The leaders of the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives on Thursday actually managed to come to an agreement on uniting into a single Conservative Party of Canada. I was taken my surprise. But then, that's the story of my life, really. It was not a smooth process; when I'd checked up on things last week, Peter MacKay and Stephen Harper were trading barbs and meetings were disintegrating into abject fruitlessness. You can find a fairly comprehensive sort of historical survey of the process here, thanks to those good folk at the CBC. About a quarter of the Tory membership is said to be vehemently opposed to the merger, including a former party leader (though it is only Joe Clark) and a leadership candidate. But in the end, the deal will be sold; it is the only sensible course of action for the two parties. The Liberal Party is a juggernaut, a big honking eighteen-wheeled poly-articulated road hog, driving which Jean Chretien has crushed all who stand against him like skunks beneath his tires.
The Conservative Alliance no longer stood a chance against such a force, if indeed it ever did. As I may have mentioned before, the Alliance is a party of freakish socially-retarded bumpkins. Their brand of social conservativism hasn't played outside the West. Thank Dog. They're historically homophobic, vaguely racist, anti-immigrant, religious, pro-capital punishment, anti-social services, anti-abortion rights, and basically Republicans. Oh, and they're anti-Quebec. They were born of a fire-and-brimstone evangelical prairie populist demagoguery, evolving from the Reform Party of Preston Manning, who was in turn the son of the Bible-thumping Social Credit Premier E. C. Manning. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this sort of regional politics hasn't played outside its region. I believe it is true that the Alliance has never elected an MP east of Manitoba. And they weren't about to start, either. Their support had peaked, and they'd milked their regional base for all they could. The Alliance had nowhere to go but down. They're just too creepy to be electable.
The Tories, on the other hand, just...sucked. They were haemorrhaging seats like there was no tomorrow.
A united Conservative Party of Canada does stand a better chance than either party did individually. This is because anything is more than nothing. But the Alliance's creepy factor, while perhaps diluted somewhat, will still, I think, be a force to be reckoned with. Moderate Tory voters might be pushed over into the Liberal camp, because incoming leader Paul Martin is basically their kind of guy anyhow, and they wouldn't have to worry about voting in Alliance freaks. And leftish voters who might have voted for the New Democratic Party because the Liberals aren't liberal enough might be scared into sticking with the Liberals for fear of splitting the vote and letting more Alliance freaks sneak in.
And how much electoral strength, really, will the Tories add to the Alliance? Especially if former Ontario Premier Mike 'Cut, Cut, Cut' Harris gets the Conservative leadership, the Ontario electorate who just resoundingly rejected the Tories and Harris's legacy aren't likely to warm to the new party. Quebec is out of the question. The urban parts of British Columbia, with their same-sex unions, blessed by their local Anglican church even, are unlikely to drink the Conservative Kool-Aid.
At best, the new party could become a credible opposition. Paul Martin is still going to bring the Liberals a fourth term in power. Beyond that, who can say? Given the sheer ineptitude the conservative factions have demonstrated in the past--electing Stockwell Day, for example--I don't think a fifth Liberal government would be out of the question.
Especially when it's the left-wing parties, federal and provincial, who have all the jokes and satire. The NDP has its satirical swipes at Paul Martin; the Ontario Liberals have their kittens...Oh, kitten jokes will keep Ontario in stitches for years. Premier-elect Dalton 'Kitten-Eater' McGuinty recently gave this triumphal speech:
"They said you can't win unless you run on tax cuts and we proved them wrong; they said you can't win unless you go negative and we proved them wrong; they said you can't win if your leader eats kittens and we proved them wrong."
To me, those kittens taste like another Liberal majority.
Posted by aloysius at October 18, 2003 12:36 PM | TrackBack |