- Doug Firby, Columnist
The unsettling quiet that descended over the Conservative crowd assembled at the Telus Convention Centre on election night told the story that most Tories refused to openly admit – a majority government was within reach and they blew it.
October’s election was the best opportunity to gain power the reunified forces of the right have had since the party split during the early ‘90s post-Brian Mulroney hangover: This time, the Liberals were faltering under a sincere but ineffectual intellectual who refused to temper his Green Shift carbon tax plan even as the economy burst in flames. Meanwhile, the left-of-centre votes were scattered across a spectrum of options, from Grit red to Green to NDP orange.
Further, Stephen Harper – a university trained economist – has the credentials to assure anxious Canadians he is the right man to have his hands on the tiller. His chief opponent, Stephane Dion, effectively committed political suicide by blithely putting his life’s passion, the environment, ahead of the market crisis, to which he seemed for all intents and purposes oblivious.
So, the palpable election night letdown is entirely understandable.
But disheartened conservatives who conclude the right is forever doomed to cling to half-mandates are substantially misreading the political scene. Rather, true blues with a longer view will soon realize that Canada may well be headed toward a whole new political era, in which moderate conservative political ideology replaces the Boomer-era neo-liberal philosophies that have dominated since the Lester Pearson years of the mid-1960s.
The divided Liberals’ credibility and influence is in a freefall, its big tent torn to pieces by factional infighting. Shunned by once-faithful Quebec, it has no choice but to seek sanctuary in its few remaining safe seats, in Toronto’s core and on the East Coast.
Meanwhile, the Conservatives are slowly and steadily erecting a big tent of their own, hanging on to the former Reform contingent while moderating the message enough to appeal to those sensible Canadians in the middle who are more interested in good governance than ideology.
One of the party’s smartest moves has been to reach out to ethnic communities and recent immigrants, who for years have been considered unreachable Liberal loyalists. By appealing to those communities’ often socially conservative values, the Tories have found the wedge that might finally pry those voters free. Many are already questioning whether they must remain obliged to the party whose liberal immigration policies allowed many of them to come to this country.
For their part, the Liberals are making a profound mistake in assuming that they lost simply because they had a bad leader. Instead, they need to ask themselves what was going on within the party that opened the door to a third-choice candidate in the first place. Clearly, the Jean Chretien-Paul Martin family feud has injected a poison that, unaddressed, will hobble the party for years, if not decades.
Even if the Liberals were to find their new messiah – unlikely, given the current list of candidates – that leader will inherit a party that has forgotten what it takes to win: the grassroots organization, the power to raise money and -- most important of all -- a clear philosophical vision of what it means to be a Liberal.
In short, finding a dynamic and charismatic leader is less of a worry that regaining their bearings on the moral compass. As Andrew Steele wrote in the Globe and Mail last week: “History is littered with the corpses of successful political parties. . . . There is no guarantee it will ever be back in government.”
The Tories have struggled with identity, too. The necessary tempering of the more radical Reform messages have some on the party’s right asking whether its quest for power will come at the price of its soul. The West is still in on the coalition, but they’re watching those Ontario Conservatives with a wary eye.
Unlike the Liberals, though, the Conservatives are close to winning the hearts of Canadians. In fact, a charismatic leader might just be the last remaining piece in the puzzle. Much as it pains a Calgarian to admit it, Prime Minister Harper is a cold fish. He simply can’t connect on an emotional level, and he lacks political intuition. Of the handful of misstatements that cost his party critical swing votes in the election, one of the most devastating was his honest – but insensitive – observation that the current market collapse presents Canadians with “buying opportunities.”
He’s an economist – not a politician. He doesn’t get it, and it seems unlikely he ever will.
Yet, in spite of their leader’s shortcomings, the Conservatives are slowly finding their way into the hearts of Canadians through solid, sensible governing. Harper can nurture that progress by showing the same tactical mastery in the upcoming minority government that he showed in the one just past. And, as long as he sticks to that strategy, the party faithful must also remain unified behind him.
Ultimately, though, there will be day when Harper must step aside in the interests of the party. Let us hope when that day comes, he will put The Cause ahead of ego. If not, a Conservative version of the Chretien-Martin war would undo years of party building that holds the promise of establishing a new hegemony of the right.
Doug Firby, former Editorial Pages Editor of the Calgary Herald, is Alberta columnist for Troy Media Corporation.
