How about denigrating immigrants, removing healthcare for refugee claimants, and generally feeding irrational fears wherever it was politically expedient ?
Are you living on some other planetr? Harper denigrating immigrants? Harper fought for the immigrant vote as much as anyone else, and raised immigration numbers in an election year. That didn't mean he didn't also play to the concern conservatives have with the unwieldy cost of bringing in the wrong kind of immigrant, and the court-ordered catering to economic migrants who claim immigrant status. Irrational fears? The guy wound up in a closet when a crazed Muslim was involved in a gunman outside the room he was in. I'd hardly call that irrational. You simply regard any concerns about immigration, culture and violence as unjustified and irrational because you're a globalist leftist and see no need of borders.
You can claim that Liberals play to peoples' emotions but if you don't acknowledge that fear is the Conservatives' ace in the hole, you are a partisan hack and utterly uninteresting.
Can you go ahead and bemoan the state of intolerant and insulting political discourse once again? It sounds so... noble.