Posted on 10/12/2008 11:01:41 AM PDT by fanfan
Prime Minister Stephen Harper held the first event of his campaign in Quebec City. One of his first television advertisements, "Family is Everything," depicted him as a doting father. In it, he wore a sweater vest, not a suit.
NDP Leader Jack Layton made his first campaign stop in Calgary. One block from Harper's constituency office, he assailed the Conservatives' environmental and economic record. His first TV ads touted a "new kind of strong."
In Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion's first campaign speech, he contrasted his "progressive" vision with Harper's "narrow-minded right-wing agenda." He promised a "richer, fairer and greener" country.
Within 24 hours of the election being called Sept. 7, the three party leaders had revealed their rhetorical intentions.
So did voters. At the start of the campaign, only 9 per cent of Canadians said the economy was most important to them. By the last days, it was the only issue that mattered to most.
Yet the polls, despite wild swings in the last few weeks, have returned to near where they were at the start – suggesting the Conservatives are on the cusp of a majority of seats.
The latest The Canadian Press Harris-Decima poll shows the Tories at 35 per cent support, 10 points ahead of the Liberals.
In the campaign Dion, his leadership qualities attacked by the Conservatives for months, would attempt to portray himself as a superior embodiment of Canadian (read small-l liberal) social values.
Layton, competing for votes with a Liberal leader widely perceived as feeble, would project a bold toughness, casting himself as a legitimate aspirant to Harper's job.
Harper, seeking increased support from several untraditional sources – ethnic minorities and women, but Quebecers perhaps foremost – would seek to soften his image. And off they went.
Harper's message of Conservative steadiness was quickly challenged by breakdowns in the party's vaunted message discipline.
Two days into the campaign, the Conservatives were forced to apologize for an ad, posted on a website dedicated to attacks on Dion, of a puffin defecating on the Liberal leader's shoulder. Harper called it "tasteless and inappropriate."
Four days into the campaign, a Conservative spokesperson suggested in an email to a reporter that the father of a soldier killed in Kandahar, a critic of Harper's first-week pledge of a 2011 pullout from Afghanistan, was a supporter of Liberal Michael Ignatieff. Harper called the email "inappropriate."
Layton received criticism for opposing the participation of Green Leader Elizabeth May in televised leaders' debates. (He soon relented.) In the campaign's second week, two NDP candidates in British Columbia resigned over drug use, another the week after for exposing himself in the past.
But these stories would fade quickly. Negative stories about the Conservatives would endure. Gerry Ritz, Harper's agriculture minister, was forced to apologize Sept. 17 for joking about listeria-tainted meat in an Aug. 30 conference call.
May's profile was enhanced by the debate imbroglio. Though the Greens' budget was limited, and though May spent much of her time campaigning against Peter MacKay in her own Nova Scotia riding, the party consistently polled above 9 per cent nationally, occasionally as high as 13. May embarked Sept. 21 on a 91-stop train tour.
Soon after the Ritz uproar subsided, Harper himself generated two controversies. Under his plan to reform youth criminal justice, teenagers as young as 14 would face the possibility of life in prison for murder, he announced Sept. 22.
Though Harper made an exception for rehabilitation-friendly Quebec, where the minimum age for such sentences would be 16, struggling Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe attacked him: young teenagers, Duceppe said, would be "fresh meat" for sexual predators in prison.
The next day, Harper gave Duceppe more ammunition. Asked about Conservative cuts to arts and culture funding, Harper said "ordinary working people" are dismayed to turn on their televisions to see artists at "a rich gala all subsidized by taxpayers" whine about their subsidies. Though Conservative support in most national polls dropped only slightly, it collapsed in Quebec, where arts funding is especially popular: a Léger provincial poll released Sept. 29 showed them trailing the resurgent Bloc 33-26. They had led the week before.
Despite the Conservatives' apparent missteps, they retained a lead of more than 10 points over the Liberals in almost every national poll. Dion's approval rating fell below 15 per cent; in the campaign's second week, less than a third of Angus Reid poll respondents claimed to understand the Green Shift, his most identifiable platform plank.
Pessimistic Liberal insiders griped to journalists about what they said were Dion's poor communication skills and stubbornness. Some predicted an electoral disaster rivalling the calamity of 1984 when the Liberals captured only 40 seats. In a Sept. 24 interview, former party president Stephen LeDrew forecast "a drubbing."
Dion began appearing more frequently with other high-profile Liberals, including former leadership rivals Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff. He spoke less frequently about the Green Shift.
Then, as losses on Wall Street and Bay Street mounted, the economy emerged as the election's most important issue.
In a national Environics poll taken a week before the beginning of the campaign, only 9 per cent of respondents said the economy was the issue most important to them. Fewer than half were at all worried.
But Canadians' pessimism increased steadily as the campaign progressed. On the first day of the campaign, the U.S. Treasury Department seized mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. By Sept. 9, Toronto's stock market was down 20 per cent from its peak in June. In the subsequent two weeks, several major U.S. financial institutions were bailed out or purchased. World stock markets, including the TSX, plummeted.
Layton and Dion had criticized Harper's economic stewardship since the beginning of the campaign. Layton focused on the loss of manufacturing jobs. Dion compared Harper's "laissez-faire" philosophy to that of George W. Bush. But the economy was performing well, Harper said, and Layton's proposed rollback of corporate tax cuts and Dion's proposed carbon tax would cripple growth. His rivals' policies were "unproven," his were "tested," he said. His confident posture appeared successful: in a Sept. 27 Toronto Star/Angus Reid poll, 41 per cent said he would manage the economy effectively, versus only 16 per cent for Dion and for Layton.
The differences between the leaders' economic messages were highlighted Sept. 29. When U.S. congressmen rejected the Treasury Department's proposed $700 billion financial bailout, stocks fell again. Layton called for an "emergency" meeting of party leaders. Dion said he was "extremely concerned." Harper, however, continued to argue there was no need for alarm. "Remember, Canada is not the United States," he said.
Nonetheless, he asked Sept. 30 that the format of the debates be changed to allow for an increased focus on economic issues.
The format was changed – and Harper's economic management was denounced by all four rivals.
Harper remained tranquil. "What leaders have to do is have a plan and not panic. Last night, Stéphane, you panicked, you came on the set and announced a whole new economic plan in the middle of the national debate," he said. Layton, meanwhile, criticized Dion for failing to bring down Harper's government. "If you can't do your job as leader of the opposition, I don't know why you're running to be prime minister," he said.
But most pundits said Dion had performed well in both debates. By the middle of this week, the Conservatives' lead in national polls, once as high as 17 points in Harris-Decima poll, was down to four.
Liberal ads compared Harper's economic approach to Bush's. After Harper suggested Tuesday there were "good buying opportunities" on falling stocks, he adopted a more empathetic tone and cited the economic worries of his mother.
Canada votes Tuesday.
Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!
Mr. sneakers is Canadian and his family is coming over today. Got the turkey in the oven. Love having Thanksgiving twice!
Good news for our Canadian cousins. I’ll pray for y’all on Tuesday.
if there is any hope it is for another Harper win in Canada soon.
Wouldn’t that be a kick in the pants if Canada goes to the Right at just the time we appear to behaving an implosion towards the Left?
bump
the nice thig about canada is that both conservatives and Liberals believe it is not good to have much debt. Alberta doesn’t have any debt at all. And conservatives aren’t afraid to talk about free trade and cutting the corp tax, unlike Americans.
“Wouldn’t that be a kick in the pants if Canada goes to the Right at just the time we appear to be having an implosion towards the Left?”
***
Last election cycle, Australia held a national vote just weeks before the USA.
I held Aussies and their issues to be
sufficiently similar to us and ours
that their vote constituted a sort of poll on ours of vast sample size.
Hence, minimal margin of polling error.
Mr. Howard, the right guy, won.
And immediately i felt sure that our lesser of two evils also would win.
And indeed ... Bush did.
Canada and Harper give me a tingling deja vu feeling up my leg.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and Mr. Sneakers!
Did he get to mail in a vote for Harper?
Thanks AAC.
Oh, Harper will win alright.
The question is if Canada will give him a majority government this time.
I hope we do.
I think it would help McCain/Palin.
I have access to a Canadian satellite dish (I just love hockey and curling) and I’ve been watching the election commericials.
The Liberals have some loof who wants a carbon tax and comes off as a “quintesential Quebecer looney”.
The New Democrat tries to come off as “Hi, I’m Mr. Macho man with one hand in my pocket, a smile and a Captain Picard hair style.”
The Conservative, Harper, is the only one that comes off as sane.
Just my two cents eh?
ROFLOL! Perfect!
It’s meant to scare leftist voters into getting off their @$$3$ and voting.
Europe and Canada are turning hard right, and in the US we are turning hard left.
“Compassionate conservatism” claims another victim.
Great News, liberals being rejected across the globe! Hope we can do the same with our liberal cheese-eating surrender monkey!
The group of eight leading economic powers are the US, Canada, Japan, Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and Russia. As was pointed out on NRO today, if the Obamessiah is elected, the US will have the furthest left government of the Eight. Even Putin would likely be to Basrrack’s right!
A Harper win would have ZERO effect on the US election. If McCain/Palin win, however, there would be a common ideological bent at the top of both governments. Sort of like the Regan/Mulrooney days.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.