Beyond The Commons

Aaron Wherry covers all the goings-on in and around Parliament Hill. Follow Aaron on Twitter: @aaronwherry

Categories: Beyond The Commons, Capital Read

A war on two fronts

by Aaron Wherry on Saturday, April 30, 2011 11:00am - 36 Comments

The Liberals release two new adverts—one aimed at the NDP, the other at the Conservatives.

Tags: advertising, attack ads, election, Election 2011, liberals

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catherine

I like them. Nice simple message in both of those – vote Liberal to get a Liberal government.

Meanwhile, Harper is telling Liberals to vote Conservative in order to stop the NDP and has changed his slogan from "a vote for the Liberals is a vote for Michael Ignatieff" to "a vote for the Liberals is a vote for the NDP".
OriginalEmily1

Reasonable ads, no hype, straightforward.

John_Edgar

Except my understanding is that the Liberals still intend to buy new fighter jets, just with a new competitive bidding process (so maybe it will end up cheaper). So the fact that they keep harping :) on about 30 billion dollars on fighter jets is a bit misleading. Unless they are in fact not intending to replace them in which case I withdraw my criticism.

chet

I'm sure, after two years of trying get Canadians to consider the Liberals as a viable alternative to the CPC, and seeing that effort utterly fail over the two years, and literally crumble before our eyes in the last two weeks,

those ads will turn it right around.
chet

The big question will be whether the Liberal worker bees will even want to get out of bed in the morning come election day, let alone work their butts off to try in vein to get the last Liberal stragglers who haven't jumped the sinking ship to actually vote.

The second biggest question will be whether team NDP can muster any sort of ground game in ridings they didn't even know they should work hard for, to get that bottom 10% of the 'youth vote' who promised pollsters they would be voting, but are actually sleeping off the "we just finished our exams" hangover.

Chris B

I think Chet had an unhappy adolescence judging by the way he thinks of the youth of today….

chet

Actually I did two things during that time: study, and party. And after exams, it was party, work a few hours at the part time job, and then party again.

Is that unusual for 18 -22 year olds?

You may want to rethink what most people consider "unhappy" at that age.

OriginalEmily1

chet gets overtime on weekends.

chet

On election day you'll see millions of "chets" out there voting for Harper. Amazing how he can mind control and or pay so many millions. An evil genius to be sure.

OriginalEmily1

Harper doesn't have to 'mind control' anyone….you do it to yourselves.

The human mind is the most effective prison ever devised

hosertohoosier

What are your rates?

OriginalEmily1

I don't need the money…chet does apparently.

http://idrinkinthemorning.com Rick Omen

Yup, that's gonna turn things right around for the LPC. They'd probably be better off pushing the "Jack and the hookers" story they leaked to the press yesterday.

OriginalEmily1

Sun news works for the PMO, not the Libs.

hosertohoosier

Sun News is a failing channel desperate for ratings – they'd air a story like this no matter the source. Moreover, if you look at the second choice preferences of Bloc, Tory and Liberal voters, it is clear who stands to gain the most from an NDP collapse:

CPC: 13.5%
Liberal: 37.7%
Bloc: 10.9% (which equates to something like 30% in Quebec)
Green: 19%

Source: http://www.ekospolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/fu…

Heck, for all we know, the NDP could have planted the story in the belief that the CPC would get blamed, and there would be a backlash. Chow's response came awfully quick (on the order of minutes) – normally campaigns debate their response to these kinds of things. We have zero evidence either way, just like there is no evidence that Jack got a rub and tug. So lets be consistent and not make accusations until we have facts behind them, whether they benefit our guy or not.

OriginalEmily1

Since the Sun has openly advertised itself as Con, and since they openly advertised themselves as taking on stories 'nobody else will touch', and since they openly advertised just last week they had a story and fake photo of Ignatieff with a gun in Iraq given to them by the PMO….I'd say we know who the culprits are.

So don't play innocent.

hosertohoosier

As usual your inane comments are entirely beside the point.

1. "Since the Sun has openly advertised itself as Con"
Uh yeah, that is precisely why if I were the Conservatives I WOULDN'T LEAK A STORY THAT MIGHT BACKFIRE WITH THE GD SUN.

2. "photo of Ignatieff with a gun in Iraq"
Why would the fact that Peladeau forced Harper to fire his best strategist make you more likely to believe that this came from the Tories? To me that suggests that Peladeau and Harper were on the outs. You may note that Sun never did anything with the santa hat picture.
OriginalEmily1

Well they did I'm afraid….headlines here this last week….so don't play innocent.
Proud Canadian

Why would the fact that Peladeau forced Harper to fire his best strategist? Because he was probably paid off handsomely by the cons to take a fall for them to make Fox news look legit. On another note, are you trying to say that sun (fox) is not conservative? The problem with cons using American republican strategies is that they don’t work on Canadians. Now, if only Harper could magically make us all dumb as yanks, fox north might just work!
TimesArrow

Uh yeah, that is precisely why if I were the Conservatives I WOULDN'T LEAK A STORY THAT MIGHT BACKFIRE WITH THE GD SUN

You don't often say anything really dumb. But this is. Why not? They already did it once, even if it did backfire. Obviously they covered their tracks well. and i doubt if the story came directly from Harper – he may not have even known about it. Aside from that they can rely on folks like you to muddy the waters or offer implausible alternatives.

Not labelling you a conbot. You're as entitled to your opinion as i am.
hosertohoosier

The Tories have the least to gain from this, and are most likely to be blamed for leaking the story. That math simply doesn't add up.

A certain other party on the other hand, has a pretty strong interest in this story getting out because they happen to be fighting a 2-front war (Jon Kay just twittered that the Liberal back office tried selling him the story, sans documents).

noob_goldberg

I'd be amazed if Chow didn't have response to this potential question tucked away in a desk drawer for the past 10 years. It's not like the issue was unknown to her. I'm sure they've had reporters sniffing at the story before. Sun was just the first one that actually ran it.

I debated about whether or not the other parties planted the story, but I keep coming back to the fact that it's the CPC that immediately started trading on it when it came out. It was a coordinated and synchronized attack, which is pretty conclusive IMHO.

catherine

Yes, I notice the CPC war room immediately came out and said we didn't leak it. As if they had any credibility.
hosertohoosier

On Chow's response – I can buy that. Warren Kinsella recently suggested that the story was reasonably well-known in Toronto circles, and that he was surprised it hadn't broken earlier. And I think we know why it didn't break earlier – Sun TV didn't exist yet.

As for the coordinated response, I disagree strongly.

Firstly, the Tories do not stand to gain, if this is true. This election is going to be decided by how the marginals move in Ontario. However, in Ontario, the Liberals and NDP are currently at the sweet spot – they have roughly equal support in most polls, while the Tories have a fair lead. An NDP or a Liberal scandal would shift votes from one party to the other (many Dippers have the Liberals as their second choice, and vice versa). And anyway, the kind of values voters that would care about this issue are already Conservatives.

Secondly, by "the CPC" you presumably mean CPC bloggers. In fact it makes complete sense that Conservatives would spread the story first. This story broke on Sun News. 99% of the viewers of Sun News are Conservatives. As for their eagerness, I'm not sure that is particularly suspicious. Tories like Jack Layton the least, and they are more likely to have puritanical views of sex. The Tory campaign, in contrast, would have known better.

Thirdly, it isn't as if the Tories are the only people who have played this game. How long ago was it that a draft of the G-8 accountability report was conveniently leaked a day before the debates?

Fourthly, if the Tories were going to leak this story, why go about it in such a clumsy way? Why use a right-leaning news station (they could leak it elsewhere and let the Sun pick up the story)? Why frame the story as the words of an ex-cop, as opposed to just the police report?
noob_goldberg

You raise some very good points. I suppose the CPC bloggers (yes, that's who I was clumsily referring to) could have just appeared to be synchronized due to the story's release in a right-wing venue, and were probably just copying the speaking points that were provided in the story.

The rest of your points are perfectly rational. I suppose I should retract the claws.
TimesArrow

You missed the fact the NDP are said to be stripping Harper of tory votes in BC and QC and may start to do so in ON. What if the tories internal olls are telling them Jack can't be stopped now?
It makes perfect sense some body in the CPC did this, not necessarily Harper[ although that is unlikely] It depends how desperate the tories are about their majority slipping away
hosertohoosier

In Quebec, NDP losses would skew Bloc – not much help in the three-way races that characterize Quebec. In BC (and maybe the prairies) you have a point, but ON + QC > BC. Even with some heroic assumptions, the payoff just isn't worth the risk.

As for desperation, why would the Tories be desperate? If the polls are right they stand to maintain the status quo – a Tory minority. Its not their ideal outcome, but it isn't the end of the world. Even if the NDP takes power, the Tories can always win next time – other parties may not have a next time. The Liberal party is about to have the worst election finish in its history, possibly killing it off. The Bloc faces an even greater likelihood of destruction. If your main piece of evidence is desperation, the Tories aren't the ones I would look at first.

We know who the villain is here – its the Sun. This story has been around for a while – Coyne knew about it, so did Kinsella. The motive? Take a look at their ratings.
TimesArrow

Given Harper's rhetoric – majority or bust he does have a strong motive. There may even be something he knows are in those reports waiting for Ottawa to reconvene. I do see your point that this may not normally be enough of a reason to panic for the tories[ and the libs do have a strong motive and prior history of their own according to Kay] but there are known unknowns here.

Don't agree on the libs facing extinction; not yet. If it was that why hasn't some of that panic surfaced yet on the twitterverse?

Mike T.

If the NDP are now a "viable" option, then the only constituency for the Liberals are mild right wingers who care about the integrity of parliamentary process. And Harper likes to laugh in our faces about how small that second factor is.
TimesArrow

Finally them libs learn how to make short, simple and effective ads…how many days to go before we vote?…sigh.
Mr. King

Remember when Harper challenged Ignatieff to a one-on-one debate, then clarified he meant to have that instead of a four-leader debate, not in addition to it. Some will say that was simply an excuse Harper made to justify "chickening out." I'm not certain of this — he's been convinced that he looks good compared to Iggy for a while now. Let's say they're right, though; if Ignatieff had agreed to exclude the NDP and Bloc, Harper would just have come up with some other excuse. It still would have been a good idea to make him come up with one (no doubt looking foolish as a result). There's just no other way of looking at it, though; the Liberals foolishly failed to capitalize on their best chance at polarizing the electorate.
cyberclark

Harper's one man dog and pony show is targeted to a very narrow strip of Canadians and he is quite ready to shred the majority for his Conservative dreams.

He has demonstrated on so many occasions he does not give a dam about the walk along Canadian. His interests lay in the corporate boardrooms as much to garner favor as support. The people who live in the castles do not rule; it is the people in the houses who are getting shafted that will be heard.

Harper can beg votes from the NDP and the Liberals as much as he wants but his "economics stupid" arguments are empty and his business tax reductions are strictly a payback to the corporate body. His way of saying thanks to them.

Anyone that stands up in the public media and tells the world he is going to Change Canada so none of us will recognize it and continues to push his conservative agenda without telling the people of this country what he is about certainly is a danger to this country and an extreme danger to those things that make Canada, Canada.

Joe Butson

Hmmm…that Change Canada stuff and Hidden Agenda compares really well to what is actually happening here Stateside with Barack Obama. Except it is actually happening vs. your "sky is falling," evil Harper meme. There is a reason the Tories number hasn't budged in the last 5 weeks and the NDP are soaring while the Bloq and Liberals are in free fall. The Left of Centre parties are running beauty contests on sand. And you think Harper is extreme?

jonatwitan

Those were doors, right?
seventyone

They are good ads actually.
Mike R

Does this actually mean the official Liberal policy is that we will not have an air force at all? No wonder they are now in third place. Even the NDP isn't that irresponsible.