The kids in the school yard are at the name-calling stage. It is a long way from anyone getting a bloody nose. And as attack advertising goes, these Conservative commercials saying Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is in way over his head are a waste of time and money. The Tories should have taken the time to do some focus group analyses with the target audiences.
This first advertisement says more about Stephen Harper and his party than it says about Justin Trudeau and the Liberals. The Tories are getting sloppy. They are overconfident, arrogant and lazy. And there is no mileage to be had in saying that Trudeau is young. If you were under 40, a person without too much interest in politics, what would your response be to greybeards like Stephen Harper putting down a younger and vital challenger? If those Conservatives (men obviously) had just checked their proposed ad with more women, they would have scrapped it unaired. They are causing women to be defensive of their opponent.
Justin Trudeau is not Stéphane Dion or Michael Ignatieff. The attack ads on Dion were cruel. They caught Canadians off guard but his failure to fight back was the reason they were so effective. With Michael Ignatieff, it was the snowball effect. He not only failed to address the scurrilous attacks on his “visiting” but he seemed nonplussed by it. It was like when the late Jack Layton used that rude attack in the English leaders’ debate about Ignatieff’s attendance in parliament. It was a simple attack to put off but he failed to say anything in response.
The guy who should be concerned about these attack ads is New Democrat Leader Thomas Mulcair. He has a complaint that the Conservatives are ignoring him. You have to at least give the Tories credit to realize that their problem in the upcoming election in 2015 is not any resurgent NDP but a well-led, strong Liberal Party under Justin Trudeau.
But the major concern for all Canadians is the current advertising for this mythical “Economic Action Plan” being paid for with taxpayers’ money. The quickly slurred words at the end of the commercial “Subject to parliamentary approval” do not justify or correct the impression that the Conservative government is doing something about the economy. This is the “Big Lie” of Stephen Harper. It is why polls are consistently showing that Canadians might hate Harper but they think he is doing something about the economy. He is not.
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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry
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