Just who are these Conservatives anyway?

Political droids, a giant spin machine, and Scrooge McDuck: the pundits search for ways to characterize our ruling party.

You’d think four years was enough to get to know somebody. But the Conservatives aren’t the most open of politicians. We know they’re consummate politicians and self-styled managers, but how can Canadians and the Conservatives ever be BFFs if we don’t know who they really are? Today the pundits try to shed some light on the Conservative personality.

If you believe the National Post’s John Ivison, Stephen Harper is “the most tightly scripted prime minister in Canadian history,” a political droid who’s wheeled out in public by his handlers, all of whom live in constant fear that a he’ll go haywire and say something unplanned. “Whenever Stephen Harper uses the phrase ‘now look’ or ‘quite frankly’ in answer to a question,” Ivison writes, “his seasoned advisors look at their shoes, cross their fingers and hope for the best.” That’s why his “media access is rationed … and tough questioners are frozen out,” says Ivison, which makes Michael Ignatieff’s unscripted summer bus tour rather impressive.

The Conservative government is nothing but “a spin machine on steroids,” writes the Globe and Mail’s Jeffrey Simpson. He summarily dismisses the government’s claims that Canada is a clean energy superpower (“demonstrably false by any conceivable international measure”), that we’re a model of debt reduction (“a claim destroyed last week by the OECD”), and that we need state of the art stealth jets to protect us from the Russians (“a very scary potential problem – about 60 years ago”). Conservative spin is so exaggerated, says Simpson, that “daily exposure leads to the dilemma of laughing or crying.”

At least they’re trying, writes Sun Media’s Michael Den Tandt. The “Conservatives have belatedly realized their tough-guy act is slowly imploding. And a delicate recalibration has begun,” he writes, pointing to the recent announcement that stimulus funds will be extended for some infrastructure projects. Previously Conservatives “wisely met every demand for an extension with … Scrooge McDuck-like stinginess.” Now that they’re tied with the Liberals in the polls, “the new message is: We’ll play nice. Look for more warm-and-fuzzy policy announcements in the days and weeks ahead.”