There are many lessons to be taken from the truckers' convoy. For Tom Walkom, the most important lesson is that the marriage of convenience between the Reform Party and the Progressive Conservative Party is over:
Ultimately, the experiment has failed. The saga of Erin O’Toole has demonstrated the near impossibility of uniting the right behind one party. Conservatives who want to challenge Liberal hegemony will have to find another vehicle.
In theory, O’Toole did all the right things. He won the leadership of his party by presenting himself as a true-blue conservative.
Once that was in the bag, he moved quickly to the left in order to appeal to the electorate at large. He endorsed a carbon tax, and had his caucus withdraw its support for conversion therapy. He made a direct pitch to unionized workers. He stopped playing footsie with the Christian right.
In short, he followed the classic formula for Conservative success: Go right to get your party on side; veer left to appeal to the country as a whole.
But it didn't work:
It didn’t work because his caucus eventually refused to play along. Conservatives — and presumably the voters they represent — were sick of hiding their true beliefs just to score easy political points in official Ottawa.
The result was total confusion. O’Toole would articulate one position, while one or more of his caucus mates articulated another.
The contradictions grew particularly intense during last weekend’s trucker protest in Ottawa. Some Conservative MPs supported the protesters. Others, echoing the feelings of many non-Conservative Canadians, were less enthusiastic.
Under Stephen Harper, things were different. But when he left
the feuds didn’t end. They grew. Social conservatives were increasingly at odds with their secular counterparts. Riding associations fractured along ideological lines.
In part, the splits reflected the party’s failure to forge a single coherent vision. There are still two parties warring within the bosom of the unified Conservative movement.
As O’Toole put it this week, one of those parties is modern and moderate. The other is reactionary and extreme.
It's clear the extremists are in charge. And it looks like a divorce is in the offing. Bring it on.
Image: The Hill Times
12 comments:
Conventional wisdom, from Coyne to Ibbitson and MacParlane to Walkom, suggests the right has outgrown its straight jacket.
Yet their American alter-egos faced a similar problem with the Tea Party/Freedom Caucus/Trump debacle and, in the main, most of the old school conservatives capitulated when it became necessary to protect their seats in the primaries.
Will moderate conservatives have the fortitude to stand in opposition to the Uber-Right knowing it will mean allowing the Liberals to trash both in future elections? Will they place party over country? Will the electorate accept a blatantly far right party?
It strikes me as more than strange, Owen, that there are so many Conservatives who are willing to sacrifice electability on the altar of some kind of ideological purity. It sounds a lot like fanaticism to me.
"And it looks like a divorce is in the offing."
OK, but please don't hold your breath.
More likely just some "Joe Clark-like" defections.
The extremist need the cover of the venerable CON brand and the idiocracy of FPTP.
And don't doubt it ... they'll be back in charge sooner or later: We be lobsters in a pot.
Good questions, Mound. The answers to them will make all the difference.
It's certainly not conservatism, Lorne -- at least as Edmund Burke defined it.
God help us if they're given the reins again, PoV.
I think NPOV is right - the extremists need the Con/Tory branding, which is why Reform didn't become the merged party name. The media also needs to pretend that nothing has changed and that the Tories are still the same old party.
But the old days of country club conservatives running the show while keeping wild-eyed Birchers, religious nuts and neo-Nazis straight-jacketed in the broom closet are over. The inmates now run the asylum, and the country club conservatives have either left the party or become crazies themselves. Discussions with "respectable" conservatives are now difficult because there's no agreement even on basic facts.
As O'Toole found out, the old move to the centre to appeal to the electorate is now seen as a betrayal of the party. The divorce has already happened and the red Tories are gone. What's left is Trump's party.
Cap
I suspect you're right, Cap. Canadian Conservatives are Trumpers. We'll see how many Canadians are Trumpers.
We'll see how many Canadians are Trumpers.
Just look to the truckers 'revolt'
Loud , small minded but significant.
Just the way Trump started.
TB
.. seems I have the ‘weather gauge’ Owen.. knowing that Pierre Poilievre is the new skipper of HMS Reform a Tory. Yes, the Harper cabin boy & multi millionaire who’s backers feel can ride & command the winds of ‘Freedom’ to victory & POWER !
It’s a phenomenal, even disgusting gamble as the ‘Conservatives’ scramble to align with a truly bizarre mixture of Vested Interests donors. They already have most of Mainstream Media embedded (who’s your daddy Pierre ?), & the aligned high power ‘elite’ PR Public Relations entities with their partisan Pollsters & ‘charitable causes’ Think Tank ‘Thought Leaders’
What has my attention currently is the surprising crowds of ‘trucker’ supporters, even with children in tow, who’ve come out in bitter weather, with essentially zero sanitary washroom options, little food or drink, complex arrival & departure logistics etc etc etc.. ‘just to be there’ & support so called ‘heroes’.. in the major urban centres of Canada
I’m going to lie in wait mainly.. watching as that wild ass social phenomena unfolds.. before I truly ‘begin to fight’ - but make no mistake.. Poilievre et al Inc are dirtbag vicious parasites.. that will consume their host - Canada. If Canadians cannot recognize the sheer ignorance of this new ‘social movement’ which does not seemingly trust Medical Science.. then what hope they might trust Climate Science. Certainly people will now elect both obvious & devious liars, crooks, opportunists, manipulators, buffoons.. and ‘vote the Party’ not the local candidate.. and ‘Conservatives’ are deniers of Medical Science and Climate Science.. just as they are in the GOP of the USA
And that is truly what is so disturbing about all of this, TB.
Poilievre and his ilk stand for denial of the obvious, Sal. If Canadians are stupid enough to buy the bunk, they're too stupid to survive.
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