Wednesday, May 20, 2009

New Conservative ads don’t add up

If you thought the Conservative Party of Canada couldn’t go any lower than the trashy character-assassination campaign they ran against former Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion, think again.

The Conservatives – led by I’ll-never-get-a-majority Prime Minister Stephen Harper – have launched Ignatieff.me. This time, their target is current Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff.

Unfortunately for the Conservatives, they are making the same mistake many marketing people make. They are taking a tactic that worked once and laying the same template over a different product and audience under a different set of circumstances.

Even though there is no election going on, the Conservatives launched their campaign-style campaign last week, including a website – as silly as the one they did last year showing a puffin pooping on Dion’s shoulder – and TV ad, which are spewing up all over Canadian television.

The ads criticize Ignatieff on a number of fronts, but most notably, they make the argument that he is not a real Canadian because he lived and made a name for himself in the U.S. and Britain. This is just plain silly.

Did Harper & Co. not get the memo that Canada has become one of the most diverse, multicultural and globally aware nations on the planet? Isn’t it a good thing for Canada that Ignatieff has political connections throughout the world, particularly in the Obama administration? Do Harper & Co. not know that a large number of successful Canadians were born and raised elsewhere? And Ignatieff is hardly the first Canadian to leave his home and native land to gain experience and fame, but then return to utilize those skills learned abroad. (If you must, you can watch the ads for yourself at http://ignatieff.me/?p=ignatieff#watch.)

But if all that weren’t bad enough, the French version of the ad – airing in Quebec – is even worse. In that ad, the Conservatives criticize Ignatieff for speaking Parisian French instead of the “joual” French heard on the streets throughout La Belle Province. And by doing so, argue the Conservatives, Ignatieff is looking down on the Quebecois people.

First of all, since when is it evil for an Anglophone to speak non-Quebec French? For the most part, Francophones are more than willing to give Anglophones a break so long as they try to speak the other official language. And Ignatieff is fully bilingual, so his lack of Quebec colloquialism is irrelevant. The truth is that the Liberals are gaining strength in Quebec, and the Conservatives will try anything to stop this.

But also, this is the same Conservative Party that criticized the Liberals last year for assembling a coalition with “socialists and separatists.” At the time, Prime Minister Harper accused the Liberals of getting to close to Quebec nationalists. Now, Harper seems to be saying the exact opposite. Which is it?

The truth is that it is both – and neither. Harper and the Conservatives are willing to play with the fire of Quebec nationalism either way, so long as they think it will get them ahead politically. This is a cynical and dangerous game in which Harper is using separatist sentiment as a political pawn.

In the end, what the Conservatives don’t seem to realize is that Ignatieff is NOT Dion. Ignatieff is much more politically savvy and a much better communicator. While Dion was hesitant to fight back against disingenuous Conservative attacks, Ignatieff is taking them head on – and rightly dismissing them.

As he said last week, “When you're down in the polls, when you're presiding over the worst collapse in employment in recent memory, when you've got record bankruptcies everywhere you look, the thing you're going to do if you're in government and responsible for this mess is change the channel and that's what they're trying to do. Is that serious government? Is that serious politics? That's the kind of government we've got." (http://www.thestar.com/article/634672)

Ignatieff is right. Harper and the Conservatives are out of ideas as the Canadian economy crumbles around them. They are scared, and this latest campaign show it. 

1 comment:

  1. Sounds like the Conservatives didn't get the latest memo on campaign strategy. Hope and optimism are what sells a candidate to the voting public these days. (Mind you, hope and optimism aren't particularly a recipe for action and results once that candidate takes office but that's a discussion for another day.)

    Just as here in the U.S., the conservative movement appears to be gasping for its last breath and will try the once successful tactics from the days of yore because they are completely bereft of fresh new ideas. Could it be because they have no new fresh minds gravitating to this paragon of dinosaurian philosophy?

    Of course, the same warnings against overconfidence and cockiness that apply to the Democrats in the U.S. are certainly applicable to the Liberals in Canada. Do not take anything for granted and be sure to lose that erroneous conclusion that the Liberal party is the natural governing party of Canada. Until the Liberals offer a broad platform of ideas, initiatives, and even hope, they will not be able to ring the death knell of the Conservatives no matter how disconnected the Conservatives are from the mainstream of Canada.

    And as for Ignatieff's French, have you ever tried to take a French class in anglophone Canada? They teach Parisian French!! Try to learn Quebecois French; impossible, unless you move to Quebec! And what about Harper's less-than-perfect French. Let he who is without sin as they say!

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