Mar

31

The Devil his Due

March 31, 2008 |

The liar Kinsella is a flaming shitheel (possibly from Hell) but he is one hardcore political analyst. He runs the ten reasons why Dion is not catmeat. A few good points:

1. After many months of crappy headlines and no shortage of bad luck, the polls reveal that Dion’s Liberals and Harper’s Tories are still… tied, mostly. It’s a fair question to ask: if all of Dion’s critics are right, then why is Dion still competitive? Because voters - particularly female voters - still have a lot of a reluctance about penciling an “X” beside the Conservative candidates’ name. In politics, it’s always good to be underestimated by your opponent. The polls say [the Tory] team is underestimating Dion. Big time.

There are lots of reasons but the fact is that Harper has not been able to open up even a tiny gap.

3. Dion is no dummy. He knows the Tories want to run a campaign about “leadership” - they’ve been telegraphing that for months. So Dion need only do what Chrétien did in similar circumstances in 1993: step back a bit and emphasize plan and team. And he’s got a Hell of team: Hall-Finlay, Rae, Dryden, Ignatieff, Kennedy, and so many others. It is a powerful front bench, one with a lot of name recognition. Can the Tories say the same thing?

Even if Harper was a half decent Leader, which he is only relative to Dion and Layton, the team theme can work. Quick, name a federal cabinet minister who could take over if PMSH was hit by a bus.

4. The Tories have a message deficit. They can’t run an “outsider” campaign - they’re the incumbents. They can’t run a “scandal” campaign, thanks to Mr. Mulroney. So they will run a campaign about “leadership” - but leadership is an exceedingly woolly concept. Voters like meat and potatoes platforms (which is why Harper won in 2006, by the way). If I were Dion, I’d do a campaign on government services - making ‘em better, and not just eliminating them, the way Tories always do. Mix in some environment, some fiscal federalism, and voilà!

Yup. The problem with running a message free operation is that, well, there is no message. Dion can campaign on whatever he likes, Harper seems to be committed to campaigning on thin air.

Say what you like about PMSH, he is certainly in no danger of being called a “conservative”. He is in no danger of being called a “socon” or a libertarian. So what is he, exactly? What has he delivered? His Finance Minister has been bright enough not to derail the Martinite fiscal policy which makes Canada the envy of the OECD. Other than that, name a policy or a position which the CPC has adopted which could not have been adopted by the Grits.

9.The media remain distinctly less-than-friendly with the Harper folks. They may not love Stéphane Dion, but – during the campaign – you can expect to see them cuddling with him more than once, if only to get back at Harper’s PMO. It’ll be ugly, as love triangles always are. But Dion will benefit.

It is one thing to put the media in their place, it is quite another to run a press operation which antagonizes the media without running the other side, the end run, which marginalizes them. Harper showed willing to put the boots to the dullards in the Parliamentary Press Gallery; but he failed entirely to make the moves - on the net and in the non-MSM - which would have marginalized them. Bad advice and a very limited capacity to think outside the box.

The liar Kinsella expends some pixels on Jim Flaherty’s fight with McGuinty. It is probably important because the Harper folks think they might win a few more Ontario seats and they probably won’t as a result of this. However, the smartest thing Harper can do is to write off TO and enviorns and look to Quebec and the rest of Canada for his majority. Sadly he seems entirely incapable of ignoring “vote-rich” Ontario.

Dion, despite being possibly the worst leader the Liberals have ever foisted themselves with, could quite easily maintain the status quo and, with a couple of breaks, shift a few seats and form a government. This will not be a Dion win, it will be a Harper and CPC loss.


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