In Gerry Nicholls book, Loyal to the Core: Stephen Harper, Me and the NCC, he speaks of how they were able to manipulate the NDP and their supporters.
The NCC also had a couple of noteworthy political battles with our ideological opposites — the socialist New Democratic Party. One battle was waged against former NDP leader Ed Broadbent, the other against Bob Rae, during his ill-fated reign as Ontario’s Premier. (1)
I have written of how they spent Bob Rae’s entire tenure as Premier of Ontario, tearing down everything he did.
But knowing that their national membership wouldn’t pay for ads targeting a single province, they set up Ontarians for Responsible Government, and Nicholls headed up the campaign.
Their assault on Ed Broadbent however, took a bit of conniving, but they had Arthur Finkelstein, Richard Nixon’s former guru, to help them out.
The Broadbent campaign was a short but intense melee that occurred before and during the 1988 federal election. In the summer of that year Arthur Finkelstein had done a poll for us on Canadian attitudes towards political parties. What he discovered shocked us. According to Arthur’s poll, a whopping 40 percent of Canadians supported the NDP, meaning the socialists could actually form the next government. Arthur told us his findings indicated Canadians liked Broadbent because they viewed him as more honest than either Prime Minister Brian Mulroney or Liberal leader John Turner. Ed Broadbent as Prime Minister of Canada? The horror! The horror! (Reference to Heart of Darkness) Something big had to be done. Somebody had to undermine public support for Broadbent and the NDP. We took on the task. (1)
So they looked for Broadbent’s weakness, and believed that it might be his agenda. Canadians liked him but may not like his “socialist views”
So they launched a campaign with the theme that Broadbent was “very, very, scary“. The NCC poured $500,000 into their attack using radio, newspapers and direct mail. There were skits interchanging Karl Marx with Groucho Marx, and at one point focused on the fact that Broadbent had said that Canada should get out of NATO.
Now there have been times, when I’ve felt the same, believing they may have lost their way, given that Afghanistan is nowhere near the North Atlantic. But that’s a subject for another day, or maybe never.
At the time the NCC really had no opinion either way on NATO, but were concerned that a Broadbent victory could put an end to the Free Trade deal, and they wanted to take the sting out of the left’s campaign against it. They had already helped Mulroney’s leadership bid, with their ABC campaign, Anybody But Clarke (1), to destroy Joe Clarke, paving the way for a Mulroney victory.
Part of the problem with pushing free trade, however, was that a lot of Canadians (and for that matter a lot of NCC supporters) just didn’t like Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. In other words, we had to sell the idea of free trade, despite Mulroney. Or as Arthur so indelicately put it during one Of our strategy sessions, “We have to convince Canadians to drink pig piss.”
So we figured if we couldn’t drive up support for the Tories maybe we could do the next best thing and help drive down support for the Liberals. To do that, we ran a newspaper ad Machiavellian in its cleverness. To the unwary observer the ad was a typical right-wing assault on the NDP. The headline was, “Look Who’s Opposing Free Trade.” And under a photo of Broadbent the ad copy declared, “Ed Broadbent: A dedicated socialist, who means what he says. He doesn’t believe in free enterprise. He doesn’t believe in free trade. He’s very, very scary.”
But the ad also had a subliminal message directed at NDPers who were thinking of strategically voting liberal to stop free trade. That message was, “Hey, we nasty right-wingers at the NCC are attacking your guy because he’s a true socialist. Are you going to let us get away with that?” Get it? We were sneakily using psychology to drive NDPers back home. After all, it’s a natural emotional reaction for people to rally around their friends when they are under attack. We wanted left-wingers to rally around Broadbent.(1)
It was a very strange day yesterday, on the eve of the advanced polls and those advocating strategic voting going into the final leg of the journey.
Headlines everywhere were suggesting an enormous NDP surge. Conservatives on Twitter were telling people to vote NDP, some even using the ‘strategic voting’ concept, by suggesting that the Liberals were on their way out.
So I took a close look at one of the polls conducted by Nanos research. If you scroll down to Regional Ballot of Committed Voters – April 20, you’ll see the breakdown by region.
In Quebec for instance, where a lot of the headline grabbing focused, Nanos shows the Conservatives at 17.5%, the Liberals at 20.8% and the NDP at 23.4% (actually down 2 points from the day before).
However, when you move down, you’ll see the “margin of error is a whopping 6.4%. How are any of the previous numbers valid? 6.4% means that the Conservatives are either 11.1% or 23.9%. The Liberals either 14.4% or 27.2%, and the NDP either 17% or 29.8%. At any given point, any of the three parties could have been leading.
The same with Ontario which had a 5.6% margin of either. If you remove that from the Conservatives they would be 39.1%. Add it to the Liberals, they would be 42.1. And the plus or minus for the NDP puts them at either 8.9% or 20.3%
So why the sudden push for the NDP, despite the fact that the numbers don’t suggest any big gain?
Pollster Allan Gregg calls it “an unholy alliance with journalists who routinely misconstrue data and ignore margins of error.” And he warns us about putting too much stock in polls. When asked who among the pollsters we should believe, he says:
“Nobody,” says veteran pollster Allan Gregg, an outspoken critic of his own industry and chairman of Harris-Decima, which conducts polls for The Canadian Press. As far as Gregg is concerned, the election campaign has magnified problems with political polling: methodological issues that are skewing the results of both telephone and online surveys; commercial pressures that are prompting pollsters to over-hype their surveys.
“Commercial pressures”. They are never going to allow the NDP to win, but at this crucial, yet still safe, part of the campaign, they are playing the same game that the NCC played.
The day you hear a Conservative suggesting that people vote NDP, “their ideological opposites”, is when you know there’s something else going on. They are trying to throw us off course. And it would appear that Jack Layton has taken the bait.
He will now pound away at Michael Ignatieff, in the same way that he pounded at the carbon tax, giving Harper a stronger minority.
If the NDP had legitimately spiked and it was at the expense of the Conservatives, I’d be thrilled. But this was just a clever manipulation by what Gregg calls an “unholy alliance”.
It’s created confusion for strategic voters, and may be just enough to give Harper his majority. They gave Mulroney the largest majority in Canadian history.
I wonder how much the National Citizens Coalition has poured into this campaign.
Sources:
1. Loyal to the Core: Stephen Harper Me and the NCC, By: Gerry Nicholls, Freedom Press, 2009, ISBN: 978-0-9732757-8-0
11 Responses to “I’m Sorry But I Don’t Accept That”
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There is only one party to vote for this election, and it is long overdue to de-thrown Harper-and that is the Liberal Party. A solid vote for Liberals can end this madness.
We can’t afford Harper, just in election costs at 300 million per election, we are nearing 1 billion dollars to vote him out. The country is divided and always has been but the future is very clear-50% or more of the population of Canada do not trust Harper and want him gone. This group needs to have their votes count also for a change Harper needs to go and he’s had 5 whole long years in office to prove himself not worthy of another 4 years. Surely most voters know that the religious right of the United States are financially supporting his campaign and the Tea Party are more than thrilled at de-funding Planned Parenthood in Canada as well as the USA.
This post exhibits the problem with generic calls for strategic voting…. voting liberal in my riding, which can only be won be a con or NDP, is the same as voting for the con. Strategic voting analysis MUST be done riding by riding…..
The only way to vote strategically is to pair your vote with other hotly contested ridings:
http://www.votepair.ca/
I believe Layton has been offered a minister’s post in a Harper coalition.
and I believe that someone should take that bottle away from you…
Love the picture you used Emily: CRUSH right over his hair weave. Your article is making the rounds of MSM. Let us hope that your revelations have some impact on how this election is being covered.
Ok, so the right figured out that 40% of Canadian preferred the NDP in 1988. They then concocted a strategy aimed at splitting the vote, through dampening the strategic voting split that favours the Liberals. And you think that the logic that results from this is that the NDP should not have been aimed at attempting to capture the “strategic vote”, when apparently, had they managed this feet of mobilizing this 40% of the electorate, half of which was voting strategically they would have possibly formed the government?
And in this you are trying to convince us of the value of supporting “strategic voting”, when it is plainly obvious that it is the “strategic voting”, itself that killed the 1988 NDP campaign, according to the NCC statistics?
There is clearly a problem with polling information at all levels, including manipulation of that information by the MSM who clearly ignore the margin of error in favour of sensationalist headlines. Polls by Nanos in my riding are absolutely ridiculous, yet all these “strategic voting” sites are using these very polls as guidance about who to vote for. We are all being played big time.
I hope the upcoming painful defeat of progressives leads to some kind of Liberal Democratic Party of Canada who can then co-opt the green party platform just enough to kill them off. The country is highly polarized and we need a binary response to that.
Sorry. It is none of these things that are fine for enriching the discourse on samapling theory and the construction of sample surveys. It is that we have lost that sense of what is proper and appropriate. We have taken personal freedom to the point that we no longer allow transcendental truth to monitoir our actions. And some how we think that its is Ok. Because t”they all do it. They all lie. After all they are politicians.” The selfish competitive genes have taken over. It is a question of life for the gratification of the flesh and the replication of the genes: no conscience is involved in this new knid of free and personal democracy. Rifkin says that we are demanding a more empathetc world civlization”. If so why are we tolerating this break dowm in mutual respect among human beings struggling to find a way for a better life and to avoid atrophic desaster. Why are we tolerating these politicians corrupting the morality of the society by teaching our children and grandchildren to demonize the next human being for their own selfserving ends (conscious or unconscious). Do I dislike Ignatieff because he looks mean or because I have allowed Harper to convince me by my lack of thought that he( ignatieff) is not really a Canadian. Do I fear not voting for the NDP because I truly believe they cannot win enough seats to form a government or is it because on the unconscious level I believe they are pinkos and that that is a bad thing. Why are we not questioning our true beliefs and the reasons that we seem to be so easily persuaded to act against some one offering leadership simply on the basis of negative ads that offer no proof of what is suggested or stated. Can we be so easily played for the fool, notwithstanding the high levels of education in the society. We got to start talking to each other as to how we can get a movement going that will punish this type of corruptin behaviours. I do understanding that notions and concepts of characte are fluid, but nature made it so that we must co-orporate to perpetuate life and conscience provides a useful social influence. This makes the case for the creation of more empathic societies not social, political and economic laissez-faire. Yes. I believe that type of voting system has to be adressed, but before or along with that that we need to find a way to engage people in a process that counter this liberty that has gone crazy.
That’s a good theory. Although I do not buy it.We as Canadians need to dialogue with each other and ask the Government to help us change what we want in our system. A small majority of individuals can change the whole system when we demand it. i do know that Ignatieff has no clear vision of leadership except complaints about the Conservatives. He stands heavily on six arguments about the Conservatives. he know has several arguments about Layton and is quite arrogant about his views of of the NDP Party. His arrogance may cost him some seats if I say so myself. No one can demean one another without serious consequences. His engagements with the Canadian public does imply a negative fall drop of Canadian values. His wife Suzzane is a Hungarian and does not hold Canadian citizen to date. I find that difficult to determine and accept for such a high position in Canadian political system. How can any body that has a mindset for Canadian ideals accept that position? Harper you know why we are having an election because of his wrongdoing and mismanagement of Canadian ideals of Parliamentary values. The former Canadian Reform Alliance Party has a history of mistrust with the aboriginals of Canada.They have a history of statements from Randy White, John Cummins, Stockwell Day,others etc etc. They are right involved with Harper Government. if there are any disgruntlement from the Government it would be them. There is no trust between them and us as aboriginals. Harper’s contradictions of that there has been no colonizations in Canada. and his apology to aboriginals for the Residential Schools in Canada.
In short I do not believe that the scheme to put NDP on front to get votes for Harper is a faculties
I strongly believe that someone has to clean up the mess we are in with other parties like the Conservatives and the Liberals..
IMO Harper is more dangerous to the civil liberties of Canadians than any PM we have seen in my lifetime. His lack of transparency and underhanded tactics of trying to push through legislation that the majority of Canadians do not support is rife an largely unreported.
Just one example is his unwavering push on passing Bill C-15. The Bill would see mandatory jail terms for people growing more five or more marijuana plants. Really!?!
I am not a pot advocate, but I do believe the govt. should adhere to the will of the people, and the last poll I saw when the Liberals were in power showed a majority of Canadians wanted to legalize pot. I would imagine because they feel it is minimally harmful compared to Crack, Methamphetamines etc…and possibly because we all know someone whose son or daughter has been destroyed by these highly refined newish drugs and would rather see our limited resources used to try to help in that area.
However with Harper’s view of using the ‘Prison System’ as an expaniding investment in infrastructure, he has to put bums in beds.
I am all for economic stimulus, and investment in infrastructure, but not at the expense of criminalizing people and taking away their freedom for growing five pot plants. To me that is completely insane. I would rather see harsher sentences for people I consider real criminals like child molesters and people who abuse the elderly or kill people.
Harper has tried to push this legislation through three(or maybe four by now) times and it has been rejected in the senate each time. But he won’t stop pushing his personal agenda. If he gets a majority govt. God help us.
I am of the opinion that politicians should bend to the will of the people whether they agree personally or not, and in all cases should back away from trying to legislate morality.
To me he is dangerous on many levels. His push to become a military power instead of a peace keeping power is another. I view him as George Bush North.
I am non-partisan, in that I do not support any of the current parties or leaders, however I vehemently oppose Mr. Harper’s view for our future locally as well as globally..