If Tim Hudak had repeated this 5 word mantra in every press conference, town hall meeting, annoying doorknob flier, and in every ethnic community he pandered for votes he would have guaranteed an election victory. No other words should have escaped his mouth in the last 6 weeks. He should have legally changed his first name too “Dalton”, middle name to “Will”, and last name to “Raisetaxes”.
Politics might be a messy and unsavoury line of work, but it definitely is not that complicated. You stick to a few main talking points that you dumb down for the general electorate, and pound down those points threw mostly negative attacks on your opponent, which you spin into positive points as to how your party will do the opposite. This could not be any easier then while dealing with a government that came out of a recession, and by default is seen as fiscally irresponsible and the reason for higher taxes. I’ll leave the debate to actual party supporters as to why Dalton Mcguinty continually raised taxes, but the fact remains he said he would not raise them, and then blatantly lied to the public and increased taxes on numerous occasions. This should have been Tim Hudak’s main talking point, with the sky rocketing Ontario debt the appetizer, and maybe a sprinkle of the G8 mess and a few other issues on the side. If his campaign managers were a bunch of drunken monkeys on typewriters they could have came up with a similar strategy.
But what does Mr. Hudak do? He opens his mouth and lets his conservative ideology possibly spoil an easy election victory. The moment he began aggressively campaigning against the ‘foreign workers’ tax credit of 10,000 put on the table by the liberals his poll numbers began to drown like an unsupervised 3 yr old at a swimming pool. The fact that he deliberately attempted to misguide the public by claiming it to be a tax credit for ‘foreign workers’ was only the 5th thing wrong with how he approached the situation. The tax credit itself gives a 10,000 tax incentive to companies to hire new Ontario residents (Canadian citizens) of 1 to 5 years, and was limited to a few industries. In total it would cost 12 million. It was a clear attempt by the liberals to salvage the vote of ethnic communities and new comers, who surprisingly voted blue/orange during the federal election. Tim Hudak quickly began a public onslaught on what he called an unfair tax credit, which gave ‘foreign workers’ an advantage over the white man (in not so many words). Hudak tried to reason his opposition to the credit by saying new comers do not want handouts and want to be on an even playing field with Ontarians. (He fails to realize that playing field is an ice rink, and new comers usually don’t know how to skate) But no matter how he cut it, it was bad politics and his immediate hostility towards the credit offended minority voters all across the GTA. He spent a solid week straying away from Dalton McGuinty’s tax record, and Ontario’s sky rocketing debt (which grows in millions of dollars everyday just in interest). And in the process he lost a significant amount of support in Toronto.
An election that was given to the conservatives on a silver platter is now a dog fight because Hudak did not stick to a simple and effective message. In general conservatives have followed this simple strategy in both American and Canadian politics over the last few years, and have come out on top of issues they had no business being in. They have proven to be politically smarter then their liberal counterparts, and have noticeably better posture because of that steal backbone they must have had implanted. As opposed to liberal parties, who bend to opposition like the Eagles offensive line.
But surprisingly in this provincial election the liberals have done a masterful job in out politicking the cons. It was no coincidence that Dalton Mcguinty put forward this tax credit. He was using it as bait to garner a response, and the conservatives bit, and they bit hard. A few days after Hudak began his tirade against the tax credit the liberals laid low and let Hudak’s mouth bring them back into the race. For 3-4 days they did not even bother to explain that claims the credit was for ‘foreign workers’ was inaccurate. Then when the time was right to get on the offensive, they did a great job to blow up the issue and brush Hudak as a borderline racist, demanding that he apologize for referring to new Ontarians as foreign workers. Then to throw salt on the wound they pointed out that Hudak had proposed a similar credit last year. Quickly the conservative party backed down from the attack, changed the language on their website and tried to brush it under the proverbial rug. But like anybody in a relationship knows, once you say something it is very hard to take back.
Edit: It should be noted that Hudak has took my advice. His last attack ad on McGuinty simply says this: MCGUINTY: HIGHER TAXES, LESS JOBS. HUDAK: LOWER TAXES, NEW JOBS. I'm Starting to wonder if politicians think the general public all have blonde hair.
