Changing the face of Canada - for the worse

Why Stephen Harper can’t build a ‘natural governing party’

The prime minister squandered several opportunities to build his party’s base and secure its power for many years to come.

Canadian Liberals used to be the experts at building and maintaining a national electoral coalition. In George Brown’s days that meant regional partners and deals. To Laurier it was about language and religion and trade. Their transcendent Trudeau years saw the triumph of clientalist politics focusing on new immigrants, hungry local political clans, and slices of activist women, youth and professional groups. Often it worked very well, re-assembling a vigorously renewed electoral coalition that did not slide into mere vote buying. Sometimes — lest we forget the sponsorship scandal of sainted memory — it did not.

The new Conservative party, rejecting the Macdonald and Mulroney template, have developed a different business model: seduce a political base whose core is the angry, the scared and the threatened traditionalist — more likely to be older, rural, more affluent and less educated. In other words, voters more likely to give money and to vote, if pumped with enough anti-establishment, anti-government and anti-modernity rhetoric regularly. It has worked so well for a decade for one reason only: weak and/or incompetent competitors. The NDP were weak and the Liberal party has not had a competent leader or national campaign for the longest period in Canadian history.

The Tory approach has two fundamental strategic flaws: the elderly die and not many of us are angry for life. To succeed in the face of serious political competition therefore they need to add to their almost static base — Harper has grown his base by just 3 per cent over his career, to one of the lowest numbers for a majority government ever: 39.6 per cent.

READ MORE: http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2015/07/02/why-stephen-harper-cant-build-a-natural-governing-party.html

Comment from the administrator: 

The fact is they are NOT Conservative nor are they Tories. They are Reformists hell bent on changing the face of Canada in their own image. Sadly that image does not include the elderly, the unhealthy, nor the middle class. They strive to create a Canada of Queen bees and worker bees sweetening the pockets of the wealthy.