Go Ahead, Make My Day!

Steven Chase and Campbell Clark

Ottawa — From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
Last updated on Wednesday, Sep. 09, 2009 08:29AM EDT


Stephen Harper's Conservatives have decided their election strategy will rely in part on reviving the ghosts of last December.

The fleeting, four-day coalition that opposition parties formed in late 2008 to unseat Mr. Harper's Conservatives was deeply unpopular outside Quebec. The Tories plan to resurrect its fading memory to rattle voters, warning that backing opposition parties will bring instability.

This strategy is also the reason that Mr. Harper will not make a deal with the NDP or Bloc Québécois to avert an all but inevitable election.

He is gearing up to attack the Liberal propensity for making deals with “socialists and separatists” – as the party did last December – and Mr. Harper would be unravelling his own campaign plans if he struck an accord with the NDP or Bloc.

Conservative strategists want to remind their base, and swing voters, of the alliance the Liberals forged with the NDP and Bloc – and frighten them with the notion Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff might try it again. The accusation plays right into existing Tory attacks that paint the recently installed Liberal chief as a political carpetbagger who's returned to Canada after a long absence merely to win power.

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Good old Conservatives. Good luck fighting the next war with the last's tactics. Can you spell backfire? Rather short-sighted of you, don't you think.