Stephen Harper wants an election. By latest accounts it will be called Sept.7, and be held on Oct. 14, nullifying the three Sept. 8 by-elections. Theelection theme is well rehearsed. Stéphane Dion is a wimp, not a leader. Dionwants to raise taxes. The Liberal leader has trouble speaking English.Therefore the only choice is to vote for the Harper Conservatives.
The Conservatives have been rolling out radio and TV ads demonizing Dionperiodically since he was elected leader in December 2006. A new cycle hasjust started. Conservatives borrowed the attack ad strategy from Karl Rove,the architect of the George W. Bush electoral campaigns. It worked fine forBush, and to date it has been effective for the Harper Conservatives aswell.
Who says advertising does not work? It was the Conservatives and not theLiberals, that introduced Dion to the Canadian people. His poorpublic image reflects Conservative advertising buys across various mediaoutlets at regular intervals over many months, reinforced by an inabilityof the Liberal party to project a better image of their leader, who may benerdy, but is certainly no wimp.
The Conservative electoral strategy is predicated on making the sorryLiberal leader the story, backed up by reruns of episodes featuring thecorrupt Liberal party who brought you the sponsorship scandal. TheConservatives plan to attack the Liberal idea of a carbon tax as unfair toconsumers already paying sky-high prices for gasoline, and heating oil. Thatthe Liberal plan does not include gas taxes will not stop the Conservativesfrom saying it does. Just as the Conservatives will claim the Liberal “greenshift” raises taxes when it fact it lowers income taxes and corporate taxes,to compensate for a new tax on fuels.
The Conservative strategy is designed to exploit long standing deepdivisions in the Liberal party. Leadership aspirations of defeatedcandidates Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff have been reignited by Dion’s weakstanding. Following an October election, should the Liberal leaderfail to become prime minister following a fall election, automatically hewill face an leadership review at the upcoming party convention next spring.If the party dumped Dion, as would appear very likely, the Liberals wouldface a second expensive, divisive leadership race and would end up deeperin debt, with yet another wounded leader.
Harper is counting on his superior party organization to see him througheventually to a majority government. And it is true that the Conservativeshave much higher levels of contributions from individual members than theLiberals, Bloc, or NDP.Election campaigns can, however, encounter uncharted waters. In the fall of2008 the Conservatives are facing a public health crisis of majorproportions. With 12 people confirmed dead of the listeriosis virus causedby tainted meat, originating from plants no longer supervised by governmentinspectors, thanks to changes brought in by the Harper Conservatives, thatallow companies to inspect themselves, the Liberal opposition leader has areal issue he can take to the people.
The leader of the opposition sets the tone in the House of Commons and fromday one Dion has been launching personal attacks on Harper,typecasting him as right-wing extremist who wants to take Canada whereCanadians do not want to go. Now Dion has a specific case of damningproportions, particularly in Ontario where Federal Health Minister TonyClement is remembered for his role as a provincial Conservative in theWalkerton deaths following failed water inspection procedures.
The Conservatives have no place to hide from the listeria crisis, with theOntario government directing warnings of its dangers in particular to theelderly, children, and pregnant woman. Adding to the tension, there are nowreports of an outbreak in Quebec of salmonella poisoning related to cheeseproducts.
If Harper wants an election Oct. 14, he can get one. What he can notcontrol is what the election will be about. Once a writ is dropped, publicopinion has a tendency to develop a dynamic of its own.
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