He gave the speech in Whitehorse on August 18. And he gave it again in Victoria on January 7th. Two almost identical speeches to the party faithful containing more partisan vitriol than usual, even for him.“What I'm telling you is that with the NDP and the Liberals, what you see is what you get,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper told the two audiences - almost half a year apart.“Their instincts are all bad. Dangerous ideas and vacuous thinking that would reverse the progress we have made.  When they do talk about policy, what is their direction?“Tax and spend schemes that are so extreme they would make the worst  European budget look solid by comparison. (Remember he has  just signed a major free trade agreement with Europe. )“Always an inclination to build big government bureaucracy at the expense of families and communities and put the welfare of the criminal ahead of the interests of law-abiding citizens.”Harper then separated his two political adversaries so he could attack their foibles individually.The Liberals “don't talk about their alternatives because they don't have any…I guess I don't count legalizing the marijuana trade as a serious economic policy.”He reached back to the Jean Chretien era to sneer at Liberal foreign policy, citing “a so-called soft-power approach that would again strip down the military and make Canada's role in the world about nothing more than pleasing foreign governments.”As for Tom Mulcair's NDP, he accused it of having policies “so far outside the Canadian mainstream, they don't want to talk about them.”  And he claimed Mulcair “lobbied against energy exports and jobs in private” when he visited Washington.He concluded each speech with the Canadian version of the American presidential sign-off : “God bless you – and God bless Canada.”University of Manitoba professor emeritus of politics Paul Thomas says Harper “seems to reflect this trend in all political systems now where the partisanship is deeper, more shrill and less constructive than it used to be. It's part of what's become the permanent campaign. It reflects the professionalization of political life.”Until quite recently, political campaigns were staffed almost entirely by volunteers. No more. Today's  back rooms and war rooms are stuffed full with political “professionals” armed with all the latest manipulative tools and techniques.The phenomenon is powerfully exposed and explained in a new U.S. book by Sasha Issenberg called The Victory Lab – The New Science of Campaigning. Thomas says Issenberg's basic thesis is that “you can win elections by getting three or four per cent more votes than your adversary so you have your loyal base and you keep them enthralled with the party they're identified with.“And now you've got so many tools and techniques at your disposal that you can target your message to a small, tiny, segment of the electorate and just boost turnout in your favour.”Canada's Conservatives were onto this technique long before Issenberg's book. University of Calgary political scientist Tom Flanagan spelled out his role in conceiving of and creating the party's Constituency Information Management System, CIMS, in his 2007 book, Harper's Team: Behind the Scenes in the Conservative Rise to Power.Issenberg, Thomas says, “shows how parties have combined polling, focus groups and statistical analysis overlaying data gathered by pollsters, on top of census information, other kinds of information and psychology -  the psychology of how people reason about public events and so on.“It clearly has a manipulative, Orwellian component to it,” Thomas continues . “Voters who are somewhat indifferent to politics, if not cynical and hostile, have to be reached and so Issenberg writes about 'anger points' and 'pleasure points'. And so you can touch on hot button issues and you trigger emotional reactions - exactly what the prime minister sought to evoke with his recent personal attacks on his opponents. “At that point, Thomas says, “people get angry and frustrated and you can use that anger and frustration by the language you use and the words you use to describe issues, people, situations and so on.”Indeed, an online ad for Issenberg's book claims that “Armed with research from behavioural psychology, data-mining, and randomized experiments that treat voters as unwitting guinea pigs, the smartest campaigns now believe they know who you will vote for even before you do.”Harper sees politics as total war, Thomas continues. “That kind of destructive approach is becoming more and more the mainstream.” Any politician who tries to have an open and civil conversation with the electorate is increasingly dismissed as naïve.The phenomenon feeds on itself. Each party thinks that because the other is doing it, they have to do it too. “It becomes a spiral of escalation and everybody starts to use the same toolkit,” warns Thomas.The ultimate victim of all this manipulation, spin and attack are citizens - and democracy itself, he warns.“It's the politics of mutual destruction now. Non-voting is a learned habit and more and more people are falling into it. The more worrying explanation is that people are starting to believe that it does no good to vote.”“We tinker around to make it more convenient to vote, as if that will resolve the much deeper disillusionment and malaise that exists within the political system for which the parties and the leaders have to answer.”Frances Russell was born in Winnipeg and graduated from the University of Manitoba with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and political science. A journalist since 1962, she has covered and commented on politics in Manitoba, Ontario, B.C. and Ottawa, working for The Winnipeg Tribune, United Press International, The Globe and Mail, The Vancouver Sun and The Winnipeg Free Press as well as freelanced for The Toronto Star, The Edmonton Journal, CBC Radio and TV and Time Magazine.She is the author of two award-winning books on Manitoba history: Mistehay Sakahegan – The Great Lake: The Beauty and the Treachery of Lake Winnipeg and The Canadian Crucible – Manitoba's Role in Canada's Great Divide. Both won the Manitoba Historical Society Award for popular history.She is married with one son and two grandsons and lives in Winnipeg.