For the past six months, Canadian have been following the leadership race for the conservative party of Canada (no they have not, no one really cares except the party members). The race has been close (not even), and the leader presents a true conservative pedigree of achievements and boldness (not really more of the same pablum).
There are two wings to the party, the economically conservative "lassez faire" wing (classical blue Tories) and the Western socially conservative wing of the party (think of the GOP today); Anti-abortion, anti-Kyoto, Pro gun, anti-vaccine, against marriage equality etc etc. There are three candidates for the leadership that matter but we will focus on two which represent the two extremes of the party: The race is between a socially conservative junior minister under Harper and the ex-prime minister of Quebec who was also the leader of the Federal Conservative Party when things were very bad. The big news: Poilievre recently got the endorsement of Steven Harper, who was until a decade ago the prime Minister of Canada in which Poilievre was a junior (the carrot to keep the unruly quiet) minister.
The stage is set: Now these two players are not equal in the eye of the party members, insofar as "secret" polls show that Poilievre leads Charest by 20 to 25%. That Poilievre has reportedly sold more than 360,000 membership cards, that he has the support of virtually all conservative members of parliament, and has for a long time. The question is, therefore, why did Harper give his sudden support to Poiliever? It's certainly not desperation on the part of Poilievre, it may help to sway some voters to Poiliever but he's already so far ahead -- what would be the point?
In my opinion, there are two reasons: (1) Steven Harper wants to stay relevant, his 90-second endorsement of Poiliever was really more about how he had discovered and promoted Poiliever, and (2) to drive a nail in the coffin of Jean Charest's leadership bid, it is well known in political circles that Charest and Harper hated each other.
The impact of Harper's announcement could be interesting, depending on the polling results that Charest has gotten in the past few weeks he could leave the party and form a new economically conservative one! This would cause a massive problem for the Conservative Party because if they are flanked on the "left" by a new Charest party and on the right by the People's Party of Canada -- its policy range will be limited, especially with the ultra socially conservative that are in the prairies.
In the end, I don't believe that Poiliever will matter. He will not be the Prime Minister of Canada, he is too socially conservative for the Ontario electorate. Ontario conservative voters will not vote for the Liberals they will simply abstain in the upcoming elections ( 20/10/25)
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