OTTAWA ONTARIO – When you hear that the KKK is planning a victory march to celebrate Donald Trump’s election win, it does make you wonder whether or not it was the right move for a candidate to align herself with some of his immigration policies even if there was an attempt to “Canadianize” them.
No doubt this was a move to gather support, donations and votes from individual members. In other words it looks like a short term attempt to position for a leadership vote, not for a future election campaign. Certainly there will be an element of the party that wants to see tighter screening of immigrants and there will be leadership votes to be gained with this whole Canadian values issue. While this might play well in some parts of the country, one only has to look at the urban results last election to see what happens when the multicultural vote walks to the other parties.
The problem with niche political marketing in a leadership campaign is that while you might win the contest, you haven’t won the war. The real battle takes place in the next election.
The other parties will have research teams dedicated to mining the media for every morsel of negative comment, they will be looking for every verbal mistake and watching how the media and population at large reacts to platform positions of leadership candidates. All of this information will be combined to help shape the political attacks of the next campaign. Every one of these items will find a use some time during the next campaign even if that campaign is a couple of years away.
Short term gain with long term pain can be the results. The Liberals must be enjoying this one.