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rfmcdonaldYou know those Conservative attack ads aimed at federal Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff, attacking him for his comopolitanism and his intellectualism and his espressos? As Paul Wells reports, they've worked wonders in Québec.
Writing in the Toronto Star, Chantal Hébert reinforces the gloom for the Conservatives in Québec.
How this will play out in the rest of Canada is, of course, open to speculation.
New large-sample Quebec poll, taken during the first four days of the Conservatives’ new ad campaign, shows the Conservative party has fallen to fourth in Quebec, behind the NDP. Stephen Harper’s party is now polling about as well as the sum of the performance of Stockwell Day’s Canadian Alliance and Joe Clark’s Progressive Conservatives in 2000. So it’s going pretty well, really.
[. . .]
UP-IS-THE-NEW-DOWNDATE, Monday morning: Still, it’s important to keep hope alive. That’s why (both of these links are to Le Devoir articles in Conservative Party-approved Quebec-French) Chantal Hébert explains the Conservatives have hitched their wagons irrevocably to the Action Démocratique in Quebec. Super Mario’s old party "may be a shadow of what it once was," Chantal writes, "it’s still in better shape than the federal Conservative party." And how’s that working out? The rest of today’s poll shows the ADQ at 8%.
Writing in the Toronto Star, Chantal Hébert reinforces the gloom for the Conservatives in Québec.
If there is a common thread to the Conservative predicament in Quebec, it is the pervading sense that Harper's political philosophy runs against the grain of the province.
[La Presse's chief editorialist André] Pratte alluded to the phenomenon on his blog, noting when Quebecers look at Harper these days, it seems all they see is his ideology.
That's a major reversal from a year ago when the Quebec-friendly policies of Harper's government seemed to offset whatever ideological reservations he inspired.
[. . .]
Judging from Harper's Montreal speech last week, the Conservative formula to win back Quebecers involves a familiar mix of patronage appointments and targeted spending sprees designed to secure the support that the government's policies fail to inspire.
It is a recipe Brian Mulroney tried in his dying days in power and the result was a lone Quebec seat in the 1993 election.
How this will play out in the rest of Canada is, of course, open to speculation.
