I don't know anything about professional politics, although I have some experience in the corporate kind.
Maybe the Liberals' sleazy attacks on John Cummins are just the way you win.
After all, the federal Conservatives' attacks on Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff seemed to work. American politicians and their handlers have great success with attack ads.
So Christy Clark has adopted the same approach. Find a way to portray other leaders as creepy, amoral, sinister figures, buy some ads and stick up some grisly photos to show them in their worst light. Make them not just people with bad policies, but evil, perhaps deranged or stupid, princes of darkness.
Use the attacks to solidify your base, as they say, and raise money.
The smear campaigns don't seem to make voters think you're desperate or fearful, or at least not often. Though it does seem odd that the Liberal party is buying radio commercials to attack a politician most British Columbians haven't likely heard of.
But couldn't parties win by arguing their opponents' policies were dumb or destructive, without vilifying them on a personal level or making up motivations for their actions and policies?
That would be a lot less damaging for democracy and public life.
If this kind of stuff works, it says something sad about us as voters.
Saturday updates:
Les Leyne has a good column in the Times Colonist on just how wretched and fake these attack ads are.
And the Gazetteer calls for a much stronger denunciation of a style of sleazy, destructive politics that threatens democracy itself. You should read him here.
Saturday updates:
Les Leyne has a good column in the Times Colonist on just how wretched and fake these attack ads are.
And the Gazetteer calls for a much stronger denunciation of a style of sleazy, destructive politics that threatens democracy itself. You should read him here.
Sad but true. The ad, too, is sad but true. Even so, I'm hoping that the Campbell/Clark Liberals' fears of the man are well-founded, and not because I'm a Conservative or a supporter, that's for sure.
ReplyDeleteRaymond Graham
I have never even come close to voting Conservative in my life, but a personal attack on John Cummins is cowardly. Like him or not,I asked him for and received his well researched papers on aboriginal fisheries, and will be keeping them. Clark and company finally figured out that the BC Conservatives are a big threat on the right side of things, and of course a lot of the BC Liberals are not Liberal but Conservative. Such adds simply confirm that she and her pals are afraid.And lots of politicians have pensions but do on to other well paying jobs.King Gordo got a soft touch and I don't see the BC Liberals complaining about him
ReplyDeleteThis is not original, saw it on another blog, someone asking how come Christy Clark is unleashing attack ads only two weeks after saying she won't call an election for another two or three years.
ReplyDeleteAnd why hasn't the media called her on it yet?
Is she going to inflict an election advertisement campaign on all of us for the next three years???
The BC Liberal party and the BC Conservative party to me are, one and the same party.
ReplyDeleteHarper giving Campbell, with the most foul political record in history, the High Commissioner to England, turned me right off the Conservatives.
The BC citizens know, the BC Liberals cheat to win. When the Liberals start bashing, we know they are very afraid.
The Campbell/Clark BC Liberals are not known, for their morals and ethics. They are known as, the worst and most corrupt party, in Canada's recorded history.
But this kind of stuff does work.
ReplyDeleteAnd demonstrably so.
In real (but not body) politic terms.
Which is why I do not agree with Mr. Leyne that these ads, and the strategy behind them, are 'clumsy'.
.
Does this come under, or over, the spending limits permitted by Elections BC by the BC Liberal Party?
ReplyDeleteOr, will this be viewed by the courts as just another instance, like Kash Heed's slap on the wrist penalty, as they didn't know about the rules.