Does the CPC Owe Warren Kinsella Royalties?

The game plan, laid out in Conservative party documents obtained by the Star, spells out the objective in three words: "drive, disrupt, disunity."

The party says it wants a "Conservative voice" in all stories that come out of the Liberal convention"

Lots of chatter among the political classes about the leaks today.  Is this a resentful staffer slipping secret documents to the enemy MSM?  Is it an attempt by the CPC to smoke out resentful staffers?  An effort to deflate Liberal morale?  Are they simply fucking with Liberal heads?

The latter seems most likely.  There's something the Tory war roomers should know, though - when you fuck with people's heads, you risk catching something contagious.

There's a line about messing with opponents' heads in Warren Kinsella's manual for campaigners, The War Room.  If you haven't read it, you should.  It's pretty clear Dimtri Soudas has.

"So?" he said.  "Why do we need one of these war room things?"

"Because it can help us win," I said.  "If we have something like that, we can sort of become part of the news media."  - P. 23

"The way I looked at it, our job wasn't dirty tricks or smears or smears or that sort of thing; our job was to dominate the communications landscape, leaving no room for our opponents to breathe."  - P. 26

Personally, I find this funny in the ironic sort of way.  The Liberals innovate new approaches to stop the Conservatives which the Conservatives then copy literally word-for-word and then put more money and vindictiveness behind.

Except there's something the CPC War Room folk seem to have missed.

The MSM (MainStreamMedia) began relying heavily on fed info because their industry was at the start of it's decline.  As is the case with the collapse of any body, when the centre starts reducing resource distribution, the organs start to work harder, hastening system-wide collapse.

These days, even the media questions the media about the content of its stories.  The majority of people who get their news through anything other thank radio, the evening news or gossip are doing so online via social media, where non-journalists who are less harried rule the roost.

The CPC War Room gang may be high-fiving each other around the conniving brilliance of their adaptation of a Liberal Strategist's tactics, but they're doing so exactly when those tactics are coming to the end of their heyday and newer approaches are starting to dominate.

But that's what happens when you mine instead of getting creative, isn't it?

Even when cribbing from their opponents, the Harper Conservatives are one step behind.  That may make them winners in the short-term, but as Kinsella could probably tell them - it's not the strongest who survive, but those best able to evolve with the times.

But Team Harper are probably gonna have to wait for his next book to figure that one out.