The corrupt Liberal government, in power since 2003 under premiers Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne, were rewarded for their waste and misuse of billions of taxpayers' dollars by being handed a majority government.
PC leader Tim Hudak announced after the polls closed that he would not lead the party into the next election. At the party's first post-election caucus meeting, the members told the leader what they thought of his leadership during the campaign. Hudak later announced he would step down on July 2, the day the new legislature will begin sitting.
Naturally there was a lot of hand-wringing after the big loss and the usual talk about rebuilding and changing the direction of the Progressive Conservative party. Wynne won the unexpected majority primarily because Hudak announced if he formed the next government, he would slash the civil service by 100,000 jobs. Although he occasionally mumbled something about attrition, he usually made the bold statement about cutting jobs and followed it up with a grin.
The way Hudak spoke of the job cuts made it easy for the other parties and the unions to attack him and convince Ontarians a Hudak government will fire your child's teacher, your next door neighbour, your spouse, nurses, firefighters and police. Candidates going door to door did not have a good experience.
Ironically, after the election economist Don Drummond said it is possible the Wynne government can cut 100,000 jobs in order to balance the budget by 2017-18. Although Wynne disagreed with Drummond, she did not say she would not cut public sector jobs. During the campaign, the premier said she would not decrease the civil service and might even increase it.
Last week, MPP Christine Elliott became the first candidate to announce she was running to replace Hudak. In an
article published in iPolitics, my friend Mitch Wolfe gives Elliott advice on how to win the next election. In short, give up conservative principles and appeal to a broad base of the population.
What is particularly troublesome in the article is when Wolfe writes, "
If she wins, she'll dramatically change politics at Queen's Park. Specifically she'll change how the Progressive Conservatives are treated and viewed by the Ontario media and opposition parties."
There are a couple of things wrong with the above. It will be fairly easy for Elliott (or any other PC leader) to change how the party is viewed by the media and the opposition. All they have to do is form policies and govern the way others want them to govern. Instead of the leader, or the caucus, or party members deciding the policies of the PC Party, others will decide for them; the media and those in the mushy middle. If what the PCs are going to do should be outsourced it would be better send it to India rather than allow the party's direction to be dictated by the
CBC and the
Toronto Star.
The second problem with this approach, one just as serious, is it simply won't work. Oh, she will be a media darling and will be praised for her policies right up until the next election is called. Then her friends in the media will abandon her, call her a right wing Sarah Palin-like bimbo and throw their support behind their beloved Liberals.
To illustrate why this approach won't work, one needs to look no further than to U.S. President John McCain. When McCain (just kidding about the president part) ran in the 2008 Republican primary, he was the favourite of the left wing media. McCain was on
CNN so much you would think he was a plane sitting on the bottom of an ocean somewhere. But as soon as Barack Obama won his party's nomination, McCain was ignored and criticized as being just another evil Republican. The media went on to not only support Obama but to turn him into a messiah.
Small "c" conservatives want a conservative government and should not simply settle for a slightly more fiscally responsible Liberal-lite party. Mike Harris was hated by the media but that didn't stop him from winning two majority governments. Ditto Ronald Reagan. They formulated and governed by conservative principles.
It is not necessary for the media to like a party or a candidate in order to win an election and Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is a perfect example of this
It is not necessary for the media to like a party or a candidate in order to win an election and Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is a perfect example of this. The media attacked Ford since he was first elected as a councillor in 2000. Despite being referred to as a buffoon and laughed at, he won the 2010 mayor's race by taking 47% of the vote.
Even after all the crack and booze scandals and allegations he is homophobic, racist, sexist and all the other "ists" and despite the fact he was missing on the campaign trail for two months while in rehab, the latest polls show he's in second place. He's ahead of former PC Party leader John Tory who seems to be spending the campaign getting people to like him.
Ford has done well politically and is in second place because he ignored the media, the criticism by the special interest groups and stuck to his fiscally conservative message of stopping the gravy train.
Wynne obtained her majority by moving the Liberal Party to the left of the socialist NDP. A party that is more fiscally conservative than the other two is not necessarily a conservative party and that's what Wolfe seems to be advocating. This is simply not good enough for true conservatives.
Hudak was on the right track as far as his policies went. The civil service needs to be reduced and a lot of Liberal supporters will be shocked when Wynne gets around to doing it. It was dumb for Hudak to put a number on the reduction and even dumber to give the impression 100,000 pink slips would be issued before the PC leader settled into the premier's office. Given the alternatives of the Liberals or the NDP, the provincial workforce could have been cut down through attrition.
If Elliott, or whoever wins the PC leadership, follows Wolfe's advice, conservatism will be dead in Ontario in terms of having a major conservative party in the province that has a future possibility of governing.
