistake for working Canadians to be "counting on Michael Ignatieff".

So Jack Layton is going back to the strategy he employed in the last election.  Target the Liberals and try to pull support away.  Focusing his attacks on Stephen Harper would have the opposite effect, since NDP supporters truly frightened by Stephen Harper would strategically support the Liberals.

Jack Layton has to downplay the attacks on Stephen Harper and cast Michael Ignatieff as the real threat to progressives - as a sort of conservative fifth-column that gets support from Canada's progressive voters but betrays them by siding with the Conservatives.

The problem is that this is a complicated and elaborate fiction that most people wouldn't buy.  It'll play well with NDP supporters, of course, but they're not the target audience.  Liberals, on the other hand, will likely register any displeasure they have with Michael Ignatieff's decision by not donating to the party or withholding their vote at election time, but not joining with the NDP.  A shift like that would take something dramatically serious.  Supporting the budget is just not seen as such a terrible thing by most voters, including Liberal voters.

As serious as Michael Ignatieff's decision to support the Conservative budget seemed to Jack Layton (it keeps him and the NDP out of a coalition government, probably forever, and means Layton will meet his hero, Barack Obama, as a leader of the smallest and most marginalized party in Canada's parliament and not as a fellow national leader), most Canadians across the board are generally supportive of the budget, and comfortable with Stephen Harper and the Conservatives implementing it. 

Frankly, Jack Layton is not going to get any traction on this issue.  The radio ads are going to be a waste of time, a tribute to Jack Layton's self-importance that he would pointlessly spend party money because his feelings have been hurt.

My question is simply how long will the NDP party leadership tolerate this expenditure?