In the Conservative Bubble

A blurry picture from my camera.

I attended a Conservative campaign rally with the McMaster "Vote Mob" on April 7th, where students demonstrated at both Stephen Harper's and Michael Ignatieff's campaign stops in Hamilton (I did not commit enough time to stop by the Liberal rally later that night, as my organic chemistry textbook was calling for me). After giving our names at two separate occasions, providing organizers with our addresses, and going through security, we were let into the sea of blue. [One guy even asked me what I had behind the new words on my sign, since I'd converted an old Halloween prop for the vote mob sign. No, it was nothing anti-Harper, just a barely visible "Only 47 Days until Beethoven's Birthday!"]

Even with a non-partisan agenda, we were kept in the back of the crowd (granted, we were late arrivals), and pretty much out of view of the main cameras, and Stephen Harper. He never even acknowledged our presence, but then again, there's no surprise that he didn't stray from his prepared speech on the teleprompter.  The event started with his triumphant voice on the booming speakers, the soundtrack for his main campaign ad*. Harper was then introduced by one of the local candidates, and gave his standard speech promising to preserve a good economy, make Canada great, and frame the "unnecessary" election as a choice between a "clear, stable, majority government" and an "unstable coalition", to the joy of his crowd of supporters cheering "yes! without raising taxes!" And then he left. No questions taken. I don't even recall any handshakes. And that was it.

This is what many journalists and critics call a "bubble campaign". Canada's own "bubble boy", Harper, and the Conservative campaign, is kept away from as much criticism as possible, living within a happy feedback cycle of support in an opposition-free environment.

The editorial cartoon from Yorkton this Week.

You have a bubble campaign when:

• You don't answer any questions from the public at your rallies (recall Duceppe in debate: "I would like to congratulate Mr. Harper for answering a question from a citizen for the first time in this campaign")
• You allow five questions from the media per day
• You ask supporters to pre-register before attending rallies
• You screen your rally attendees 
• You kick out students from your rally because they have a Facebook profile picture with Ignatieff
• You exclude a veteran from a rally because they hold different views
• You rarely attend public events
• Your supporters chant your name for a full minute for you to ignore a question on terrorism
• Your party's candidates are skipping some of their all-candidate's debates in 50 out of 308 ridings, including Julian Fantino and not Bev Oda (she's still running?!?) 
• Your Youtube videos block comments and disable ratings (none of the other four parties do this)

I find this bubble campaign very troubling. How can you be accountable if you don't account for the opposition? How can you be "Here for Canada" if you don't listen to Canadians? On May 2nd, let's burst Harper's bubble, and vote anything but Conservative. 

*Side note: Harper's campaign ad is much like Tim Pawlenty's book promo, both embedded below. Tim Pawlenty was a former Governor of Minnesota, and a potential candidate for the Republican primaries in preparation for the US 2012 Presidential Elections. A very comedic analysis of Pawlenty's ad by Stephen Colbert can be found here.