We are, as I said the other night, losing this election – but that does not mean that the election is lost. At least, not yet. The fact that we’re losing is, let’s be frank, undeniable. In every poll of which I’m aware we’ve lost ground since the start of the campaign. In our best poll – Ipsos Reid – we’ve gone from a tie to being down by four points. In our worst poll – SES – we’re now down by fifteen points. The real figure, if I had to guess, it somewhere in between. Whatever it is, it’s not good.

But, still, there’s hope.

Wars are not won on the defensive. At best, we can dig-in and hold our blood-stained ground. Given that we hold insufficient territory as it is, a defensive strategy cannot possibly be a winning one.

As I see it, the problem is that we’re running the campaign that the more moderate members of the press corps would like us to run. We’re running a campaign on Timbit-sized promises which, fundamentally, buy into the Liberal view of the world – that the state should sponsor child care, that our crime problems can be solved by tinkering, and that total public health care is a good idea. We’re running the campaign that moderates would like us to run in that we’ve mostly played nice and have refrained from negative attacks. We’re also running the campaign that most of these so-called “moderates” would like us to run in that, if we keep on acting this way, we’re going to lose.

It reminds me a lot of how I’d like things in the United States to work in reverse. I – and many other Republicans – regularly advise Democrats to become more patriotic and more Republican-like, not because we want them to win, but simply because we’d like our ideas too dominate the political discourse regardless of which party is in power and, further, we believe that if the Democrats move to the right it gives us a chance to do the same in that it would shift the political centre of gravity.

If we’re going to win, leaving aside the policy prescriptions I’ve set out elsewhere, we need to do one important thing: attack, attack, attack.

Forget the “people tune out negative attacks” nonsense. All evidence – from our last election to every American election in memory is that negative attacks worse. The best way to win – especially in a media-saturated environment – is to paint your opponent being the moral equivalent of a child molester.

The secret to victory is, as Fredrick the Great pointed out – audacity, always audacity. Maintain the assault, never apologize, and never retreat. Our goal is not to hold our position. Nor is it to outflank the enemy. This is a war of annihilation. We don’t need any finesse or subtlety, we need to grab the enemy by the throat and not let them go. We need to adopt a political strategy analogous to the military strategy of Ulysses S. Grant in 1864-1865 when he defeated Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. We need to latch onto the enemy and use our superior resources (cash and volunteer support) to annihilated the enemy’s forces in an unending battle of attrition.

The way to win this battle is not to stay in our trenches, hoping that we will be shielded from Liberal fire. We must be attacking constantly and without mercy. We need to overrun the Liberals’ position and then bayonet the survivors. That’s how we’ll win.

Now what, you might ask, does that translate to politically? Simply another rehashing of sponsorship? Hardly.

We need to launch an all-out assault on the whole of the Liberal record. Every scandal, every policy failure. There’s a list of 199 of them out there. We need that tacked up to every wall in the land. We need to use everything in the arsenal against them. Every wild proposal – every wedge issue.

We need attacks on sponsorship. We need attacks on HRDC. We need attacks on their proposals for legalized drugs and prostitution. We need to find victims of crime and put them on television to explain how the Liberals let the people who harmed them out of jail to rob, rape, or murder again. We need Canadian soldiers to explain how the Liberals sent them to war with gear suitable to fight and win the first Korean conflict.

It’s time to put down our Nerf Gun and get out our Louisville Slugger. We need to seize hold of everything we can use against the Liberals and then we need to beat them until they lie bloody and unmoving on the ground. And then we need to beat them some more. We need to kick the hell out of these liars, fools, and criminals who have stolen and nearly destroyed our country.