Erin O'Toole has won the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada. But, to achieve that victory, he tied his fortunes to the party's social conservatives. Alan Freeman writes:
In the 2017 Tory leadership race, O’Toole ran as a moderate against a pretty right-wing roster of candidates. He came in third. Scheer won by hoovering up social conservative votes and capturing support in Quebec by promising to defend supply management for dairy farmers. Realizing that being a moderate wasn’t going to work in 2020 against the equally moderate MacKay, O’Toole took on a harsher, more belligerent tone to appeal to the party’s right.
So the one-time moderate became a right-wing attack dog pledging to fight the “liberal left” and “cancel culture,” language he seems to have learned after watching a bit too much Fox News. And O’Toole vowed to “Take back Canada,” unsubtly borrowing from Boris Johnson’s successful and xenophobic-tinged “Take Back Control” slogan in the 2016 Brexit referendum.
Though O’Toole comes from Ontario, he decided to go after the Alberta vote big time, and succeeded in landing Premier Jason Kenney’s endorsement. To do so, he went all out for the oilsands by promising to: get rid of carbon taxes, overturn the federal B.C. north coast tanker ban, make it easier to build pipelines, and give Alberta billions in equalization payments.
At a time when Alberta’s economy is in free fall and the need for massive diversification away from fossil fuels is imperative, O’Toole came up with the extraordinary statement that “My province needs to understand that Alberta’s issues are national issues.” How about a national politician who speaks the truth to Alberta about its need to prepare for a post-carbon world?
O’Toole also won because he understood the Conservatives’ weird voting system, which gave major weight to Quebec ridings where Conservatives are about as plentiful as unilingual anglophone monarchists. Allying himself with Quebec gun-rights activists, the O’Toole campaign swept many of these constituencies, helping to secure his victory.
There has never been anything moderate about The Harper Party. Despite their name, they are still Stephen Harper's Party. Like any good politician, O'Toole realized that presenting himself as a moderate in The Harper Party was a losing proposition. So he veered strongly to the right.
The downside of that strategy is that, try as he might, he won't be able to put lipstick on this pig.
Image: strive.org.za
8 comments:
The Cons have yet to realize that aping the GOP's religious culture wars isn't a winning strategy. Fifteen years ago, only 28% of Canadians said religion was very important to them, compared with 55% of Americans. Since then, church attendance has been dropping steadily in Canada and the non-religious now make up almost a quarter of the population. In the US, evangelicals make up 26% of the population and comprise a huge portion of GOP voters. Conservative Catholics make up another significant GOP voting bloc. In contrast, evangelicals make up 7% of the Canadian population. And while 39% of Canadians identify as Catholic (vs. 20% of Americans), the vast majority of Canadian Catholics don't accept the church's positions on birth control, abortion and same sex marriage.
While capturing religious supporters continues to be the road to the Con leadership, it's not the road to electoral success. The majority of Canadians, even religious Canadians, have no interest in or patience with US-style culture wars. They don't want to turn back the clock on abortion or gay marriage. Making promises to so-cons and receiving their support becomes a political liability. Trudeau beat Scheer with that cudgel throughout the last election. O'Toole will have a hard time avoiding the same fate.
Cap
The Conservatives still haven't cottoned on to the fact that most Canadians aren't where they are, Cap. While it's true that you can win with 39% of Canadian voters, if they're concentrated on the prairies, the Harparies will be in perpetual opposition.
So after taking a hard right turn to win the leadership of the CPC, I've heard that O'Toole will campaign from a more moderate position to appeal to more voters. So he's just an opportunist politician. How surprising!
GDN
That should surprise no one, Gordie. What we must not forget is that the faces change, but the party doesn't.
Wouldn't it be welcome to see the NDP go after O'Toole's Tories as Layton went after the Liberals in his drive to position the New Dems in shooting range of forming government? They did it in 2011. With the Tories rudderless, Singh could exploit their weakness if only he could become focused.
In our present circumstances, Mound, the NDP could have tremendous leverage. They don't possess large numbers of MPs. But circumstances are on their side.
O'Toole is obviously a cynical, grasping man with the very minimnum of personal ethics. and a whole lot of ego, greed and need to be in charge.
As repeated here in the post, he once was apparently a "moderate" Conservative, which judging by Mackay's faux pas and utter drivel issued over the past few months, has itself morphed into dogwhistle guff at best, sort of O'Toole Lite. The Conservatives are beyond moral redemption, they just want to get in power and order everyone around. Look at kenney in Alberta - but he's got 'em cross-eyed there and like Trumpites, they claim to love being abused, while claiming we now owe them a living, which if fully realized is ecological suicide. That's your Con mind: empty of empathy and eye on the money. Nothing else matters.
For O'Toole to get his butt into Stornaway, well, why not appeal to the armpit-scratcher racist crowd, the gun nuts, anyone with the need to tell women how to live their lives, and/or to advise people living on the streets to get a job? Empathic souls, each and every one of those strata of society. Dolts to my way of thinking. Two sentences into a speech, you can pick out a Con because 'great again' is their current line of bullshite.
And as we continually remind ourselves, 37 or 38% of the vote and you and me too can have a whiny bigot run the country and up-end all the social advances of the post WW2 system. Ontario voted for Ford, so anything's possible on the way to ruining our country completely for mere filthy lucre and to make pals and cronies rich. A bunch of individual hawgs with little education, zero social understanding as a "feature" and damn the common people, who of course pay their way to lord it over us.
Scary, ain't it? The natural world is going to hell in a handbasket, and Cons want to double down on the destruction.
BM
As Willy Loman said, "the woods are burning," BM. And social conservatives are convinced that God is on their side.
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