New Liberal Lesson: Don't Tick off Mike Duffy

We all expected the Liberals to go negative at a certain point in the campaign... The Liberal negative campaigning history is legendary... Or I'm sorry what do they call it now?... That's right it's not negative - it's "comparative" campaigning...

In any event, the Liberals released 12 new attack ads claiming that George W. Bush would be happy if Stephen Harper won, that Stephen Harper admires American US Conservatives, that he eats babies, lives on Mars, and even one claiming that he wanted "increased military presence in cities..."

Ok the eating babies and living on Mars was made up - but the military one was no joke.

The point is that even the Liberals realized their venom was way over the top and pulled back the ad on the military from their website... Because well - it was made up. Stephen Harper said he would want to have more soldiers ready to be deployed in cities when natural disasters happen. The deplorably underfunded state of our armed forces means that in those situations like the floods out west where Canada would be unable to respond adequately.

Apparently that translates into "Stephen Harper wants an increased military presence in Canadian cities... Soldiers.... Soldiers with guns... We are not making this up..."

The Liberal excuse thus far has been that no ad was ever pulled... The double speak is based on the fact that the Liberals seem to believe that you need to have the ad actually run on TV and then be pulled before the ad can be considered to be "pulled." What a pointless debate that is.

The fun part of all this, is that the Liberals expected to attack the Conservatives dead on with these Ads... Instead they are now being forced to explain away The Ad That Was Never PulledTM.


In an interview Thursday morning on CTV's Canada AM, Martin said he approved every one of the harshly critical ads -- including one that suggested the Tory Leader would use the military to occupy Canadian cities.

The ad did not air and was pulled from the party's website within hours of being posted. But Martin said the ad was lifted simply because he didn't think it was very good.

(...)

"Some idiot inadvertently sent out an ad that was not approved and not supported by the party with the 11 (ads) that were supported," Martin told CP. His riding includes CFB Esquimalt, the headquarters of Canada's
Pacific naval fleet.(link)


An act designed to destroy their political opponents has somewhat backfired into their faces making them look desperate and mean spirited.

What's worse is that we now have a Duffy vs. Duffy moment here... What I'm talking about is a confrontation that happened between legendary CTV election reporter Mike Duffy, and the Paul Martin's right hand man John Duffy over The Ad That Never Ran TM.

"You were in here earlier when we were off the air on a commercial break trying to intimidate me into not going back to that ad," said Mike Duffy, his voice rising in indignation. "We will not be intimidated. We will do our jobs as journalists."(link)(video)(via)
Mike Duffy is said to be a Liberal supporter, and was once in line towards an appointment by the Liberal Prime Minister into the Senate. I've never seen a moment like that on Canadian TV before. Mike was steaming mad. If there is one political lesson the Liberals should take from this is never tick off Mike Duffy.

The Ad That Never Ran TM may go down as one of those pivotal moments in a campaign that those that loose would rather forget...

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