The Harper rally in London, Ont. Monday night drew the biggest crowd yet for the Conservatives during this still-young campaign. By my count — and I do actually count — there were about 800 people in a downtown conference centre to hear Harper give what has become a pretty standard stump speech.
Still, even with 800 people present, the hall wasn't full and the event didn't have much energy. That's not Harper's fault necessarily. Barack Obama, he is not. But his stump speech is always competently delivered and his speeches are generally well crafted. What Harper needs from rally supporters his energy and tonight, in London, despite the crowd it wasn't there.
Now that, by itself, is not a big deal.
But it was a rally in the very same hall in early January of 2006 that first got the national press corps travelling with Harper beginning to sense that a change was about to happen.
In the last general election, the Conservatives had ran a disciplined campaign before Christmas, full of policy announcements, including the GST cut. But according to the polls, Harper's campaign wasn't winning much support and the Liberals, at Christmas, were still ahead.
Then, over Christmas, the income trust investigation broke and Harper returned to the road in the new year with new wind in his sails.
And so, on a Friday night in the first week of January, 2006, we ended up were we were tonight. The weather was much worse then. Dark, cold, windy winter weather then; a warm, pleasant summer evening tonight.
In 2006, about 1,200 supporters crammed into the very same hall that just 800 were in tonight. (And, again, I was there in '06 and I counted them then.)
Until that point, the biggest crowd we'd seen for a Harper rally was about 500 people.
But that night in London in 2006, it was the first hint to those of us watching the campaign that perhaps Harper did indeed have what it takes to topple Paul Martin. Shortly after that, we were starting to see huge crowds at Harper rallies, including 1,000-plus turnouts in downtown Montreal during the last week of the campaign.
But tonight, it wasn't the challenger that everyone had come to see. It was the prime minister. And perhaps there isn't the same urgency or desperation among Conservatives that there was in 2006. This time, Harper came to London well ahead in national polls; in 2006, he was behind.
Still, there is a new poll out today from Nanos Research that shows Conservative support ticked down slightly. And tonight we saw some evidence, in a sense, that Harper and the Conservatives still haven't ignited the kind of passionate political love that can propel a party to a majority victory.
Hey David, I missed you at the rally. I would have liked to have chatted a bit.
Anyway, I agree that the London Rally wasn't quite what it was in 2006. I also agree that there isn't the same urgency there was back in 2006. That being said, I would like to suggest that Mr. Harper is basically running on his record, and asking the Country to give him some kind of mandate to continue on the steady course he has put us on. In light of that, I wasn't expecting it to be another “Bringing Down The House” event.
We're moving forward on the course we've set, and the opposition parties are wanting to make drastic changes in direction that will very likely COST a lot more than staying the course. They would of course, blame all those additional costs on the Conservatives.
The theme of this election, I believe, is Staying The Course.