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Fine Gael ‘Stump’ Rallies?
Read more about: Fine Gael, Irish Election, Progressive Democrats
I use the question mark because reading the Examiner it seems Fine Gael are rolling out something like the US-style rallies in the coming months to mobilise support before the Ard Fheis. It is a very interesting story because it seems their US consultants are bringing in the negative campaigning we are used to from US elections. Whether it will work here in a general sense is difficult to predict, but they have chosen the perfect candidate to test it on in McDowell. Read the story here. Comment below.
Cian, why the emphasis on ‘their US consultants’ when FF and the Labour party are making use of consultants from the US? and how do you (or anyone else for that matter) know that it isn’t advisors internal to FG based in Ireland that have suggested focusing on the negative performance levels of weak goverment ministers?
Cian, FG always used ’stump rallies’ just not in long time. My parents can remember Garrett Fitxgerald addressing a crowd on Grand Parade. So infact FG are bringing back a historical political activity, is that such a bad thing?
fair enough point dan, i don’t. And your right they all have consultants in but it does seem plausible that they may have brought it over from the states.
Do you think its worth doing Dan? Negative campaigning can turn people off as much as win votes. Though the target is perhaps an easier one.
Stephen, I think its a good enough idea really. It is intersting to see stump speeches being resurrected and will be interesting to see if they have an impact. It may well be more effective at getting a message to people.
I notice in the article about negative campaigning Enda talks about bringing integrity back into politics. Is it just me that notes that as ironic
The thing about the Luntz program and of course it didn’t get the press coverage that the initial impression got was that the more people saw and heard of EK the more they liked what he was saying and how he said it. Now, I wouldn’t go singing down the road about mainly because it was the one focus group and because I’ve been saying much the same thing for a few years now.
I would differentiate between wholesale negative campaigning at the party level and highlighting the particular failings in execution of a minister who has defined responsiblities. The real intent of negative campaign especially in the states is that you don’t vote for X because in a two party state you not voting for X means Y wins. However, that doesn’t translate so well here as if you don’t vote for X then Y still has to compete with A, B,C and so on for the vote. Now, if you move behold negative campaigning to what are really attack ads focused on issues you know that a specific key public constituency are concerned with, then you can make some headway.
That said, I’m not alone in having said this already but I believe we will see focused/targetted negative ads or op-ed pieces online. And I think they will come not from parties but from individual voters and those with specific interests or concerns. For example, it isn’t much of leap for someone to go from a blog post about corruption to a mini-vid on youtube showing election posters of say Michael Collins, Bev Flynn, Denis Foley, Liam Lawlor, Ray Burke, and Charlo. And a voiceover of ‘you pay your taxes so we don’t have too.’ Or even worse, ‘FF a party of leeches, cos the public are suckers’. And that’s what I a mild manner person can think of in 5 minutes. Imagine someone with a real beef about an issue. Say a person has a camera phone with them while waiting for hours in A & E with their gran or mam, and they make a tiny video diary.
Very good point Dan.
Does seem quiet funny.
Question is, who will turn out for rallies in a country radically more time-poor than it would have been 30 years ago?
Dan’s right about the camera-phone/YouTube effect. Why HASN’T someone done a vid diary in A&E?
Finally, anybody know whether Irish election law is interpreted as covering expenditure for online video? Assuming one of the political parties could actually create something that people would choose to watch, they presumably would not be subject to any of the traditional restrictions on TV adverts? And if you’re going to create something that will catch fire online, presumably it’ll have to be funny. Very funny.
Good point about the A&E Video diary and the last point doesn’t seem to have gotten any coverage but that is due to the lack of interest from both political parties and the civil service with regard to the potential of the Internet. Yes, it sounds overly harsh but we’re about 6 or 7 years behind the states in use and most definitely in legislation so I think it will be interesting to see if it will be ignored, charged to those that use it by some mechanism or maybe even counted as political donations from YouTube / Google or whoever to that particular candidate / party.
I’d love to see true barn storming but Richard is right, time-poor people who can no longer find the time might need some serious convincing to turn up to a rally.
And what was the ould Fianna Fail “Health cuts hurt the old, the sick and the handicapped” poster in 1987 if not negative campaigning? Not to mention straight up dishonest as when FF got elected they introduced savage health spending cuts across the board.
A rather sloppy first attempt I will admit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ola_daxdTho
According to Wednesday’s Irish Times, there’s going to be a national campaign targetting McDowell. One thing that perhaps makes it newsworthy is going national against someone other than the Taoiseach. Even though electioneering in parliamentary systems has clearly moved towards a presidential model in the last few years — Bertie is the face of the government (”people before politics” anyone?) — it’s more unusual to try to make an issue of a minister. But it is a coalition and McDowell is the 2nd in command, and he’ll certainly be using his own pulpit to national effect when the campaign comes.
Another issue is the definition of “negative campaigning.” To me it has more to do with what are perceived as “side issues” from a policy perspective. The Bush-Cheney campaigns were very good at getting the media chasing their tails on arguably irrelevant stories about the opposition — that Al Gore claimed he invented the Internet, that John Kerry “looks French”, the latter apparently trumping voter concerns about Iraq. When that kind of stuff shows up in the next campaign, I’d be more worried about the American influence.
Richard raises an interesting point, which I responded to on his blog but I’ll include here for completeness
‘I’m not schooled in election law in the professional sense but as a candidate in ‘04 locals and a hopeful NUI Seanad candidate this time out I have some perspective.
In essence services you as an professional individual give to a candidate or party are viewed as benefit kind. Also, it has to be for a party. If it is anti someone then who came it possibly be charged to?
Now, for youtube what is the cost? youtube aren’t charging anyone anything? And if someone as a professional hairdresser does a min-ad and posts it then it shouldn’t be included but if a graphic designer did it then it might be. But if they did it in 30 minutes then they could cost it at €50 for a half hour’s work.
This kind of follows on from the situatiuon that if a solicitor gives a candidate legal advice for free something that might bill out at €100 per hour during the campaign they have to include in their expenditure However, if the same solicitor spend 8 hours per day dropping leaflets into doors, something that bills out at about €50 per 500 houses or €20 per hour, that doesn’t need to be included!
However, none of this has been really legally tested. For example in the ‘02 election we saw Michael Martin use Dail facilities to assist his campaign which he did not include his expenditure. When it was included retrospectively it put him over the limit. This was something which Kathy Sinnott challenged in court as she had lost by a handful of votes and she stated that this overspend materially impacted the outcome of the election to her detriment. The court agreed with her on the detail but said that it wouldn’t overturn an election result on the grounds of campaign expenditure limits.’
“This kind of follows on from the situatiuon that if a solicitor gives a candidate legal advice for free something that might bill out at €100 per hour during the campaign they have to include in their expenditure However, if the same solicitor spend 8 hours per day dropping leaflets into doors, something that bills out at about €50 per 500 houses or €20 per hour, that doesn’t need to be included!”
That is something that always got me. In addition, why is fair for a person to give up a day a week to canvass/leaflet drop (as I would do as a student), but not for them to contribute the cost of a person doing the same (lets say a well to do business man with a family)?
With regards to P O’Neill’s contribution, the best example of such negative US style politics was the FF unearthing of Justin Barrett’s supposed neo-Nazi links in the Nice Referendum - certainly true and worthy of concern, but it denigerated the campaign into do you support the neo-Nazi?