A review of Tory attack ads over the past three years confirms this is the final battle the Conservative leader has long anticipated. It’s also the one the Trudeau Liberals have prepared for, husbanding their ground game for a full-on, final push to reclaim their old perch as Canada’s “natural governing party.” Every recent poll suggests that epic struggle is now upon us, with Tom Mulcair’s New Democrats slipping by the day. This means the next couple of weeks will be ugly; an alley fight, no Queensberry Rules.
Why, not fair? Simply this: Mulcair has run a fine campaign. He has made no egregious mistakes. He performed well in five TV debates, pitched his platform at the sensible centre-left, and took a principled stand, knowing it would wound him, over Zunera Ishaq’s right to wear a veil at her citizenship ceremony, which has been re-affirmed, yet another time, by the Federal Court of Appeal. If the NDP lose the election and possibly even the Opposition Leader’s chair because Mulcair took that position, universally unpopular in Quebec, they will have lost for the best of reasons. It’s rare to see a politician put principle over politics.
But they still will have lost, and the reaction from the NDP’s old guard — left-wingers who’ve been forced to gnash their teeth in the dark as their centrist leader promised balanced budgets, tax cuts for small business and no tax hikes for the wealthy — is not likely to be merciful.
More likely, should the party lose significant ground in the House of Commons, Mulcair will be reminded he used to be a Liberal and shown the door. Politics ain’t fair.
But we digress: There’s the brass ring to consider. Who will seize it, should Mulcair continue to fade into the home stretch?
There are two intriguing threads there, it seems to me.
The first is that Harper has shown remarkable personal resilience, in the face of challenges that would have poleaxed lesser politicians. Amid the general stunned surprise that Trudeau can give as good as he gets in televised debate, Harper’s consistently impressive, steady performances have been eclipsed, to a degree. But it is not coincidental the Conservatives still lead — and by a widening margin, according to a Mainstreet/Postmedia poll published Tuesday. Lament the transparent use of the niqab as a wedge though one might — and I do — there is no denying the tactic has had its intended effect.
Meantime, Canada’s signature on the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, complete with the customary billions in hush money for tariff-protected industries who might otherwise have to compete, is a disgrace from a consumer-protection point of view. Politically though, it’s a win for the Tories. Free trade is not something Canadians argue much about any more, and the Left know this.
The second big surprise of the campaign, and the one that has changed its complexion in the past ten days, is Trudeau’s aforementioned competence in debate. If there was a moment in which he was fated to crash and burn, according to the Conservative and NDP narratives, it was the Munk foreign policy debate Sept. 28. Instead, despite being saddled with a position on the bombing mission in Iraq that is fundamentally contradictory, he emerged with many observers calling him the winner. In the first French-language debate, Quebec commentators universally panned his performance; in the second, several called him the winner.
This isn’t to say Trudeau triumphed to universal acclaim. He wasn’t required to do that, because the expectations established for him by three years of unrelenting Conservative attack ads had been so low. Attack ads have always worked for the Tories which is why, despite the fact that many of the party’s MPs are quietly embarrassed by them, they continue to field them. It’s not clear any of the marketing geniuses behind these campaigns ever considered what effect they might have if a candidate proved the messaging wrong.
It remains to be seen whether the Harper lead captured by Mainstreet will hold or widen. Ipsos’ most recent numbers have the Liberals and Tories virtually deadlocked, whereas Nanos has the Grits several points up.
Either way, the stage is now set for a big move away from the New Democrats and toward the Liberals, as so-called “Anybody But Harper” voters coalesce behind the party most likely to unseat the government. That in turn would catalyze a last-ditch Conservative move to ignite their base, to prevent the hated Liberals’ returning from the dead, while the New Democrats rush to save the furniture.
It’s a pity, really, there couldn’t have been just one more debate. It would have been one for the record books.
Original Article
Source: news.nationalpost.com/
Author: Michael Den Tandt
No comments:
Post a Comment