I’ve bumped this up because I think it needs saying again.
The Harper government has taken some flak for perceived flip-flops and lack of ideological commitment. Are these Conservatives in fact really conservative?
But there’s a problem for critics on the right: In Canada, we’re 20 or 25 years behind the States. That goes for the Culture Wars and the natural long-term swing of the political pendulum.
The United States is notably more right wing than it was in 1980. It might even be that the U.S. in 1980 was more right wing than Canada is now, but I doubt it. If that were the case, we would not have elected the Conservative party in 2006. Even at that, the general election of 2006 was not the coronation of a Conservative government but the burial of the carcass of an already dead Liberal regime.
The task for the Conservatives is quiet, competent government – they’re doing well at that, though following the Liberal meltdown helps – and a change in the general public viewpoint.
Canadians have to learn how to be free, with less government and more self-reliance. The government has to govern well enough for the public’s attitude to change away from expecting our next entitlement.
Canadians must come to expect that government can’t do everything, must not attempt to do some things and does well at those things it does do.
In 10 or 15 years the tired, ailing, old-hat, has-been Tory government of the day will be replaced by an energetic team of bright Liberals. Just as the Grits were turfed for the Conservatives of 2006. That’s the way of politics.
If the Conservatives want to leave a more conservative country behind them, they have to work on three fronts: the politically possible, governmental competence and governing well enough for long enough that the public attitude changes. This can be done. The Republicans had a 12-year run in the United States with Ronald Reagan and the first George Bush. They were bracketed by Democratic administrations with Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton as presidents. Clinton was a more conservative president than Carter and the difference was 12 years of change in American opinion.
Before 2004, the Liberals were seen as Canada’s middle-of-the-road party, which defined the Conservatives as being of the right. Canadians want the centre, so every time a conservative talked of bringing Progressive Conservatives, Reformers and others together to unite the right, the rest of us heard the conservatives plotting to lose another election.
The Tories have to redefine “middle of the road” as where they are. They need to make the change by moving the line, not themselves.
If Stephen Harper and any successors who hold office as Prime Minister fail to facilitate this important change, the Tories will be succeeded sometime between before 2020 by someone other than Stéphane Dion. That someone will draw voters who are spending 2007 wondering if Dion or Jack Layton would be a better Prime Minister, i.e. more middle of the road.
If Tories succeed in their task, the 2020 version of a Liberal voter will be someone who thinks that Harper was an OK centrist for his time, but views anyone farther left than Harper as scarily pink.
That would make a 2020 Liberal farther to the right than I am in 2007. And that just might be a good thing.
