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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
October 19, 2003
Re-united we stand
One should I think rejoice and not only on the "right" in Canada to see the union of the Progressive Conservative and Canadian Alliance parties. Assuming of course it is a deal and it doesn't fly to pieces from the same old centrifugal forces. Perhaps it won't: for the very announcement of the merger is powerfully centripetal; the vested interests begin to accommodate themselves. And a wonderful opportunity has emerged for the new party in Ontario. Our province has long had the clever instinct of splitting its vote between provincial and federal Parliaments. The election of Dalton McGuinty's Liberal Party to provincial office is the single most dangerous threat to Paul Martin's federal Liberals. There is yet not the slightest whiff of poll evidence to support this contention but I expect to find it soon. Ontarians are just like that: we want to have it both ways. We want federal and provincial governments vying with one another to provide services to us. We assume the best way is to set them at each other's throats in a life-and-death game of competitive spending. As to the party itself Ontario wants re-assurance that the leadership knows what it is doing. We like government in this province we like it to appear to be competent or rather smooth. Ontarians are vexed by the spectacle of a party that looks amateurish even if its heart is in the right place. We would prefer devils in human flesh so long as the sound-bites come trippingly from their tongues. As our provincial elections have shown we are quite prepared to be a volatile electorate to throw out a government . We've done it six times in living memory (which I take to be 20 years) -- the whole province swinging round to the view that it is time to "throw the bastards out" and in each case swinging very close to the election. Yet in all these cases but one (the NDP provincial victory in 1990 which was the result of a three-way vote split) I would argue that we did the most comfortable thing -- voted in the obvious smoothies. Which is both opportunity and danger for any contender and an argument for courage. It is actually more important to stay "on message" than to get the message right if your purpose is to get out the vote. A party publicly worrying that it may be "too conservative" or alternatively not conservative enough is a party with a well-developed deathwish. Here we must consider the fundamental weakness of "conservatives" in our time. The people who feel comfortable with the label form naturally two wings -- the "libertarians" who just want a dynamic free economy and the "social conservatives" who want a civilization too. Given the times the libertarian wing is the stronger and the social conservatives will support it for only a few crumbs thinking it at least less likely to try such grand experiments in social engineering as post-modern "liberals" can't resist. On this point the good news is the orphaning of the "Red Tories" by the new union -- of the people within the old Progressive Conservative party who were committed to both social and economic policies indistinguishable from those of the ruling Liberal elite. In two candid words what I have called in a former column the "apostate Catholic" faction -- the people with family roots in the anti-clericalism of another generation who today champion instant divorce easy abortions the equality fever and the latest eugenic technologies simply because these are "modern". With any luck the Red Tories will set up their own party under David Orchard that can help the NDP split the vote on the left instead of the right. But even failing this the new Conservative party benefits by being rid of them. I believe a plain review of the history of the PCs in the last generation would show that the destruction of the federal party was a function of the rise of the Red Tory faction within it putting genuinely conservative voters in the position of wondering if they could support the party at all. The party emptied the same way the churches emptied when the progressive types seized the pulpits. For the first rule of competitive electoral politics is to concede a large block of voters to the enemy. "Liberal" views are already well-represented within the Liberal party and the people who have them are not going to move. The Conservatives must rather steal the people who vote Liberal despite not being "liberal". And such people have been accumulating over the last three federal elections. It will be happy hunting season if the party knows its game. And even if it slips and slides a bit the advantage of the return to two-party competition (Liberal v. Conservative) in English Canada bodes well. No good whatever came from the west-east schism that Red Toryism triggered in the Mulroney era. It only allowed the Liberals to replace 75 safe seats in Quebec with 100 safe seats in Ontario. In this sense the three-term prime ministry of Jean Chretien was the ultimate gift of Preston Manning just as Mr. Manning's western success was the ultimate gift of Brian Mulroney. The clock is ticking against the new Conservatives however -- for the purposes of the next election. I gather it will not be possible to arrange a leadership convention till March and at that it will be an unconventional convention. Canada's determinedly pro-Liberal media will pounce upon and exaggerate the slightest sign of disorder in what must necessarily be a chaotic process of reunion; as much as America's determinedly pro-Democrat media have been out to skewer George Bush and the Republicans with the slightest sign of disorder in Iraq. Moreover Paul Martin soon to inherit the Big Red Machine of federal politics is as cynical as his predecessor when it comes to tactics. He is hardly going to delay the next election to accommodate a united right. We can reasonably assume he will time it expressly to strangle the new infant in its crib. For this reason I am praying that a new party leader -- say Mike Harris -- may quickly emerge as "heir apparent" in the same way Mr. Martin emerged for the Liberals. It is nice that we have recongregated in the wilderness but will need a Moses to lead us out. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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