Conservatives’ infighting damages chances of closing gap with Liberals: Poilievre dealing with ‘slow erosion with no defined endpoint,’ say political players
Conservatives’ infighting damages chances of closing gap with Liberals: Poilievre dealing with ‘slow erosion with no defined endpoint,’ say political players
2 Comments
Teneycke had a damning comment in the article via a podcast where he said (paraphrasing) that Poilievre is Trudeau. Called him the right wing version of JT and he’s as unserious and unaccomplished as JT was, calling him a lesser celebrity version of it.
Dan Robertson in the article also had an interesting point that the sniping from some conservatives resonates because there’s an audience for these comments in the CPC.
Oh well, so all Poilievre has to do is turn his numbers around? Easy-peasy, just the snap of a finger, a few clever verb-the-nouns and whammo-blammo, the Tories are on top!
Let me spin an alternative narrative. The breakdown between the CPC and the Ontario and Nova Scotia PCs is part of a larger crisis; that the weld points between the Reform and PC wings of the party are coming undone. Some of this is on Poilievre, who has demonstrated no small incapacity at being a political manager, and whose instincts always seem to be to follow the most intransigent course of action. Watching moderates, that is, what’s left of the Red Tories, start to walk away, not merely in Parliament, but clearly on the ground, is only furthering that echo chamber, which is become a decidedly Reform-only chorus.
I’d also add a note about the Tories inability to stop huffing the US culture war. It fuels the trollish and boorish behavior, not to mention creating a pretty clear umbilical cord between MAGA and GOP south of the border and the CPC and western Conservatism north of the border. Being “Trump adjacent” delivered the support to make Poilievre unchallengeable but, considering what Donald Trump is trying to do to us, I’d argue it makes the CPC unelectable as a government. Couple that with the general contempt the CPC seems to have for our country, I’d argue the party has a loyalty problem.
But this isn’t just on Poileivre. The Tory caucus, through various iterations since Harper’s departure, has used the Reform Act to basically become an uncontrollable mob, projecting and amplifying their Western Canadian myopia and general contempt for Canada. The Quebec caucus is basically going extinct due to this phenomenon, in no small part because, well, why would even a Quebec conservative want to associate itself with a party that clearly holds the province in contempt.
The party needs to get serious about controlling its trolls, controlling its caucus, and yes, probably giving people like Jivani the boot. They need to discover a Canadian style of conservatism, and rid themselves of the Republican attachment. It’s getting so bad that the Tories may be losing its rock solid grip on urban Alberta.
If the Tories don’t do this, then they’ll just turn into a rural Western grievance party, and the CPC itself will probably fracture again as the Progressive Conservative Party did in 1993.