- Auditor #9 wrote:
- So tell us ibis (I know you won't) is it dead in the water? Do you feel it in the bowels?
I think there's only been a couple of occasions when I felt it would pass, to be entirely honest. Somewhat depressing, really. I think I can lay a fair claim to
Libertas' slogan - facts, not politics - and by and large the political
establishment has been a burden rather than a help.
I think the complete lack of 'official' effort through March and April left the field clear for the No side, so that a lot of what they said wasn't contradicted early on. The official campaigns only started in May, and by that time they had too much ground to make up - they started a reactive campaign to counter the various spurious claims (the majority of which only sound good), and haven't actually got a positive campaign off the ground at all. FF's early effort wasn't even reactive - it was scaremongering, and dismissals of the various No campaigns themselves.
I think FG have run a very good campaign - they were in early, out on the streets early, and ran a rebuttal campaign early. As far as I can tell through the smoke, FG are now trying to run a positive campaign, but the outlying elements of the party are still at stage 1. I see the FF shills on p.ie are already trying to put the blame on FG, amazingly.
Labour were...where? Running an early poster campaign for the locals, I think.
The Greens, unfortunately, were somewhat hamstrung. McKenna found her movement early on, but the main players...hmm. I imagine they would be wary of alienating the third of their support base that oppose the Treaty.
The attention paid by the media to Libertas has given the No vote a respectable face. We may not consider Libertas respectable (and most of the No side doesn't), but 'successful businessman' just attracts automatic respect in Ireland.
Is it actually dead in the water? No, I don't feel that. It's been in a state of flux all along. What matters is what people think on the day. The polls had it for the opposition just before the general election last year (you may remember the FG crowing before the results), but I thought a large part of that was attributable to people not wanting to
say they were going to vote for the crowd of chancers. I think it's currently popular to say you're voting No, but all that actually counts is where you put your mark on the ballot paper.
As Edo says, though, it's a complicated treaty, about a complicated institution, and one which the Irish government frequently uses as a scapegoat for its own misdeeds. Frankly, very few people are actually good at explaining complicated things in an understandable way.
Portal 