Sunny ways can’t shine forever
If Andrew Scheer didn’t expect much of a reaction to his Conservative leadership victory, he will not have been disappointed.
These Liberals have never been more popular. At the halfway mark of the government’s mandate, a new poll by Abacus Data of voting intentions suggests Justin Trudeau’s party has a 12- point lead. It suggests if an election were held today, the Liberals would garner 43 per cent support, compared to 31 per cent for the Conservatives and 17 per cent for the leaderless NDP.
The poll offers confirmation of philosopher David Hume’s claim that reason is the slave of the passions. The controversial Omar Khadr settlement has had no apparent impact on Liberal popularity, nor has Bill Morneau’s proposed tax changes for small businesses.
Broken promises on electoral reform and deficits have been discounted, while the prime minister’s winter holiday on the Aga Khan’s island has been erased from the collective memory.
The reason: Canada has been afflicted with an outbreak of hope and optimism, for which all trespasses are forgiven.
Fear has been the dominant emotion in Canadian politics the past 20 years, as Liberal governments accused Conservative leaders of harbouring a hidden agenda, and Tories raised doubts about the competence and commitment of Liberal leaders. But Canadians are in hopeful mood and it has made the Liberals invulnerable — for now.
On the back of last week’s GDP numbers, which suggested annualized growth of 4.5 per cent, the Abacus poll said 69 per cent of Canadians think the economy is growing, with a majority agreeing in every region, including Alberta. Just after Trudeau came to power, that number was at 28 per cent.
Not even the most blinkered Liberal would suggest this is all the government’s doing, but when voters are not anxious about jobs, the party in power benefits.
The Liberals are aided greatly by Trudeau’s own performance. A plurality in every region except the Prairies approves of the job the prime minister is doing and he outpolls his own party by four points.
Scheer is a jovial chap but he must have a February face — in The Bard’s words, “full of frost, storm and cloudiness” — when he watches TV.
The report Tuesday from Global’s affiliate in B. C.’s Okanagan region was typi cal, the prime minister pressing the flesh with local firefighters before hiking up Kelowna’s Knox Mountain. “My heart was beating a little quickly,” said one woman he encountered. “I’m crying,” another said on Twitter after snapping the obligatory selfie.
So where does that leave Scheer as he heads to Winnipeg for his party’s caucus gathering?
The Conservatives have money in the bank. Arguably they won the 2008 and 2011 elections before the writ was even dropped, courtesy of devastating negative advertising campaigns that made Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff unelectable in the eyes of many voters.
But the attacks on Trudeau in the last election just didn’t work. Two weeks after the campaign began, the Liberals were seven points in the lead.
Conservative strategist and academic Tom Flanagan theorized attack ads are less effective when the target is more esteemed than the source of the attacks — which would certainly be true in this instance, given Scheer’s approval rating is just 19 per cent, according to Abacus. A better strategy is to play the long game.
In recent interviews, the new Conservative leader has focused on offering a positive alternative to a Liberal party that is in the midst of racking up an unenviable record of raising taxes and breaking promises.
In doing so, Scheer has to win back support from groups that supported the Conservatives in the past but which deserted them in 2015: married women, Roman Catholics, suburban and ethnic voters. Policies should be adopted to get elected, rather than to be implemented. As the Liberals understood so well in 2015, the platform is a means to achieve the end of winning the election, rather than an end in itself.
In his 2014 book Winning Power, Flanagan recommended a Conservative party in opposition should campaign from the centre, as long as it does not face a serious threat from the right. He pointed out the merger of the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservatives in 2003 allowed Stephen Harper to moderate his reputation for dogmatic conservatism and move toward what he would previously have derided as the mushy middle.
Scheer will have political room to make the move because the Liberals will be obliged to move left to meet the challenge from the new NDP leader.
The Abacus poll suggests the Liberals have 56 per cent support from self- described left- of- centre voters, compared to 24 per cent for the NDP. But a state of affairs where around half the people who voted NDP last time continue to support Trudeau may not prevail as we near an election.
Trudeau appears to have built an i mmune system that makes him resistant to a host of political pathogens. But we are at the end of summer, Scheer remains unknown and the NDP is leaderless.
The Conservative leader should abide by the old proverb: with patience and saliva, the ant swallows the elephant.