Panic attacks?

Perhaps surprisingly, The Times (behind paywall) is wondering if the Tories are on the wrong track:

... the Conservatives seem to have gone out of their way to reinforce their two most serious image problems. First, they found themselves forced into defending the super-rich by Labour’s promise to scrap non-dom status. Then, to divert attention from that, they went into “nasty party” mode, with Michael Fallon’s personal attack on Ed Miliband. It was a perfect example of what Mr Crosby calls the “dead cat” strategy — changing the subject by throwing something so shocking on to the table that people can talk of nothing else — but for many Tories the decomposing corpse just stank. “It reinforced everything people hate about us,” says one ministerial aide. “The message is ‘we sorted out the economy but we’re still bastards’. That really matters when so many people on the doorstep continue to question our motives.”

...

More traditional Conservatives worry that the chancellor is also undermining his party’s greatest strength — the perception that the Tories can be trusted to run the economy — with unfunded spending pledges. In recent days, he has announced an additional £8 billion for the NHS, as well as rail fare freezes costing £1.8 billion and a volunteering scheme that could cost £1 billion to the public sector — on top of the tax cuts already announced by Mr Cameron.

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people ...