Tory leader choice a gift for Trudeau

Dear Editor:

Once again the Conservative Party has shown how completely out of touch with the majority of Canadians it is with its choice of leader Monday.

I wonder which leader Dan Albas was backing this time?

If the Conservative Party wants to regain Canadians’ confidence, it must represent every region of the country, not just its Alberta base.

The fact that Conservatives are unable to widen their base creates an imbalance within the party and its electorate, which remains marginal in major urban centres and some provinces.

The role that populists play in the party does not help, either. To have a strand that defends the silent majority and promotes pragmatic policies is vital.

But it becomes counter-productive when the Conservatives are primarily perceived as a populist party.

Conservatives must affirm once and for all that abortion and same sex-marriage are fundamental rights. If not, they run the risk of alienating themselves from a majority of Canadians.

Also as long as they stick to their big tent philosophy where everybody, including the racists, are welcome, becoming the party of racists is the inevitable consequence.

Every time somebody says something abhorrent that goes unchecked, another moderate leaves the party for good, and, before too long, the only people who are left are the racists and the people who are ok allowing the racists to have a platform.

The Liberals are probably dancing in the streets, metaphorically, with Erin O’Toole’s victory.

They know full well that as long as the Conservatives keep putting up objectively bad candidates (at least from a progressive standpoint), they will get a portion of the progressive vote who are scared of the Conservatives.

Nobody on the left “likes” the Liberals, and most view the Liberals as right-leaning, but they’re at least palatable.

Witness former Conservative leader Andrew Scheer’s performance last year: despite Trudeau’s “many” faults, which were myriad, he still won because we don’t like social conservatism.

As long as they’re still pandering to the social conservatives, the party will not win, except in the Western parts where they are so hard-core biased. Sad. R. St. Martin, Lake Country