Tories no longer just ignoring the opposition

Snap, just like that, Alberta politics slip deeper into the mud with news of the PCS’ first attack ad against an opposition party.

After professing disgust when Wildrose attacked new Premier Alison Redford in TV ads last fall, the PCS are now doing the same thing.

The new ad suggests Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith is endangering lives with her opposition to the PCS’ .05 drunk driving law.

To the best of my prehistoric knowledge, the Tories haven’t done anything like this in all the long years since they were first elected on Aug. 30, 1971.

They clearly feel challenged, especially in Calgary, apparently the only place where the ad will run at the beginning.

“It proves they see the Wildrose as a real threat,” says Mount Royal University political expert David Taras.

“Negative campaigns don’t come out of nowhere. They appear when a party has got a problem.”

Wildrose immediately quipped that it’s odd for a party with 68 legislature seats to be attacking one that only has four.

“I welcome the debate on this in the campaign,” Smith says of the new law.

Polls have been tightening and Wildrose strategists feel they’re almost in a dead heat with the PCS in Calgary.

In response, the Tories are throwing out their comfy, decades-old strategy of simply ignoring the opposition.

The ad is certainly tough. It implies that Smith would basically kill people with her opposition to the .05 drinking law.

In the dubious style of such ads, it’s also a bit misleading.

The ad doesn’t actually mention .05, Alberta’s new hot-button digits for bloodalcohol content. It says only that since 1998, 300 people have been killed by drivers blowing .08 or less.

But nobody in Wildrose or any other party is contesting the .08 threshold. Smith’s whole point is to toughen enforcement for those impaired under national law.

For any enforcement threshold below that, she says, the province should get approval in a referendum.

Wildrose will have to take their advertising lumps, though, because in school- yard lingo, they started it.

Their own ads and rhetoric have been brutal. The current logo on Wildrose news releases is: “Stop the PC Culture of Corruption.”

Now the PCS are poking at the soft spots in Smith’s image, well aware that the new party’s fate rides on her performance.

In menacing tones, the ad says Redford wants the streets to be safe, but Smith doesn’t.

Taras thinks the ad is shrewd because it ominously plays on the impression that a vote for Smith might be politically risky.

“It’s very smart,” says Taras. “It’s saying that not only is she a political risk, she’s even a risk to your safety.

“In 30 seconds or so (Redford) is hitting on all her points and putting questions in the public’s mind about Danielle Smith.”

Taras expects Wildrose to hit back quickly, even though they’ve been swinging pretty hard already.

“The key with these ads is you have to respond right away. You can’t allow the other team to define you because it’s hard to get the sticky glue off.”

“So the ball is in Ms. Smith’s court now. She’ll have to respond with something just as smart and devastating.”

In terms of PC tradition, the change is profound.

Ex-premier Peter Lougheed, after 1971, never mentioned the name of an opposition party in a campaign.

He thought he only needed to explain what he would do; and he was right four times.

In 1993, Ralph Klein had a quarrel with party veterans when he broke the rule because the Liberals were strong.

But even though he took on Leader Laurence Decore, his criticism was relatively mild and there were no attack ads.

After that, the PCS dropped back to their comfortable silence until the 2008 campaign, when former Premier Ed Stelmach was briefly incensed by attack ads financed through a blanket organization for unions.

The PCS responded by making that illegal, but the political opposition was so weak there was no need for the PCS to counterattack directly.

Today, Wildrose is neither weak nor poor; so the PCS enter a street-fighting world they’ve long had the luxury of ignoring.

And it’s farewell forever, phoney civility.