Majority or bust
Less than a week out to the election, here’s a thought: Can the Tories survive anything other than an outright majority win? If they lose at the polls, or win a minority that’s toppled, can the party hold together?
For the last nine years, the spoils of victory have allowed the party to keep a variety of ills under wraps. So long as the party was in power, able to provide jobs and power to the faithful, it was easy to manage growing discontent in the party and among the grassroots. Once the good times stop, though, the party is going to have to come to a nasty reckoning — its record in office has left few conservatives happy, and its efforts to win another election, if futile, may make winning the next one even harder.
A key issue, of course, is the sense among true-blue conservatives that this government has been underwhelming ... to put it mildly. I share that frustration. There’s a few bright spots here and there — thanks again for nuking the long-gun registry, fellas — but overall, the Tories have been all the centrist things I’d hoped they wouldn’t be. They spend too much. Instead of reforming the tax code, they’ve actually made it worse through their ridiculous boutique credits. They haven’t found a sector of the economy they don’t feel would benefit from corporate welfare. They have actually boasted of defending supply management. And despite all Stephen Harper’s tough talk, the Canadian Forces are too small and in desperate need of new equipment. In some areas, the Navy, first and foremost, things have got worse under the Tories. Our onceproud fleet has rusted out on Harper’s watch, and help is years away ... if it ever comes at all.
Those are just my beefs. Ask a thousand small-c conservatives what their biggest disappointment has been and you’ll probably get about as many answers. That’s a problem for a party facing a potentially long spell out of power. “We’ ll do better next time, probably, eventually” won’t exactly fire up the troops as they cart their office supplies to their new, crappier desks in the opposition wings, or keep donations rolling in from the grassroots as the party sets out to rebuild. Morale matters, and I’m hearing it’s not so great these days. It’s no mystery why.
But the main concern isn’t that the party has disappointed the true believers (though that’s bad). What’s worse is my sense that they’re losing moderates in the Toronto area. Tories around the country may roll their eyes at being told they need to worry about the mushy moderates populating the centre of the universe — let the eastern bastards freeze and all that — but show me a path to victory for a Conservative party that doesn’t involve a strong showing in the GTA. Anyone?
Fundamentally, the Tories have too often offered voters the worst of both worlds. On the issues that matter most to most conservative voters — national security, fiscal responsibility, smaller government — their record is lousy. And for millions of other Canadians, swing vot- ers who might be persuaded to vote Conservative but aren’t committed Tories, the party has played to its worst impulses. It’s been petty, arrogant, aloof, and has allowed its desire to win over small voting blocs to blind itself to how it all comes across to the public at large.
I don’t personally believe that the Tories have been worse than the governments that came before.
Indeed, on balance, I’d give Harper a lukewarm but passing grade. Still, Conservative parties have to work harder in Canada. There just aren’t enough committed right-wing voters to win elections on a sustainable basis. Winning over the middle while satisfying the right was never going to be easy, but good Lord, there had to be ways other than this.
The conservative message, to my mind, has always been a fundamentally optimistic one: things aren’t perfect, but they’re getting better, and with a few minor tweaks, they’ll be better still. No need for massive government programs to solve problems that don’t exist. Maximum freedom and minimum taxes will solve most of them on their own.
Simplistic? Sure. But a positive and uniquely conservative message that the Harper Tories never really articulated. Instead, they demoralized the true believers and turned off the mushy middle, leaving them with no option other than to play the odious niqab card in hopes of shoring up some last-minute votes.
It could work, I suppose. If it does, the Tories will have dodged a bullet. But if not, the day after they lose power, Canada’s Conservatives are going to have to ask themselves what party they want to be, and whether there’s enough voters left who’ll trust them to actually follow through this time.
The spoils of victory have allowed true-blue Tories to swallow a lot they disagree with. What if they lose?