A rchive Date
[ 24-03-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[Time for Joe to go
Change in federal Tory leadership next priority for conservatives
By PAUL JACKSON - Calgary Sun
March 24, 2002
"As for Stephen Harper, if you want to form a debating club, go with Stephen. They will be exciting, wonderful debates, but they won't elect anyone." - Joe Clark
That was a mocking Progressive Conservative party leader Joe Clark just a week before Stephen Harper romped home to a spectacular win in the Canadian Alliance leadership race.
Yet on the night the votes were counted, Clark was no longer pouring scorn on Harper. No, now he was complaining Harper's supposed hardline position on unity with the federal PCs was a threat to the future of conservatism. Now he was taking Harper seriously.
It's Clark who is the one who has constantly held back moves to unify the CA and the PCs - basically because he insists CA supporters must come to his party rather than meet everyone halfway, and because he wants to retain his grip of the leadership - and yet he utters huge mouthfuls of doubletalk.
He ridicules Harper - as he has ridiculed every other Reform/Alliance leader - then moans Harper didn't answer his telephone call of "congratulations" on Wednesday night.
Well, perhaps Harper isn't a hypocrite. Why shake hands with one who routinely demeans you? But, maybe Joe took one of those syrupy Dale Carnegie courses and Stephen didn't.
Instead, Harper was pointing out (A) how he wasn't going to be sucked in by Clark's ruse of playing telephone tag in a dating game in which the prospective bride has no real interest in marriage, and (B) why would conservatives be interested in joining Canada's second "liberal" party, anyway?
Quite right, Stephen.
That night Clark looked drawn,dismayed and demoralized, while Harper looked fresh, buoyant and full of fight.
The contrasts weren't simply the fault of Clark being 20 years older than Harper (and those 20 years will show in the coming months, and particularly in how younger voters perceive the two politicians) but that Harper's strong victory was the worst possible outcome for Clark and his dreary and diminishing band of supporters.
They had hoped Stockwell Day would squeeze out a victory, and with it, the 10 or 15 dissident Alliance MPs would bolt from the caucus to sit as independents or join the flotsam and jetsam in the Democratic Representative Caucus, now loosely aligned with Clark.
With that, the Clark forces saw the Alliance imploding and fragmenting even more and giving them the platform to say he represented the only hope for conservative-minded voters.
That hope was shattered with Harper's bold win.
Now, as we'll see in coming months, the Alliance represents the only choice for true conservatives coast-to-coast.
Ever since the November 2000 federal election - if not since the 1993 election - the hard facts have shown the federal PCs are history. They may whimper now and again, but the voice will never be robust. It will just get ever more pathetic.
In 2000, Clark, who has routinely heaped scorn on Preston Manning, Day and Harper, took his own party down to its worst popular vote showing ever.
It was even worse than Kim Campbell in 1993 when the PCs elected just two MPs.
Even while under the hapless Day, the Alliance picked up 750,000 votes, but under the disaster-prone Clark, the PCs dropped 900,000 votes - a 40% decline compared to 1997.
The Alliance pulled in 25% of all votes cast and the PCs just 12% in 2000.
Now, which "conservative" vehicle really has a chance in the future, and which one is moving into the past?
I told CTV's Mike Duffy - and anyone who'd listen on the Alliance leadership night - that what conservatives needed was a cleansing of political deadwood.
Well, with the election of Harper, we got a cleansing in the Alliance, but now we need a cleansing in the PC party. That could come in August when the party meets in Edmonton for its convention.
Political insider Peter G. White, at one time or another a big honcho in both parties, has surmised the quickest way to unite the two is for Alliance members to take out membership in the PC party - and then oust Clark as leader.
Since the Alliance has close to 90,000 active members - the ones who voted in the leadership race, aside from the 123,000 simple membership cards suggest - and the PCs have less than 15,000 - a conservative takeover of Clark's rump outfit would be easily accomplished.
As I said, we conservatives had one cleansing of political deadwood this past week - now we need the second cleansing.
August's the month.
Jackson, associate editor of the Sun, can be reached at paul.jackson@calgarysun.com. Letters to the editor should be sent to callet@sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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