How to benefit from electoral royal rumbles

OAKVILLE, ONT.—When it comes to formulating grand strategies, military planners always seek to avoid the nightmare of fighting a “two-front” war. Such is not the case, however, for political strategists, who, when concocting their electoral battle plans, are always ready, willing and able to wage war on multiple fronts against multiple opponents. Napoleon would probably cringe at the thought. But then again, Napoleon probably wouldn't understand that in politics facing off against many enemies on many fronts doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing; in fact, under certain circumstances having several enemies can actually provide a political party with strategic opportunities. Before we get to that though, let’s first consider just how crowded a political war zone can be. I’ll start off by using my own experience as an example. Several years ago, I was consulting on a U.S. Republican senatorial primary campaign, an operation which saw us not only going up against four other candidates in the race, but also against non-party opponents, including well-funded right-wing advocacy groups and, on some occasions, the media. In short, we had opponents galore, and that’s operating within the context of the American two-party system. Here in Canada, where we have three major parties, plus a few smaller ones, multi-front contests are even more part of the process. The NDP, for instance, is not only taking on the Liberals and Conservatives, but also the Green Party. The Conservative Party of Canada, meanwhile, will, in the next federal election, find itself battling the Liberals, the NDP, the Maverick Party, and the People’s Party. On top of that, Conservatives will also likely have to deflect attacks coming from powerful labour unions on the left, and perhaps even from some disgruntled advocacy groups on the right. As for the Liberals, they’ll be battling the NDP, the Conservatives, and in Quebec, the Bloc Québécois. They may also have to contend with attacks coming from Conservative provincial premiers. At any rate, you get my point, right? During elections, everybody seems to be fighting everybody else. It’s like a Royal Rumble. So, how can a political strategist use all this apparent electoral battlefield chaos to his or her tactical advantage? Well, for starters, if your candidate is being assailed on all fronts by hordes of political enemies, it could actually help to mobilize and energize your political base, as it’s a natural reaction for people to rally around their leader in times of crisis. Hence, you’d go to your base and say something like, “Our enemies are hitting us from all sides, because they know we can win this election; it means they're desperate. So don’t let them stop us now. Give us a donation and be sure to vote! Show our enemies we can’t be intimidated!” It’s like Franklin Roosevelt once said, “I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.” The other opportunity that comes from having many opponents is it gives you a chance to play them off against each other. To use one hypothetical example of this, Conservative Party Leader Erin O’Toole might benefit if he were to loudly attack NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh as more “dangerously socialist than Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.” The point of this attack would be to strengthen the NDP, as it could cause indignant progressive voters to abandon Justin Trudeau and to jump into Singh’s camp, since as noted earlier, people tend to rally around a leader who’s under attack. This, of course, would weaken the Liberals. Anyway, the lesson here is, in political campaigns you’re going to have lots of enemies, so why not make the most of it? Gerry Nicholls is a communications consultant. The Hill Times