EIGHT REGISTERED CANDIDATES. ANOTHER SIX DECLARED. THE RACE FOR THE LEADERSHIP OF THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY MAY BE CONFUSING, BUT THE UPSIDE IS THAT IT’S WIDE OPEN.
By now the jokes write themselves: “Wouldn’t it be simpler just to list the Conservatives who aren’t running for leader?” With eight registered candidates, another six declared, and three or four more considering a run, the Tories are in the opposite conundrum to that of the NDP, whose leadership race has yet to attract its first candidate.
True, the Conservative race is absent most of the few names anyone can recall from Stephen Harper’s cabinet: Jason Kenney, Peter MacKay, John Baird, James Moore. Probably the biggest name, Tony Clement, has since pulled out, knowing enough not to mistake name recognition for support.
Still, the upside of all this confusion is a race that is wide open; the last thing the Conservatives needed was a coronation. A party that in government had managed to stamp a deeply unpleasant image of itself on the public, even as its wayward policies were demoralizing supporters, has the opportunity in defeat to remake itself into something more appealing. The present raft of youngish pretenders — of 10 or so serious candidates, eight are under 50 — may not be household names, but together they present a fresh face for the party, and the makings of a formidable front bench. With seven months to go, there is time enough for candidates to grow in stature. Or not. We shall see.
One early trend: they seem to be shaking into two groups, with starkly different tones and policies. On the one hand, there are Michael Chong and Maxime Bernier, with optimistic, ideas-based campaigns, broadly liberal (in the classical sense) in outlook, that put a smiling face on conservatism. On the other, there are Kellie Leitch and Steven Blaney, whose early forays — values tests for immigrants, niqab bans (backed by the notwithstanding clause!) — seem aimed at mining the dark vein of fear and belligerence that were the party’s trademark in the Harper years.
Indeed, the race may well become something of a referendum on the Harper government. Chong and Bernier, though both held cabinet posts at one point or another, nevertheless defined themselves as mavericks within the party, often bucking the PMO’s line in a way that few others dared. (Chong remains one of the few Canadian ministers in living memory to resign on a point of principle. When was the last before him? John Turner?) The policies they have been rolling out — liberalizing markets, simplifying taxes, restraining the power of the party leader — can all be seen as implicit rebukes of the previous government, which did none of those things when it was not moving in the opposite direction.
Blaney and Leitch, on the other hand, as conspicuous Harper loyalists, will appeal to those Conservatives who feel the party has nothing to apologize for, and those voters who believe the country’s most pressing concerns are the threat of terrorism and a disintegrating sense of national identity. This is much the same rupture, albeit in less extreme form, as now divides the conservative movement south of the border: between free-marketers and cultural nationalists, traditional conservatives and Breitbartian yahoos.
The divide cannot be explained in conventional leftright terms, as between moderates and radicals. Neither Chong nor Bernier could be accused of running as moderates, in policy terms: both are, in fact, proposing radical shifts in direction. With Bernier that’s evident, but the same applies to Chong: his proposals on democratic reform or privatizing Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., for all his Red Tory manners, would be quite at home in the old Reform party.
What distinguishes them from their rivals is more a matter of temperament. It’s the difference between principle and populism, between radicalism and yahooism. Chong and Bernier are running on policies that have wide support among expert opinion, but have until now been considered too politically difficult to attempt. Whereas the policies proposed by Leitch and Blaney, like so many of the Harper government’s, have almost no expert support, but are, they hope, easily sold to the public. And while the latter carry themselves with that familiar mix of greasiness and pique so characteristic of the Harper cabinet, there is a notable guilelessness to Chong and Bernier. Whatever else might be said, no one could accuse either of a hidden agenda.
It will be interesting to see how the other candidates arrange themselves along this spectrum. While Brad Trost, for example, shares some of the same boiling resentments as the Harperites, as a social conservative he has more in common with free-marketers like Bernier: like virtually every other strand of the conservative movement, the so-cons got next to nothing from the Harper government. Lisa Raitt (if she runs) and Erin O’Toole, on the other hand, share some of Chong and Bernier’s amiability. Yet I couldn’t tell you one thing about what either stands for.
Former speaker Andrew Scheer, meanwhile, may hope to position himself equidistant from each of these poles: not as radical as Bernier, not as Harperite as Leitch, not as so-con as Trost, yet with more policy heft than Raitt or O’Toole. As for Chris Alexander, who can say: while he shares the odium of having announced the “barbaric practices snitch line” with Leitch, his first policy statement since declaring his leadership aspirations was a call for a one-third increase in immigration.
The first official candidates’ debate is in two weeks’ time. Stay tuned: things are about to get interesting. No joke.