The Liberal focus on scandal masks a deeper problem
The Liberal Party has been focused on the In and Out Scandal. Why? The Canadian people don't seem to think it's much of a scandal. Neither does the media. With the eruption of the allegations against Liberal MP Blair Wilson, inarguably a scandal, you would think the Liberals would do well to drop the whole thing. But they haven't.
Why not?
I think it's a deliberate decision motivated by desperation.
The Liberal Party has come to call it the In and Out Scandal. As you might recall, the Conservatives reported to Elections Canada the transfers of money from the national level to a number of ridings (the "In") who the used the money to buy local advertising from the national headquarters, moving the money back (the "Out").
Nothing illegal here and all dutifully recorded on Elections Canada returns.
The problem is that Elections Canada has since decided that the advertising bought was not local advertising. The ads were national ads with the name of the local riding display on the closing frames. As such the Conservative MPs are not entitled to reimbursements. The Conservative Party disagrees, arguing that the ad clearly names the local riding, and anything else is editorial musing that goes beyond Elections Canada's mandate or competence. Like any two parties disagreeing over an interpretion of the law, they've gone to the courts to seek out a definitive ruling.
Hardly stuff to make your blood boil.
But the Liberals are spinning this as a scandal of depraved corruption. They argue that the whole thing was a "scheme" to run national advertising even after national advertisiing limits had been reached by using local ridings as a proxy. Since schemes are rarely listed accounted for in such exact detail and the evidence filed with government agencies, this would probably be an example of exploiting a perceived loophole, and there is nothing illegal with loopholes. The Liberals have also alleged that the people involved in this were rewarded with jobs as a reward for "violating" Elections Canada rules, and that characterization of the Conservative Party as a criminal enterprise has earned the Liberals a warning that a lawsuit for libel might be coming their way.
But only the Liberals seem to care. You don't see the NDP jumping on this bandwagon. Nothing in a month's worth of media releases makes mention of it.
Why not? Because NDP strategists are working on the "Effective Opposition" meme. Let the Liberals spin their wheels on In and Out, while the NDP uses Question Period to bring up issues of poverty and the environment and such.
Turns out to have been the right decision. With the news that Liberal MP Blair Wilson is embroiled in allegations of serious elections spending abuses (and I mean serious -- unaccounted for donations, cash spending with no receipts) forcing his ejection from the Liberal caucus, the NDP is not dragged in after the Liberals. Imagine the NDP defending its Liberal Party ally in order to prop up NDP allegations of corruptions against the Conservatives. The NDP has dodged that bullet.
And the media doesn't care about the In and Out Scandal either. John Ivison sums it up nicely in today's National Post:
Since Parliament returned this month, the Liberals have been using Question Period to attack Conservative accounting practises during the 2006 election. It's an eye-glazingly complicated tale that has failed to gain any traction in the national media, but which boils down to the allegation that the Tories exceeded election spending limits by more than a million dollars.
The Liberals have been pushing the In and Out Scandal, and have gotten nowhere with it. The strategy seems to have been that the Liberals did not need ideas, because all they had to do was prove the Conservatives were irredeemably corrupt inside of two years of winning an election.
Call it the Ebola virus version of Lord Acton's observation about how power corrupts.
Well, no one is buying it, and the Liberals aren't able to articulate another reason why they should form the government other than the electorate has no choice. It's either the Liberals or the corrupt Conservatives, say the Liberals. What more do you need to make a choice?
Is this incompetence? Ivison seems to think so:
All this [focus on the In and Out Scandal] suggests that Mr. Dion's problems cannot be explained by bad luck, his poor English or his lack of charisma. Rather, it is a question of judgment. Some really questionable strategic decisions have been made by the leader -- or at the very least, sanctioned by him.
I think Ivison is missing another possibility. What if the Liberals are just playing to their constituency? There will always be a certain group of people who will buy into the Liberal story. More than that, they just love the Conservatives are corrupt message.
But this points to serious problems for the Liberals. A confident party can hold its constituency even as the message grows and evolves to draw in more people. A party in a death spiral has to focus on holding on for dear life. That means forgetting the periphery and holding desperately onto the core. If the party has any hope of surviving, it needs that core. They will form the basis of, and provide the funding for, a future rebuilding effort. But what do these true believers want to hear? Partisan mudslinging, of course.
If internal Liberal Party polling has been suggesting that Liberal support cotinues to contract, becoming focused in some urban ridings, than this focus on the In and Out Scandal makes some sense. Taking the fight to the Conservatives on the right or to the NDP on the left is the wrong thing to do. The Liberals will lose those fights as polls might be suggesting that swing voters are moving away from the Liberals and are not going to come back anytime soon. The right thing to do is to staunch the bleeding before it begins to drain the support out of the core. And to do that means reminding the core why the Liberal Party is the only possible choice for them.
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Comments
My favorite line from the Ivitson article was
"At the moment, the Liberals are behaving like the crack suicide squad from Monty Python's Life of Brian, who attack by impaling themselves on their own swords."
just about sums it up don't you think?
Posted by: mungman at October 30, 2007 08:22 AM
Right on, Steve, it's a Liberal desperation strategy to hold on to it's core supporters who vote Liberals right-or-wrong. But why is this deterioration growing and why can't Dion stop it?
It's pretty well acknowledged that once an election campaign begins, Liberal popularity will drop after Canadians get a good look at Dion and compare him to Harper on an emotional gut-feel basis. Conservatives expect a bump in their popularity on the issue of leadership, while Layton expects to snag the lefty Liberal vote, as he has in the last two elections.
It's somewhat pathetic to watch the Liberal party and listen to their faithful, fearmongering forum supporters. Nothing political here, just sheer survival in their dismal existence.
Posted by: Observant at October 30, 2007 08:28 AM
We see his strategy in the "George Bush lite" arguement. Just yesterday Brison seemed to be accusing Harper of meeting with the Dalai Lama in an official Gov't office just because GWB did! In a year George will be gone no matter what. So after that, what will their arguement be?
To be fair all three opposition parties use this strategy but the Libs seem to be the most torturous at it.
Posted by: David at October 30, 2007 09:23 AM
Well said... why do you think I want an election so badly? (that, and so that I can get it out of the way and focus on my new business venture, which is basicly on hold until after the next vote...)
Posted by: Christian Conservative at October 30, 2007 11:00 AM
Why should Elections Canada be judging the content of advertising? This whole thing is ridiculous - some scandal. If thats all the Liberals can come up with they are in really sad shape.
Posted by: Bruce at October 30, 2007 11:11 AM
I had a slightly different take on Ivison's article.
The bogus scandal-mongering isn't only the result of poor judgement, it's the result of Dion's inability to dictate the narrative of his own party.
He's like the supply teacher who the students don't respect. They do what they want, and the teacher goes along with it.
Posted by: Dennis (Second Thots) at October 30, 2007 11:48 AM
There's something else about the ads issue that's occurred to me recently.
If the ads ran in local markets, and were paid for by the local ridings, who cares what the content was? They were local in terms of distribution, even though many ridings distributed the same ad. Right?
It's just another fancy way of saying what I've said all along: It's up to the local riding to decide what ads they'll run to win the riding, right?
Next.
Posted by: Dennis (Second Thots) at October 30, 2007 12:03 PM
At the risk of posting three times in a row, I just wanted to clarify my point on the ads.
It's one thing if, say, a Kitchener riding paid for ads used in, say, a New Brunswick riding.
But that didn't happen here, as far as I know.
Ads used in Kitchener were paid for by the Kitchener riding. Same as in New Brunswick. Right?
Posted by: Dennis (Second Thots) at October 30, 2007 12:06 PM
So CONservatives like Gary Goodyear seem to think Dion should kick Elizabeth May out of the Liberal party -- HELLO !!! (House of Commons May 2, 2007). When was she ever a member ? She's heading the Green Party and trying to defeat a light weight contender in Nova Scotia. Some people should never have left the Reform Party. The Progressive Conservatives of old at least had honesty in their repertoire. This new breed of CONservatives disregard facts and truth as readily as their Republican mentors south of the border. DING, DONG. HELLO !!!
Posted by: rob at October 30, 2007 02:29 PM
Sniff some more glue Rob.
Posted by: Bruce Randall at October 30, 2007 02:44 PM
Why doesn't Dion stop the stupidity going on all around him? Lets start with he has no real power unto himself, has no bloody clue what's lurking around the many corners of his fractured party so who can he trust?
He's leading off every QP with the same dumb question to Harper re the so-called, In/Out non-scandal they're trying to get going.
Harper doesn't bite and rightly so. Van Loan smacks him down well and that should be a clue to him his efforts to gain any traction on it are futile.
Can't recall a party so obviously sunk as the Liberals are at this point. The media are their only friends, trying to imply they just might bring down the government. Guess they believe in assisted suicide.
Posted by: Libby at October 30, 2007 04:46 PM
I don't suppose any members of the Liberal brain-trust took too long thinking about how they will respond when the courts rule that Elections Canada overstepped its authority by passing judgement on the content of election advertising.
Dion has spent a month in QP howling about this "scandal", this "criminal enterprise", this "electoral abuse"; he's going to look like an (even bigger) idiot should the courts rule that there was no "scandal", no "criminal enterprise", no "electoral abuse." How will he respond then?
I predict Dion will be channeling the late Gilda Radner as Roseanne Rosannadanna:
"Never mind."
Posted by: Tom at October 31, 2007 12:40 AM
Rob sounds a lot like Garth Turner with his childish arrogance...Is Garth now writing under the Rob??
Posted by: Marc at October 31, 2007 11:05 PM
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