Politics of Desperation Catching up with Tories.

So in the past month or so we have the Harper Tories attacking the Liberals with negative ads, blaming the previous government as answers to questions in question period and now accusing the Liberals of supporting terrorism. All in a day's work for a party that's struggling outside of Alberta. This election style attack on the Liberals may make for great political theater, and plays well to the Tories' home audience in Alberta, but is it good government?

There is a possibility that all the Conservative name-calling could start affecting how the government is operating. With the Conservatives considering back to work legislation to end a conductor strike at CN, they need the good will of the Liberals. The centre-left Bloc and the NDP are likely to vote against any back to work legislation and at the moment the Liberals are unlikely to want to help the Tories do anything. So despite federal Minister of Labour Jean-Pierre Blackburn's plea to put politics aside for the good of the country, his own party and leader continue to create a political situation that prevents cooperation in the House. In effect, in a desperate bid to hang onto power, the Harper Conservatives have stopped governing.

Now this may also be some kind of ploy on the part of the Conservatives, stop governing and start electioneering, then blame the opposition when the opposition calls them on it. No doubt the Tories will try to blame the Liberals for Tory inaction. Only time and an election will tell if it will work. I suspect it won't work for two reasons. First off Canadians aren't Americans. The American style attacks the Tories are using tend to leave a bad taste in the mouth of Canadians and as I've stated before, hasn't been very successful for those parties that have used them in the past. Best case for the Tories is that their current actions just numb the Canadian voter to the Tory message. Worse case the Canadian voter will be turned off the Conservatives in droves. In reality the Tories can no longer blame the Liberals for anything. Any inaction, error or detrimental action at this point will be seen as clearly an initiative of the Harper Conservatives. It will be very difficult for Harper to deflect things onto the previous Liberals, let alone the current Liberals which seems to be his tactic. Sure he can blame the opposition for keeping legislation from passing, but in reality most people are going to see that the Tories did nothing to try to negotiate with the opposition to get anything done. In fact I suspect that most Canadian voters will see the Tories as spoiled brats who blame everyone else when they can't get their way.

Secondly by electioneering and not governing, the Conservatives look like they're not doing anything to keep the country running. It also makes them look like they're hungry for power for power's sake and this makes them look more and more like the old Liberals every day. The problem this poses for the Tories is that the voters are more likely to vote for an arrogant Liberal party than an arrogant Conservative party, simply because the Liberal social agenda is more in line with mainstream Canada than the Conservative social agenda. If all the Conservatives are to the voter are arrogant Liberals who don't believe in minority rights, this will not be the differentiation factor that will lead to another minority government for Harper, let alone a majority. Harper and his party have to quit acting like spoiled brats and start acting like responsible adults if he's to keep what voters he has, let alone gain any.

Unfortunately for Harper and the Conservatives, to be successful they need to be subtle. This is unfortunate because the Conservatives suck at being subtle. Their black and white thinking is great for blundering through things, but there's a point where black and white thinking fails and the Conservatives have hit that point. They have to learn quickly how to be subtle, diplomatic perhaps even a little Machiavellian. By being so openly hostile towards another party when there's no election on, they're simply making that election more and more probable. There's a real danger that the opposition will pull the plug before they Tories can spend their way back into power with a new budget (and there's another catch-22 for the Tories) and if they Tories can't get back into the good books of the non-Albertan voter, they're going to be in a world of hurt next election.