I noticed it and raised my eyebrows, and I'm from a state where we get TONS of these every two years. Sounds like the Gore ads in 2000.
It may be that the Tories dropped the ball, by not counterattacking immediately. They perhaps have not watched Clinton closely enough, who honed that rather necessary technique.
Where the CP failed was in not creating a positive image of being a gun nut, cowboy Western separatist and essentially any other "negative" image the LP might have come up with. Here in the our own land Reagan certainly was a master of this. I think we've got some major lessons learned to ponder. The Right must define our own image on our terms - we must preemptively take every stereotype the Left makes of us and turn it around. For far too long, the whole RINO moderate approach has kept us shy to do this. For example - let us proclaim all the goodness about Judeo-Christian values and sell this to the sheeple, let us proclaim the utter necessity of 2nd ammendment rights and be unafraid of using devices such as Neimoller's monologue or other things to make that point, etc, etc. The more dramatic and emotional our appeal the better! I know it goes agaist our nature, but the Left are using these techniques against us time and time again. We need to become, at least in the short term, the same sorts of political geeks and wonks as Leftists are in our own case vis a vis the Rightist creed. All it takes is courage. If we deny the Left the opportunity to slime us negatively on the issues that define the Right, then they will look really lame when they roll out all their noise.