By Joe Johnson (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: November 21, 2012
White noise, it’s all starting to become white noise.
“Canada’s NDP has a new leader, but can we afford him? Thomas Mulcair’s $20 billion carbon tax will make everything you need cost more: groceries, heating, electricity. Experts say Mulcair’s carbon tax will raise the price of gas by $0.10 a litre. You name it. Under Mulcair, you’ll pay more. Taxes, taxes and more taxes. We can’t afford Mulcair’s NDP, we just can’t!”
That’s the current line of Conservative attack ads to come down on us. I first heard this particular one on CKNW, but there are already variations of it being played up on the television and internet.
The federal Conservatives are going after the newly-elected leader of the federal NDP, Thomas Mulcair. Having been elected as head of the party only last March, and without an actual election scheduled for almost three years from now, the reasoning behind them almost causes you to wonder.
Clearly, they are going back to their tried and proven character and policy assassination technique. Regardless of an election or not, they’re working on chipping away at Mulcair so that whenever the election does come, some Canadians will have developed a deep seeded doubt. It worked so many times in the past it wouldn’t make sense for them not to keep doing it.
As long as the Conservatives have their large cash reserve, and are given the freedom by the telecommunications body to sling half-truths and lies, they’ll continue to do so.
Honestly, I grow weary. I grow weary of seeing these black and white television ads, and menacing overtones that continue to be pushed through the airwaves. They’re simply not true and try to obfuscate what people need to hear. People need to hear all sides of policies to decide for themselves which is the best for the country, not have one party diminish another. It’s nauseating and far from civil.
But after hearing the new attack ad on Mulcair, I actually had hope for once. That hope arose because after hearing so many of these same types of ads against every single person who has, or even has had a chance to, oppose the Prime Minister it felt like white noise.
Being obsessed with politics, I pay attention to these ads maybe more than others. But as the same types of ads have been recycled for so long now, I have a growing confidence that the target demographic of them will begin hearing the same noise. After a while people begin to either tune the message out or think about what’s behind it. Either everybody but Stephen Harper is irresponsible and will ruin this country with taxes and wonky policies, or something else is going on behind the scenes.
And that’s exactly what it is, there’s a Conservative machine in place to annihilate Harper’s competition. But it’s not going to work this time. Mulcair is not leading a weakly held together party. The huge upswing in NDP support during the last federal election proved it.
The Conservative messaging is becoming white noise, plain and simple.
