In my limited exposure to the Canadian Right, it has become apparent that the “movement” is heading toward another identity crisis of sorts. Or rather, I should amend that to say that the Canadian Right SHOULD be heading towards another identity crisis. At this point, with Harper at the helm and no sizable opposition present, any large scale shifting of the Conservative ship seems unlikely.
Which is surprising to say the least. Against a Liberal opposition which has stumbled and bumbled its way through scandals and missteps over the last decade, the Conservative Party under Harper has failed to win a majority government. Currently the Conservative Party under Harper is running slightly behind the Liberals in the polls, despite running attack ads against Michael Ignatieff, the Liberal Leader.
One is left to believe that any election to come would be the Conservative’s to lose, and it seems that they are making a decent go at it. Despite the Prime Minister’s tight control over what exactly his cabinet says and does, they never fail in providing the media with scandals. First, Maxime Bernier, and now we have John Baird and Lisa Raitt.
Naturally, none of these scandals is quite on the level of the Liberal sponsorship scandal, however it seems that the Prime Minister just can’t get his cabinet to keep their mouths shut, or gov’t documents from being misplaced. The silence on the Prime Minister’s performance has been deafening. It would seem that his leadership is beyond criticism, even though the polls say otherwise.
Throughout the George W. Bush years, Harper was seen as a Canadian version of the same. Not far from the truth, this essentially means that Harper talked the same neocon jargon so common in conservative circles during the Bush era. Cutting taxes, getting tough on crime, pushing for a Triple-E Senate, supporting the invasion of Iraq, supporting the free market….Harper was a strong Bush ally, and seems to be coping fairly well in the midst of Obamamania.
Despite a strong base in West, the Prime Minister will have no hope of a majority unless he makes gains in Ontario and Quebec. He has only had mixed results in either province, which could well mean that a majority government is too much to hope for. In order to gain votes in central and Eastern Canada, he risks alienating his base support in the West. Overall, he has not been able to breakout of the regionalism endemic to Canadian politics.
What this means is that Harper is not the leader that the Conservative Party needs. In order to prevent any fractures in the Party, it must be willing to engage a broader range of conservative thought. Unfortunately for the Conservative Party, neoconservatism is the accepted ideology of the day.
