The Unlikely Majority

I like Gerry Nicholls because he stands up and actually defends conservative principles, even in the face of a Conservative government running Ottawa. Now, I may disagree with the wisdom of some of those principles (such as continued tax cuts in the face of runaway deficits), but Mr. Nicholls is willing to say what too many Tory politicians, media shills and bloggers aren't: That the Conservatives are hardly different than the Liberals.

For entirely too long I've been hearing from Conservatives that things will be different when Harper gets his majority. I believe that's unlikely, since winning a majority in the first place would be wholly reliant on winning swing ridings that are unsure of Harper and his agenda. He'll want to keep those ridings on his side and a dramatic departure from his current governing style. There's point in winning a majority if he can't keep it.

And that assumes that a majority is in the cards at all. Gerry Nicholls suggests that it is. I disagree.

As Nicholls concedes, the Tories have blown big leads in three consecutive elections. This has been due to two separate, but equally important factors. Western Tory candidates tend to say industrial strength stupid things about social issues, like gay marriage and abortion, which scares Ontarians off of voting for the Conservatives. This is what happened in 2004. In 2008, Harper introduced a initiatives on arts funding and criminal justice reform that were geared for national conservatives. What he didn't count on was the potential support that it cost him in Quebec.

The Conservatives ran an impressive campaign in 2005-06, but they didn't win it as much as the Martin Liberals lost. Between the lingering stench of the Sponsorship Scandal and Paul Martin's erratic performance in the debates, it was hard to imagine the Grits maintaining their minority.

Having said that, if the Tories couldn't win a majority in the face of Adscam and a dreadful Martin performance, it's hard to imagine that they will now. They couldn't decisively beat Stephane Dion, who is a good and honourable man, but perhaps the most inept party leader in Canadian history.

Much of the majority projection at Making Sense with Nicholls rests on the idea that the Liberals will simply lose. While that's likely, given their leadership and fundraising, it's hardly an electoral strategy for the Conservatives. While Harper has kept Michael Ignatieff's negatives high with regular ad buys, it's unlikely that Ignatieff would be as poor a campaigner as Dion was, and Dion held the Harper to a minority in '08.

There is the incessant Liberal leadership in-fighting that should be considered, but I wouldn't bet an election on the premise that it will significantly handicap them in a campaign. Ideally, you build a strategy on how you're going to win, not over how the other guy is going to lose.

There's also the issue of where the Conservatives are going to pick up seats, as the Globe and Mail illustrates this morning. Harper faces a less than ideal map to hold onto everything he currently has and pick up another 12 seats. The Harper Tories have always done well in polling when it looks as though an election is imminent. But when the writ is finally dropped, they return to earth well before any ballots are actually cast.

Most importantly, the Prime Minister has introduced a complicating issue with the proposed North American security perimeter. Since the NASP could (and probably will) adversely impact the integrity of Canada's sovereign laws, the Conservatives shouldn't count on it being an issue in any campaign in the next few years, it should be seen as the issue.

Yes, NASP could be sold as a trade and jobs agreement, but it remains to seen how well that would stand up in the face of concerns of having our criminal, immigration and other laws overruled by politicians and bureaucrats in Washington that weren't elected by a single Canadian citizen. If the Liberals were crazy enough to forgo that as a wedge issue, they may as well dissolve their party and buy Conservative membership cards.

I've written at some length about my belief that the Liberal Party of Canada is eventually going to disappear, which is something that Stephen Harper would very much like to see. But that's a goal that's years or decades away. What I think is going to be Harper's last election is almost certain to occur in the next 18 months.