You have to admit that the Conservatives have run a brilliant election campaign.
Stephen Harper opened the campaign by promising a free vote in Parliament on the same sex issue. The next day he said he would not use the notwithstanding clause of the Constitution to override the Supreme Court ruling on same sex marriage. You can sort of see where this is going: a Conservative government will keep passing legislation banning gay marriage until the Supreme Court, momentarily distracted by Brad and Angelina’s new baby, lets it stand.
The important thing, though, is that Harper has learned to play to his religious base early enough in the campaign that voters who do not share his beliefs will forget that that’s what he has done. Brilliant! Not original – George W. Bush used the same tactic in the 2000 American election – but brilliant.
Throughout the campaign, the Conservatives used sly religious references to keep the base happy but not alienate voters who don’t belong to the religious right, especially their slogan “Stand up for Jesusda,” based on the Christian hymn of the same name. Again, brilliance. Uhh…and, again, a tactic Bush used in the 2000 election.
The brilliant thing about getting the extremism out of the way early or pandering to it in a language only it understands is that you can then claim that you are running from the centre. Thus, Stephen Harper continually claimed that he had undergone an extreme political makeover (reality TV producers take note), and was now a kinder, gentler party leader. Hell, he almost smiled a couple of times during the campaign. Brilliant.
Err, although, to be fair, not entirely original, either. Remember, during the 2000 campaign, when George W. Bush claimed to be “a Unitarian, not a dividerer?” Bush perfected the technique of running from the centre but ruling from the far reaches of the solar system.
Of course, ensuring that the party leader doesn’t do anything vote-costingly foolish is only half the battle; the other half is ensuring that the candidates stay in line. This tactic is alternately known as “muzzling the nutbars” and “staying on message.”
The Conservatives have tried a number of methods to muzzle the message. Early in the campaign, Conservative candidates were hypnotized into believing they were Stanfield followers. When that stopped working, Stanfield was replaced by a rubber chicken. As a last resort, the party has kidnapped its own candidates and held them in undisclosed locations until after the election. (Oh, you thought candidates like Rondo Thomas didn’t show up for all-candidates debates because of their general disdain for the electoral process? You should have more faith in the democratic system.)
Brilliance. Brilliance learned at the feet of American neocons, for whom breaking party solidarity was a mortal sin rewarded with eternal lack of access to campaign funds, perhaps. Still, a brilliant campaign tactic.
Of course, politicians couldn’t get away with this if not for a compliant and distracted press. If a journalist asked Harper if he still believed that “Human rights commissions, as they are evolving, are an attack on our fundamental freedoms” and “totalitarianism,” to take one example, we might have gotten a better idea of who he really is.
However, journalists seem to have the memory of fruit flies. That, and the fact that the great liberal media conspiracy in this country seems to be made up of one newspaper and one TV network, ensured that Stephen Harper, Mark II would get a pretty free ride from the media.
Yeah, yeah, just like President Bush. Okay, so the Conservatives borrowed a little brilliance, but that doesn’t make it shine any less bright.
To ensure that those few journalists who were actually paying attention were kept busy, the Conservatives hammered home the concept of Liberal corruption. The fact that the last time the Conservatives were in power, Brian Mulroney ran one of the most corrupt governments in the history of the country didn’t seem to be in anybody’s talking points. (What? The party has a new leader? So do the Liberals, not that that argument appears to apply to them…)
Okay, so the Americans got there first: anybody remember Whitewater and Monicagate? The reason the Conservatives, uhh, appropriated this tactic from the American Republicans is that it works, dammit. And, that’s brilliant.
Perhaps the strongest tactic the Conservatives used during the campaign was to constantly accuse the Liberals of being about to “go negative.” Virtually every day of the campaign, Harper would say, “After 12 years in power, I wouldn’t be surprised if Liberals sacrificed native children to Satan just to stay in power…but, hey, you know they’re going to attack me for saying that’s wrong.”
It is brilliant. Demented, but brilliant. When the Liberals finally did mount an advertising push in the last week of the campaign, they could have said the sun shines out of Stephen Harper’s nether regions, and it would still have been perceived as an attack on the Conservatives. In fact, they used the words of Harper and his supporters to paint a portrait of the extremism of the Conservatives, but, instead of dealing with the substance of the accusations, the media gnawed on the “attack ads” bone until it was nothing but splinters and smelly saliva.
Not only did the daily “Liberals about to go negative” warnings neutralize anything they might have said, but it also gave Harper a free pass to be as negative as he wanted. (I’m pretty sure Liberals have never sacrificed native children just to stay in power. Pretty sure…)
Of course, the Republicans have been engaging in “class war” even while accusing their opponents of it for over 20 years. In 2004, they warned Democrats to keep the campaign clean (ie: to not “be partisan”) while they sanctioned the smearing of war hero John Kerry with lies about his military career.
Brilliant strategies. And, yet… Is it just me, or does this whole Conservative election campaign have a whiff of Rove about it?