How Stephen Harper can win a majority

If there is a federal election this spring in Canada, all indications point to more of the same: another Conservative minority government. The principal reason is because the Bloc has a lock on 40 seats in Quebec. As long as this remains the case, the only way any party can win a majority is if it wins a supermajority elsewhere in Canada. While Harper is seen to be a competent manager and the Liberals are seen to be led by a weak, vacillating leader, this advantage is partially cancelled out by the fact that the Conservatives are currently beset with a bunch of small-time scandal. While these individually don’t amount to much, collectively they serve as friction, throwing sand under the wheels of the Conservative’s locomotive of victory. Nevertheless, this is not Harper’s biggest obstacle. The biggest impediment to a Conservative supermajority in the rest of Canada is that the voters there need a compelling reason to vote Conservative and, at present, none exists.

While there is no bigger fan on American-style attack ads than me, there is limit to what negative campaigning can accomplish. The trouble with continuing to paint Ignatieff as an ineffectual opportunist is that the voters already know that. While the Liberals can’t shake the charge, the Conservatives have already gotten all the benefit that they are going to get from this issue.

So if he wants a majority, Harper needs something more.

Here is my suggestion: switch gears completely in the next federal election; stop playing it small; use the campaign to announce a clear conservative vision for Canada; force the Liberals to have a substantive debate on where Canada is going; and challenge the Liberals to come up with a competing vision of their own. The trick to pulling this off is to find two or three conservative issues that a significant minority of Canadians already agree with and fight for those things tooth and nail. His base will rally towards him like never before and enough mushy moderates in the middle will flock to his newfound alpha-male presence to give him the majority that has eluded him until now.

This is what Mike Harris did with his Common Sense revolution; this is what Rob Ford did with his “respect the taxpayers” campaign that swept him into power in Toronto – the heartland of the Liberal Party; in fact, a watered-down version of this strategy was how Harper won his first minority in 2006.

Stephen Harper doesn’t have to worry any more about the increasingly hysterical Liberal charge of right-wing extremism. He has already won that debate (see previous post).

All elections are a judicious mix of negative and positive messages. For the moment, the Conservatives have maxed out on the negative. It is time to go positive – with a clear conservative vision!

The one thing Harper can’t afford is another Seinfeld campaign like 2008, when the only substantive issue on the table was just exactly how much of an idiot Stephane Dion really is.

 

Comments

[Paul]

Maxed out on the negative??? Hardly compared to Liberal nonsense of the past.