The new campaign....... Just like the old one

The Globe and Mail's Editorial Board took the Liberals to task for rerunning the 2003 campaign in 2007. The premise was the Liberals are still trying to get voters to remember the "bad old days" of the Harris PC government as a strategy to defeat PC's in this election. This they felt was an ineffective strategy and that the Liberals should run on their record instead -- not so sure on that one.

The PC's seem to be responding to the "Harris legacy" approach however -- their campaign signs and literature don't seem to recognize the PC brand but rather the John Tory brand. The campaign literature I have seen again stresses the the John Tory brand. I am not sure that Tory will win based on the "John Tory" instead of the PC party brand -- and if he doesn't he may actually be harming the party in the future -- one man parties tend to fall out of favour pretty quickly and repositioning the brand back to the party might take more than one subsequent election.

There is also this underlying current of what they did in the past was somehow wrong -- whether you agree the policies and directions of the Harris PC's or not they were elected to two majority governments -- with strong mandates. There are still a large number of Ontarion's who agree with the direction taken, maybe not all of them, but with alot of them. I would marginalize them at your own peril.