Off the mark

Somewhere, Stephen Harper is laughing his ass off over the intraparty fighting he's managed to provoke by pushing Candace Hoeppner's private member's bill to eliminate the federal long gun registry. But I'll suggest that for those who are eager to fight over today's vote (and future ones), the current strategy of attacking NDP and Liberal MPs over their willingness to vote against the gun registry is at best marginally productive for a single vote, and thoroughly counterproductive in the long run.

So far, the lone apparent strategy has been to try to pressure rural opposition MPs (some of whom actually ran on repealing the gun registry) to vote with their party leader instead of with their constituents. But to the extent the issue is seen as one involving a rural/urban split, doesn't it make more sense to instead put pressure on urban or suburban Con MPs to listen to their constituents as well, rather than setting up a situation where opposition MPs are the only ones in the line of fire?

It's obvious that the Cons are trying to have it both ways by playing up the "free vote" line for opposition MPs while their party looks to be entirely whipped. But that messaging can be used against them by the opposition parties: they can embrace the free-vote principle for themselves (rather than calling for whipped votes as some are doing), then turn a spotlight onto Con MPs as to their individual choices.

From there, it should be an easy step to turn the tables on urban and suburban Cons - not only by pointing out the support of police chiefs for the registry, but also by highlighting crimes which have taken place in a particular community where the gun registry would be a useful tool in law enforcement, and asking why the Con MP doesn't want to see them solved.

Again, I'm far from sure that the gun registry is in fact a hill that any opposition party should be willing to die on. But if the issue is one that's going to be a public fight (at the expense of the patronage and incompetence themes that were starting to take hold), then surely it's at least better to make Con MPs the battleground - rather than assuming that Harper's hold over his party can't be challenged, and thus needlessly taking on damage to the opposition that can be avoided.

Update: Steve V makes the case for free votes as a matter of principle.