Stephen's Ghost

The Conservatives are stuck. That's the lesson behind Pierre Poilievre's quest for the leadership of the party. Michael Harris writes:

Poilievre’s camp is hitching his alleged vaulting popularity to the notion that size matters. They’re coming to his rally in droves—by the hundreds. And the usual suspects in the media are parroting this codswallop in their sweaty exertions to turn a partisan and political hit man into an estimable national figure. He’s the guy who thinks bitcoin is our salvation, and nastiness is a synonym for opposition. Poilievre-mania is as manufactured as a Walmart greeter’s smile.

But Poilievre is not without political insight. He knows that the shortest route to winning the leadership is to pass the Conservative purity test—in other words, to sanctify everything his former boss Stephen Harper ever did.

That’s why he spit venom at leadership rival Patrick Brown, who dared to criticize the Harper government for its anti-immigrant policies—no face coverings at citizenship investitures, and a snitch-line for so-called barbaric practices. You know, Peter MacKay’s “stinking albatross” problem. Brown was dead on.

Poilievre responded with cobra-strike venom. Brown was nothing but a liar. According to PP, he lied a lot. It was sacrilege to criticize Steve. And a lot of core Conservatives believe that, at least the ones who applauded the hostile takeover of the old Progressive Conservative Party, and the Harperism that replaced it. So the not-so-fabulous Pierre makes a connection here.

But  all of that won't open the door to the prime minister's office:

Winning the political mud-wrestling contest of the party leadership is a universe away from winning a general election. It depends more on swallowing the old Harper model, hook, line, and sinker, than on appealing to voters in a country that doesn’t like to look at aspirant leaders and see an after-market version of Donald Trump. Fanning a sense of aggrievement, blaming political and media elites, personally attacking opponents, doesn’t work here. Canada is not Texas or Florida, at least not yet.

Poilievre is betting that Canada will soon be Texas or Florida. But anyone who takes a careful look at the country wouldn't back that bet:

Every time the CPC has reached back into the Harper era for a “new” leader, it has lost at the box-office. Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole played to and won the same crowd as Poilievre is courting; won the party leadership by running as Harper loyalists; and face-planted in the federal elections they contested because they badly misread the country.

Andrew Scheer mimicked Harper, even though as Speaker of the House, he was not involved in the government’s record the way Erin O’Toole was. But O’Toole tried something different. He sucked up to the Conservative base when seeking the party leadership, then underwent a strategic sea-change in the federal election. He took a giant step toward the political centre. Voters didn’t buy his conversion on the road to electability.

The Conservatives have a chance to move into the present:

With Jean Charest and Patrick Brown in the race, the CPC has yet another chance to get out from under Stephen Harper’s shadow.  Each has their own baggage, to be sure. But neither of them has genuflected to a political approach that Canadians have now rejected for three elections in a row. The party may yearn for the Harper years, but the record shows that the country does not.

At the moment, however, Stephen's ghost continues to haunt the party.

Image: CTV News Calgary