The Most Negative Campaign in History
I disagree with people who say that the CPC should be running a positive campaign in the next election.
In fact, I hope that this next election campaign goes down as the most negative election campaign in the history of modern politics. These guys are bunch of liars, cheats, and crooks. We should destroy their reputation. We should do so to point out that there are consequences to one's actions. We should do so to teach the kids of this country a lesson. We should do so to make sure that no politician will ever again think of the public treasury as his own personal bank account.
This should not be a battle of ideas. This should be a battle of morals.
We are not liars. They are.
We are not cheaters. They are.
We are not thieves. They are.
It should be that simple.
Now, as I've advocated before, I think we should have good ideas so that when we get into power we can do something. I think we should publicize a conservative platform to fight the hidden agenda message. However, I do believe that for the sake of our country we must make sure that the next election will be studied for years to come in university politics classes for being unusually cruel.
posted by Watch at 11:36 AM
11 Comments:
One could argue that the 2004 election was exactly what you say this next one should be - look where that got us; an election that should have been a cakewalk into at least minority government territory was lost.
12:54 PM
No. By negative, I mean actually negative.
Not hiding behind cute ads, but actually being very, very negative.
As far as I'm concerned the only negative ads ever run federally in Canada, were run by Joe Clark in the 2000 election. Even then, they weren't negative to the degree I think we should be negative.
I'm not talking about positive contrast ads. I want "they are bunch of liars and crooks" ads. In fact, I think that may be a good quote in an ad.
1:49 PM
I suppose that there are ways to say all those things without sounding as bad as people think that it will sound if you say them. Take the ad of the tons of money being carted out to the garbage bins. That was a brilliant ad, in my view. It would qualify as a negative ad, in my mind, but it drove home the point without slinging mud directly. We need more of that.
We need to think of clever ways to deliver the message. There are times in an election campaign when one needs to sling mud, I guess. I'd disagree with Glen that the negativity is what lost the last election. I'd say that there was not much energy in the message at closing. A good ad campaign with a smashing closing line would be better.
1:51 PM
Your strategy would see us lose.
"We are not liars. They are.
We are not cheaters. They are.
We are not thieves. They are. "
The public currently sees all politicians as equally bad.
CPC: They lie!
Voters: So do you
CPC: They cheat!
Voters: So do you
CPC: They steal
Voters: So would you
Your strategy is a losing one.... but sadly it seems to be the one that the CPC wants to follow.
1:53 PM
I have no idea who decided to tell Toy activists that negative ads don't work.
They are, by far, the most effective type of election advertising there is. In fact, negative direct mail is probably the single most successful tool a politician can use.
There isn't a single study, NOT A SINGLE ONE, ever done that shows negative ads don't work. There are half-dozen that suggests they do work brilliantly. (Some negs backfire, but they do so often because they lead the campaign to change directions..)
Sometimes I shy away from promoting negative ads, but in this case it is needed to save the country from a bunch of crooks.
1:57 PM
I support negative ads - when they aren't ineffective negative ads. You want ineffective negative ads? See: Ontario PC campaign, October 2003. Note that this was almost identical to the ones that killed McGuinty in 1999.
It's not enough to say "let's go negative". I'm not one of these naifs who thinks we should never get our noses dirty. But my point is that I don't think going negative next time is going to work.
Consider: what the hell would we say that we haven't been saying for the last 18 months? What miraculous revelation would the public have? The biggest problem - and the scariest - is that the public seems to care way more about the "scary" Conservative party than they do the corrupt, lying Liberal party. So the solution isn't to keep talking about the corrupt, lying Liberals. It's to hit them over the head with so much policy that there's no time to listen to Liberal spin lines.
I reiterate: there's nothing intrinsically wrong with negative ads, and sometimes they work. But this isn't that time, and they won't work this time. If negativity worked, we should have won the last election, and be way up in the polls.
9:26 PM
Disagree for the most part, remind them of the scandels, but focus on the policies, make sure you pound em on policy at every opportunity....
10:36 PM
I agree - ruthlessness must be the norm. A two pronged campaign is the idea - a positive message focusing on three key elements of the platform, and a negative messagve attacking the Grits on everything. Negative campaigns work, period. If they didn't we wouldn't be seeing them. This is the problem the CPC has always had - they would let the CBC/Torstar/G&M/Grit Smear machine get them first.
8:22 AM
Okay.. the avg voter spends 11 minutes in an election listening to the news. Which do you think will work best:
The average Canadian does not know what our policy. They don't know what the Liberal policy is. They don't need to. I'm a policy wonk, and I am saying this.
In the last campaign President Bush had over 11 distinct platforms. (11.. we usually have 1 if we are lucky.) You know how many times the platform's got media play? Less than half. Less than half the ad buy was on platform.
11:53 AM
and about the last election:
We were winning the first 24 days of it. We were negative. Then the Liberals out-negatived us and won. Is that a big surprise?
They appealed to the voters emotions better than we did. We just have to do a better job at being more negative.
11:54 AM
That's not a game we can win, because scary beats sleazy every time - which is precisely the ace they used in the dying days of campaign 2004.
You speak as if going negative hasn't been our de facto strategy since Harper became leader of the party! We've been tearing our hair out over the Liberals for more than a year and a half, and what fruit has is born? I think you can only bang your head against the wall for so long until you try a different tack.
12:52 PM
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