Is there a path forward for the current Conservative Party?

The historic arc of Canada's conservative parties (Progressive Conservatives, Reform, CRAP, Conservatives and others in between) in the late 20th through early 21 centuries has been fascinating.

The PC party essentially ended with the Campbell implosion at the polls.  Mulroney has stitched together a coalition of Quebec sovereigntists and western conservatives and achieved 2 majority governments.  That iteration fell apart when the stresses of the Meech Lake Accord led to the formation of the Bloc Quebecois and the en mass decamping of the ROC conservative vote to the Reform Party.

That created an opening for Stephen Harper to kludge a new Conservative party from a blend of western Conservatives, social conservatives, somewhat crypto-separatists and an assortment of other  smaller conservative factions. With the help of an unethical RCMP Commissioner, a television journalist desperate to get into the Senate and a weakened opposition, this jalopy was able to cobble together two minority governments and one majority governments  The Harper governments were extremely unpopular and Canadians tossed them out as soon as a plausible alternative became available.

Harper stepped down as leader to manage his puppet, Andrew Scheer, from behind the curtain.  Scheer was unable to leverage faux scandals into a winning campaign.  As a result, Scheer was forced to step down so that Harper can push forward one of his other "Sure Fire Winner" acolytes.

But have the Conservatives slipped back into a repeat of  the Stockwell Day era?  They have a lock on a small subset of voters and can marginally add to that support by ginning up anger at non-scandals but will they ever be able to build a truly national coalition?

Their problem might not be that Harper is still pulling the strings.  It might be that they are trapped in a structure that is fatally flawed.Recommend this Post