The Tory Stakes

 

Stalking horse.

It seemed to me at the time that the last Conservative leadership race was fixed. Obvious candidates kept dropping off at the last minute. Candidate were arbitrarily refused the right to run. The timeline was made tight so that no outsider could build a new base. It was all set up to coronate Peter MacKay, who, no doubt, in the eyes of party grandees, had earned it for his long service. Erin O’Toole was just supposed to be a plausible opponent, so that it wasn’t too obvious. A good soldier ready to take a little humiliation for the party. He pretended to be a right-wing figure, to fake diversity. The equivalent of the Washington Generals.

Leslyn Lewis was allowed in, no doubt, because it looked good to have a black woman in the race. Derek Sloan might have looked to unformidable to worry about: let the Christian social conservatives have their candidate. Just enough to keep them in the party.

Despite all this, the party base was not having it. Unexpectedly, they elected O’Toole. 

No problem; O’Toole remained the good soldier. He simply shifted to the same platform that MacKay might have run on. 

This was a suboptimal outcome. If you were going to run to the centre, MacKay would have been the stronger candidate.

This time, perhaps they have learned their lesson. Or perhaps Pierre Poilievre starts out too far ahead to get away with such shenanigans again; the grandees do not want Poilievre. A wide-open race becomes their best chance to defeat him. Giving us a better choice and a better spectacle.

It’s nothing personal, and it’s nothing ideological, really. It is not even that they think a centrist has a better chance to win in an election. I think that contention is dubious, and I think they are savvy enough to know it is dubious. Firebrands like Reagan or Diefenbaker have in fact racked up historic majorities. Trudeau won running to the left of the NDP. The problem is that a man of principle, regardless of the principle, cannot be managed. He is not going to be a team player.

Same problem the Dems in America had with Bernie Sanders.

So the grandees and the talking heads are backing Charest, as their best chance to stop Poilievre. 

It also makes sense to get Patrick Brown in the race. He has a proven record for winning by selling memberships. They are going to have to sell a lot of memberships to have a chance at beating Poilievre with the party base. Brown is not a plausible victor himself, but he can move all those new votes over to Charest on a later ballot.

Maxime Bernier has already puckishly endorsed Charest. Charest is best for him. Poilievre could achieve party unity and put Bernier in the shade. If Charest wins, the Tories likely split and Bernier benefits.

Lewis Is In

 

Leslyn Lewis has entered the Conservative leadership race. I did not think she would, since she is fishing in the same pond as Pierre Poilievre, and he has a much better shot than she. But she adorns the race. She ran a strong third last time, coming from nowhere. Obviously an impressive campaigner.

Jean Charest is expected to declare tomorrow, and he is also an extremely impressive candidate. You could hardly get more highly qualified: former party leader, former cabinet minister, former deputy prime minister, former long-term premier of Quebec, fluently bilingual.

For the sake of a good race, I would also love to see Michael Chen come in.

Going to the Candidates' Debate

I watched the Canadian Conservative leadership debate in English last evening. It was quite dull. My impression was of people mouthing platitudes while trying to sound passionate about them. I found myself missing the cool of Stephen Harper, or Pierre Trudeau.

The one rather memorable moment was Lisa Raitt openly criticizing one of the candidates. As moderator, she came across as a Karen. Oozing assumed privilege. Pity; I used to like Lisa Raitt.

I feel nobody won. Presumably, that favours MacKay as frontrunner: nothing was shaken up.

On the other hand, I see an inherent vulnerability for MacKay. It is a common one for clear frontrunners: they tend to get the bulk of their support on the first ballot. If you like MacKay, you are probably already with him.

So if he does not win on the first ballot, he gets caught by someone back in the pack. That happened to Bernier last time. It happens a lot.

This is magnified this time because MacKay is on the leftward extreme of the candidates. His closest competitor, O’Toole, is to his right, yet to the left of the other two candidates. That means O’Toole can expect to get the support of their voters once they drop out.

Nor is there scope for any backroom deals and throwing of support at the last minute, given the preferential ballot system being used this time. Ideological affinities will matter more.

And O’Toole seems a credible enough candidate to, with the other two in the race, keep him from a first-ballot victory. Lewis seems to be making some waves too.

Who do I want to win?

I rule out MacKay from the starter pistol. He won the PC leadership years ago by cutting a deal with David Orchard, which he violated as soon as he became leader. I am glad he broke that deal; I was horrified when he made it. But it reveals him to be utterly without principle. I would not want to see him in any position of leadership.

I also resist MacKay and Lewis because they have not earned their places here. MacKay stands on his father’s shoulders. We have too much of that in our politics. And there can be little doubt that Lewis, a failed one-time candidate for Parliament, would not be on the stage were she not black and a woman.

Lewis is getting a lot of interest, and I have heard commentators praising her performance at the debate. I think that is the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” Her head was down a lot to check her notes. Asked how she would expand the party’s appeal among minorities and millennials, she gave the usual bland nostrums about reaching out. This does not fit with her rightward program or the implied hope that, as a black immigrant herself, she would have special insight. She needed, I feel, a better answer. Sloan, more interestingly, cited some specific issues: drug addiction, homelessness.

That brings the choice down to Sloan and O’Toole. Of the two, O’Toole obviously has the stronger resume. More important than that, his French is better. I do not think a national party can afford a leader who cannot speak both official languages.

So O’Toole seems to me the best choice.

I have heard the criticism that O’Toole is opportunist, running further to the right than he did in the last leadership contest. I find it credible, however, that his personal opinions have genuinely shifted to the right since then. A lot of people’s have. I noted one consistency: he spoke in favour, in the debate, of closer ties with the CANZUK nations. This was a keynote of his last campaign.

I also think he shone in his apparent command of the new Canada-US-Mexico trade deal. He seemed able to correct MacKay on an important part of it. Impressive, since MacKay has served as Foreign Affairs Minister.

I now feel that O’Toole is the Conservatives’ best choice.