So I leave you with this…
Remember Harper in his sweater vest stroking the cat (not a euphemism). It was pointed out to me that he sorta looks likes the villain from Inspector Gadget.
Here’s both pictures, what do you think?

Establish and rely upon fall-back positions. Using a minor matter or element of the facts, take the “high road” and “confess” with candor that some innocent mistake, in hindsight, was made — but that opponents have seized on the opportunity to blow it all out of proportion and imply greater criminalities which, “just isn’t so.” Others can reinforce this on your behalf, later. Done properly, this can garner sympathy and respect for “coming clean” and “owning up” to your mistakes without addressing more serious issues.

Health Minister – Body Bag situation
Here’s a quote from her apology:

“It was insensitive and offensive,” she said. “As minister of health and as an aboriginal, I am offended. To all who took offence at what occurred, I want to say that I share your concern, and I pledge to get to the bottom of it.”

Ok so the Cons got the first part of that right… now onto the blown out of proportion site by the Opposition?
Oh this is just making my writing too easy:

Aglukkaq said anyone suggesting body bags were the government’s solution to H1N1 was “sensationalizing this situation.”
The results of the inquiry will be made public, she said.

Look at that! They followed number 11 to a T. She apologized, made it personal, said the Opposition was out of line, and they’re going to make the results public. By her making it personal she garners sympathy. I mean come on, she’s a female rookie MP from Nunavut and she speaks quite softly for a politician, so getting sympathy is easy for her to do.

Another situation that shows this is the whole Raitt sexy isotopes issue.
She didn’t apologize at first, but when she did, she laid on the water works and made it personal by speaking about her personal experiences with cancer. She blamed previous Liberal governments for not doing anything for 10 years (even though the Cons had been in power for like 3 yrs at that point and could have acted) and she even fired the staffer who left the recording behind! Talk about garnering public sympathy!

One last example of this is John Baird apologizing to Toronto for telling them to fuck off. He really hit the nail on the head with this one. Let’s look again at the beginning of this tactic:
“take the high road and confess… it was an innocent mistake”
Now look at Baird’s apology

“I was speaking out of frustration, and I certainly expressed that,” John Baird said in the House of Commons on Tuesday. “This morning I phoned Mayor Miller and apologized. The mayor and I both agreed — let’s look to the future. Let’s continue to build on the important investments that we need to make in public transit and we committed to work with them over the next two weeks to make it happen.”

BANG!

The Conservatives really work with this one, which makes sense because they USE IT A LOT. They make a lot of mistake. There’s a reason why Harper controls what they say so much and this is why. Most instances where they do apologize it’s because a tape or some documents were leaked. So this is how they speak behind closed doors. I’m not saying the other parties aren’t guilty of it either but the Cons get caught quite a bit. Plus they make a lot of mistakes in public too.

Point being the Cons know how to work an apology to their political advantage while denying us the truth the whole time. Seems like a lot of the public falls for it hook, line and sinker.

Associate opponent charges with old news. A derivative of the straw man — usually, in any large-scale matter of high visibility, someone will make charges early on which can be or were already easily dealt with. Where it can be foreseen, have your own side raise a straw man issue and have it dealt with early on as part of the initial contingency plans. Subsequent charges, regardless of validity or new ground uncovered, can usually then be associated with the original charge and dismissed as simply being a rehash without need to address current issues — so much the better where the opponent is or was involved with the original source.

If you read message boards like I do, you’ll see a few common themes with Con supporters; they still bring up AdScam and they like to say that the Liberals have no policies (since they haven’t released a platform under Ignatieff but to be fair we haven’t had an election and look at Harpie’s record on platform releases). Anyways I digress.
They continually bring up these same old charges and have yet to come up with new ones, even when the opportunity is ripe.

The same goes for the Cons themselves, they like to still blame previous Liberal governments for mistakes, mistakes they have done nothing themselves to rectify. Now that the Cons are the previous government, they still enjoy blaming the Liberals past mistakes. They still do little to fix the problems for example the isotopes issue. The Cons had known for years there were problems and waited till they had no choice and yet they still blame the Liberals.

They also like to say that Ignatieff is “just visiting” whether this is true or not remains to be seen but they like to rehash this along with quotes Ignatieff has said in the past before he was even with the Liberal party. Although should someone bring up Harper’s past quotes they mention that things have changed.

The Cons like to deny, deny, deny and then deviate. Hey in our fickle society it tends to work so what can I say to that? The problem lies in the fact that people don’t demand more.

Play Dumb. No matter what evidence or logical argument is offered, avoid discussing issues with denial they have any credibility, make any sense, provide any proof, contain or make a point, have logic, or support a conclusion. Mix well for maximum effect.

Since I plan on writing up my examples in point form, I’m going to include the example given in order to provide some context.
Example

“Nothing you say makes any sense. Your logic is idiotic. Your facts nonexistent. Better go back to the drawing board and try again.”

Examples of Conservatives doing this:
1) Painting Dion as incapable by mocking his speech and claiming his proposed Carbon Tax plan would raise taxes.
2) Saying that the Liberals proposed EI plan would cost $4billion when in fact it would be closer to $1billion
3) Denying that we were in a recession last election, than calling it a ‘technical recession’ when all other parties and financial institutions said otherwise
4) Blaming previous governments for the isotope crisis by denying their role in the problem
5) Denying global warming and the harsh impact of the oil sands by telling other parties that their information is wrong
6) Again I bring up Question Period because this is your best opportunity to watch the Cons play dumb and avoid facts and answers
7) The whole issue of sending body bags to the reserves. The Cons denied it right away and said that they would look into who sent them. Why not just accept the blame and explain the situation?
8) Not putting out a party platform until after the debates and after advanced polling had closed. This means that during the debates Stevie could play dumb on issues and could also steal other people’s ideas
9) Saying they won’t raise taxes, cut social programs or sell assets to get us out of deficit. Financial experts disagree with this plan
10) Claiming the economy will be worse off should we go into an election right now while it’s slowly recovering.

Those are just a few examples but see the Cons get away with their lies and misinformation because they keep hammering on the same point. It works, especially when you have an audience that is made up of sheep and people who don’t pay attention.
The dumb part works well for the Cons because for the most part that is genuine. Quite possibly the only genuine thing with this bunch.

Invoke authority. Claim for yourself or associate yourself with authority and present your argument with enough “jargon” and “minutia” to illustrate you are “one who knows”, and simply say it isn’t so without discussing issues or demonstrating concretely why or citing sources.

I’ll be honest, I am having a difficult time coming up with concrete examples of this one. I actually believe that this is how Stevie always speaks, especially if you watch Question Period. Questions are never directly answered and instead they use a lot of acronyms, numbers, “facts and stats” and then they throw in some adjectives.
It gives the appearance of getting things done but in reality they aren’t. For instance, the Conservatives are spending 5 times more money on ads to promote their ’stimulus money’ than they are to promote H1N1 awareness. Keep in mind, it is our money paying for these Conservatives ads. The fact is, most of the stimulus money hasn’t been spent and to my knowledge there’s an actual clause whereby the cities/provinces must put up the same amount of money as what the Feds will give them, in order to get the money from the Feds. So this means a lot of money probably won’t be spent, and also that a lot of the money has gone to Conservative ridings. But that’s not in their commercials, nor will they say that. I’m not sure where I’m going with this one, but whenever election talk is brought up the Cons like to play “authoritative” and say that an election would harm stimulus cash, which isn’t only a lie but their own policies prevent stimulus cash from rolling out. I guess the point is, is that unless you pay attention you would believe the words spewing out of the Cons mouths on this topic and you’d actually think that they not only knew what they were speaking about, but that they were leaders too.

Ask Stevie or Jimbo a question about the economy and they don’t give you a firm answer, instead they use rhetoric and partisan speak to avoid the answer while still giving off an air of authority and intelligence.
For instance, they never elaborate on how they plan to put us back into a surplus. They (Cons) just says “we won’t raise taxes” but they don’t tell you their plan. They never give details on the isotope crisis, instead they prefer to blame previous-previous governments. They never gave accurate facts on the legality of a coalition government in Canada’s parliamentary system, instead they just said it wasn’t legal and refused to answer questions on it. They refuse to speak about our Afghanistan mission and Stephen will not go on Canadian television to speak to us.

Do all of these things invoke authority? Not to me, but I guess to some blind sheep it would. All I see is someone who is a liar, a partisan petty person who speaks down to us. To each his/her own.

Question motives. Twist or amplify any fact which could so taken to imply that the opponent operates out of a hidden personal agenda or other bias. This avoids discussing issues and forces the accuser on the defensive.

Keeping it short because it’s Friday.

The Conservatives are well known for twisting their opponents’ words, just watch Question Period and you’ll see/hear it. A very recent, and well publicized example of this is the leaked Harper speech he gave to his subjugates. In it he said that if he didn’t get a majority, the Liberals, NDP and Bloc would form a “socialist/separatist” coalition and that the Liberals had a secret agenda.

This is hilarious for 2 reasons:
1) Harper has been accused of having a hidden agenda for years now and to be honest, if you’ve followed him like I have, you’ll know that he actually does have one. For instance, he pretends to be a moderate yet he is against abortion and same-sex marriage and wants to get rid of both and would if he had an election. He is a reformer/alliance(r?) and he believes that only God will judge him, so how can he be a moderate?

2) Harper is the one who is now working with the NDP and Bloc to keep his minority government alive, so now who’s working with those “dirty socialists and separatists”?

Ok that’s a wrap for today!

Hit and Run. In any public forum, make a brief attack of your opponent or the opponent position and then scamper off before an answer can be fielded, or simply ignore any answer. This works extremely well in Internet and letters-to-the-editor environments where a steady stream of new identities can be called upon without having to explain criticism reasoning — simply make an accusation or other attack, never discussing issues, and never answering any subsequent response, for that would dignify the opponent’s viewpoint.

I’m gonna be honest, I’m having a hard time with this one, it may be due to the fact that I rarely watch the news and instead read the news online, so I’m less likely to actually see this one being done. It may also be that ALL politicians do this and therefore I am desensitized to it. I think both are likely, so let’s start this off with what I can think of off the top of my head.

I actually think of Question Period for this. If you’ve ever watched it, you’ll know that Conservatives never answer questions directly, and instead use the opportunity to ridicule and belittle their opponents (this reminds me to watch QP today, it’s been awhile). I don’t watch QP every day but the times I do, I have yet to see the Conservatives answer a question.

Another example of this, to me anyways, is how the Conservatives pay people to swarm message boards and newspapers with their talking points. They also have on their website a feature where you just input your personal information and choose a topic and it will send a pre-made letter to a chosen newspaper for you. They also provide talking points for call radio; for some reason right-wing people are really big on talk radio, I can’t figure this one out. Maybe because it’s so regressive and shows any lack of progress in the last 30 years, just like they do?

I think another example of this, and it may be a bit of a stretch but it definitely follows the same premise, is Harper not allowing journalists to ask questions at press conferences, unless he chooses them. This definitely had the press up in arms a few years ago, but lately they’re been in a sleeper hold with him on this one. They basically let him get away with this stuff and play his game and endorse him.You’d think the press would want more for this country, but you’re wrong. The media has a job to do and that is to not show bias, unfortunately they have forgotten this.

One of the biggest problems with Harper and his attempt to stifle free speech with journalists is that he speaks freely to US news, mainly Fox News. He has even paid aids of former US Presidents to lobby for him and do PR for him in the US. He used our money to do this. This to me is a hit and run. He’s not answering to Canadians and we are not able to get answers out of him. He spoke on Fox News about our stimulus money and hasn’t yet done so for Canadians. In fact, he very, very rarely speaks to Canadians.

This is truth suppression and unfortunately a lot of Canadians don’t care. They don’t care about what he’s doing; they just see someone who is decisive and stubborn and think he is a good leader doing a good job. What they fail to realize is that he never answers to us (and we are his employer) and never speaks to us. It’s a shame that in this day and age, he can get away with it. Crafty bugger isn’t he?

Sidetrack opponents with name calling and ridicule. This is also known as the primary attack the messenger ploy, though other methods qualify as variants of that approach. Associate opponents with unpopular titles such as “kooks”, “right-wing”, “liberal”, “left-wing”, “terrorists”, “conspiracy buffs”, “radicals”, “militia”, “racists”, “religious fanatics”, “sexual deviates”, and so forth. This makes others shrink from support out of fear of gaining the same label, and you avoid dealing with issues.

Why do the Conservatives make this so easy? I mean when I write these posts, I’m coming up with examples off the top of my head; very little time is spent thinking about these because it’s just too darn easy for someone who actually pays attention to politics and cares about her country. Ok… number 5 – name calling. Let’s go.

1)No explanation needed:

Other names Conservatives have called people:
2) Ignatieff has been called a carpetbagger
3) NDP have been labeled socialist (side: how is this bad? we live in a socialist country!)
4) Bloc have been called separatists as though it’s dirty
5) Bloc have been called pedophiles
6) Ignatieff and Dion have been called academics as though it’s a bad thing… I suppose coming from a party where very few of its members have college or University degrees it’s pure jealousy
7) Harper has labeled women as a LEFT WING FRINGE GROUP
8) the Arts community has been labeled elitist
9) Child soldiers has been replaced with “children in armed conflict”
10) Gender equality has been replaced with “equality of men and women”
11) On Canada: “Canada appears content to become a second-tier socialistic country, boasting ever more loudly about its economy and social services to mask its second-rate status.”
12) Continually telling Canadians that we are becoming more conservative – simply not true
13) Calling parliament dysfunctional in order to break his own fixed election date law
14) Calling anyone who is against his war in Afghanistan a Taliban supporter (let’s be clear here, the Conservatives hate Arabs and Muslims)

Ok I think that’s a good start, enough to make it clear that he uses this tactic. For instance, by continually telling us that we are becoming more conservative, many people will believe it, with very little introspective thought as to whether it is true or not. The fact is, the majority of Canadians live in urban areas; areas not known for being mainly traditional and conservative. Stevie does this to appeal to his loyal rural subjugates.

By labeling Dion and Ignatieff as academics, he is implying that they are elitist and out of touch with Canadians. If anyone actually thought about this, they would realize that a) Harper can also be considered an academic since he has a Master’s degree, albeit from a third rate Calgary University and b) there is nothing wrong with an academic wanting to run this country. In fact, having someone intelligent and prone to thinking about issues before acting is a good thing.

By labeling women as a left wing fringe group, he is appealing to his Real Women of Canada supporters (part of his base) but he is also mobilizing many, many other women, so hopefully this one will backfire.

Basically, he is doing exactly what the description of this tactic says; making people vote for him for fear of being labeled something bad or out of fear of being associated with a dirty separatist or dirty socialist. It’s insane that something this simple works as it plays on grade school and high school lack of self-esteem and lack of knowledge. What scares me the most is that people are so apathetic and have such low self-esteem that they think being associated with Stephen Harper is a good thing and want to be associated with him. Very, very scary.

Use a straw man. Find or create a seeming element of your opponent’s argument which you can easily knock down to make yourself look good and the opponent to look bad. Either make up an issue you may safely imply exists based on your interpretation of the opponent/opponent arguments/situation, or select the weakest aspect of the weakest charges. Amplify their significance and destroy them in a way which appears to debunk all the charges, real and fabricated alike, while actually avoiding discussion of the real issues.

Easy… this is something the Conservatives do all the time; but more so when Dion was leader of the Liberals. Remember his carbon tax? Well the Conservatives made you believe it was a bad thing and you’d be taxed more… not true. Their plan was to cut taxes in other areas to compensate for this tax; which would have also assisted in reducing pollution.

Another example of this is more current. The Conservatives have called the Liberals EI plan a “fantasy” and a “detriment to the country” and that the proposed plan would cost $4billion dollars. Not true, in fact it would cost $1billion. Also, let it be known that the plan the Conservatives have come up with, only after an election threat, is close to the Liberals $1billion dollar plan, but doesn’t hurt the middle class like the Conservatives plan does.
One last straw man created by the Conservatives – they are the underdogs and the other 3 parties are ganging up on them in order to form a coalition.  If they make themselves look pathetic and as though they are being bullied people will begin to hate the other parties and will see them as the bullies. This could not be more false. The reality is, is that the Conservatives have been the bullies for the past 3 yrs; they knew the Liberals didn’t want an election and knew they could get away with a lot of dodgy legislation. They know that the coalition, while perfectly legal, is not something the other parties are running on.

The Conservatives like to claim that it will be the fault of the other parties should the government fall. Again not true. Harper secretly wants an election and in fact, the guy has never been out of election mode. He just wants you to believe that it isn’t his fault so that his party won’t face the wrath at the polls. If he really did not want an election he would try  harder to work with the other parties. After all that is what the Canadian people have asked of him, time and time again and he still doesn’t get it, nor does he even try to work with other parties. The only time he comes up with something palatable to Canadians is when the Opposition and other parties have his back up against a wall. He doesn’t really care that his back is up against a wall, what he cares about is how the average, media/politically illiterate citizen thinks of him. Do you perceive him as being ganged up on? As the one trying to work with others? If so, then you’ve been duped.

The Conservatives frame the other parties as socialists, separatists and the Liberals with a leader who will leave the country again should he lose and voila! People who are too apathetic or uninterested in politics will fall for this. The more you say something, the more it becomes true and something like that works effectively with the average person who does not understand politics or is media illiterate.

Create rumor mongers. Avoid discussing issues by describing all charges, regardless of venue or evidence, as mere rumors and wild accusations. Other derogatory terms mutually exclusive of truth may work as well. This method which works especially well with a silent press, because the only way the public can learn of the facts are through such “arguable rumors”. If you can associate the material with the Internet, use this fact to certify it a “wild rumor” which can have no basis in fact.

I think the first sentence says it all; create rumour mongers. Examples of this to my knowledge are:

Rumour: Harper and Cons claiming that a coalition is illegal.

False:  under our parliamentary system this is entirely legal and a lot of European countries use coalitions all the time to make their governments’ work. In fact Stephen Harper signed a letter with the NDP and Bloc back in 2004 (I think) to enter a formal and legal coalition with them should the current Liberal Government fail.

Rumour: Harper claiming the Libs will enter a coalition with the NDP and Bloc

False: This has been denied and even if they did, it is not illegal and could actually be a great step for our country.

Rumour: Everyone wants a Conservative government and will give them a majority.

False: The Conservatives send out talking points and have their ‘fans’ swarm message boards to skew public opinion.

Rumour: The Liberals were the reason the EI blue panel did not work.

False: The Liberals attempted to make it work but the Cons showed up unprepared in an attempt to stall the committee. Finlay and a co-worker even staged a committee to make it look like the Libs were the problem.

Rumour: Ignatieff will return to the US if he loses/ Ignatieff hates Canada/Ignatieff is unfit to lead the country because he has lived outside of it for a considerable length of time.

False: We don’t really know the answer to this, but the Cons love this rumour as it keeps up their story that Ignatieff isn’t a real Canadian. Of course, Stephen Harper being President of the National Citizens Coalition and telling them that we should scrap Health Care; or wanting Alberta to separate from Canada must make him a better Canadian. Let’s not forget this quote either:

“America, and particularly your conservative movement, is a light and an inspiration to people in this country and across the world,” – a speech Stephen Harper made eight years ago to a conservative American think-tank

Source

I think those examples provide enough support to the theory that the Cons are trying to distort the truth for their own political gain with little consideration to the unity of this country and its citizens.

One last point, the explanation of this includes a line about having a mostly silent press in order for this to work. It must be stressed that our media does not do enough to get the truth out; whether they are being paid by the Conservatives or the head honchos are Conservative supporters (both scenarios seem likely) something has to give; citizens need to demand more. Our press does very little to ensure that facts are presented and the fact that our country is apathetic and demands so little allows for the press and our government to get away with these tactics. If you don’t ask for much, you’re going to get very little in return.