Bad Advice for Scheer and the Tories

The spectre of populism.

In the wake of the Canadian federal election, the general consensus among the punditry has become that Andrew Scheer and the Conservatives lost.

This is in itself debatable. By several measures, Scheer did unusually well.

Moreover, the consensus is hardening that the reason they lost was that Scheer’s “social conservatism” was not marketable in the East. The Tories, if they ever want to win again, we are warned, need to get rid of any trace or hint or vestige of distaste for abortion or for gay marriage.

And that is what it amounts to, too; because the Tories already publicly support both abortion and gay marriage.

The proof everyone turns to is apparently Scheer’s fumbling of a question about abortion in the first French language debate.

I think this advice to the Tories is exactly wrong, and demonstrably wrong, given that this is what they are already doing.

They ought to go the other way. I don’t think they can do anything on gay marriage, and I don’t think anyone cares. Other than legislation to protect the conscience rights of individuals and religious groups who dissent from the practice. But they should come out for some modest restriction on abortion.

Steve Paiken’s preferred pollster on TVO, Advanced Symbolics, using newer technology and rolling polls, was extremely accurate on the final result of the election. And their polling suggested that the reason Scheer’s vote fell near the end of the campaign was simply that the media, he, and Trudeau were all saying that the Conservatives were poised to win. That scared a bunch of NDP votes over to the Liberals.

If Scheer’s awkward answer on abortion hurt him, I suspect it hurt him because of its timidity rather than because it revealed his support of unregulated abortion was not heartfelt. Not speaking plainly about such issues promotes a sense of a Tory "hidden agenda,” and an aura of dishonesty. That is what may be killing them.

Consider this comparison: for generations, in North America, socialists have not dared call themselves socialists, considering the term electoral death. So we had the Canadian socialists declaring themselves first “the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation,” then “the New Democratic Party.” No, not socialism: a “cooperative commonwealth.” A “new democracy”…

Then, in the last election cycle, Bernie Sanders came out and ran using the term openly. And suddenly among the Democrats, and among young people, everyone seems to want to be a socialist. It is as though a dam broke. All it took was honesty, and socialism went from something bad to something good, in the eyes of that society.

I expect it would work the same way for social conservatism in Canada. Everyone is afraid of being the first, and perhaps committing some social faux pas. But it is easy for a real leader to move that “Overton window.” In Canada, I suspect there is now a huge pent-up demand for it.

According to polls, only 32% of Canadians support unrestricted abortion, the present situation. And that number is declining. Yet currently all federal parties adamantly support unrestricted abortion. Let Scheer come out for some limited restriction on it, let this become a major issue, and the Tories get 68% of the vote. More than any government in Canadian history. The other three or four parties must fight over shards of the remaining third.

By normal political calculations, this ought to be a no-brainer.

Why hasn’t Scheer done this? Why haven’t the Tories? I think the bottom line has to be class consciousness. As a publisher friend of mine warned me, against any straying from the officially endorsed positions on life, the universe, and everything, “Sure, Jordan Peterson sold a lot of books. But nobody respects him anymore.”

Nobody? That is, members of his own class, the educated and ensconsed in academics, journalism, publishing, government, law, education—and politics. Nobody else really exists, to this elite. They think only of the people they socialize with, the members of their own class, and their status within this group.

The Case for a Continuing People's Party of Canada

Andrew Coyne, who may be the brightest person in Canada, argues counter to the common fear of a second right-wing party splitting the vote, keeping the Liberals permanently in power.

There are, after all, Coyne points out, four parties on the left—and yet the Liberals are the one party most often in power. How does that work?

How is it, for that matter, that the Canadian public seems generally to the left of our next-door neighbour, the US, in politics generally?

Isn’t it precisely because we have smaller parties on the left?

These force the left’s issues onto the national consciousness; the population repeatedly hears the left-wing point of view advocated. By comparison, the one right-wing party, always seeking the centre, will most often not even bring right-wing issues up. The job of a centre-left or centre-right party is always to follow the polls, and move where they think the voters are moving. The job of an ideological party on the left or right is to advance ideas. With three leftist ideological parties, and no rightist ones, only leftist ideas are advanced.

This moves what is called the “Overton window,” of what people consider acceptable solutions and acceptable discussions, ever further left.

Something like the People’s Party of Canada, an “NDP of the right,” might, Coyne suggests, be exactly what we need to keep our politics healthy. It could do the job of presenting a the right-wing view, leaving the Conservatives, like the Liberals, to tack to the centre for power.

People fear this because of the example of the Reform Party, whose rivalry with the PCs seemingly sustained Chretien’s Liberals in power for a generation.

But the reason that was a problem is that Reform was not an ideological right-wing party. Preston Manning never identified it as either left or right. It was a party of Western regional alienation. As it grew in success, it challenged the PCs for the centre-right. And so the anti-government vote was indeed split until one or the other party could establish dominance. Because of the splintering, at one point during the transition, the Bloc Quebecois was actually the Official Opposition.

The PPC, if it survives, seems well-positioned to fill this need for a non-regional ideological party of the right. Although Coyne does not like it.