Conservatives ready for election

Canadians witnessed a moment in history one weekend this past month, at least the eleven people outside the Toronto convention center who bothered to watch it.

In a predictable end to a far less than exciting campaign, the fledgling Conservative Party of Canada elected Stephen Harper its first leader. In a strange hybrid of former Progressive Conservative and Canadian Alliance voting systems, Harper handily defeated his two Ontario rivals: former Ontario Tory health minister Tony Clement and auto parts magnate extraordinaire Belinda Stronach.

At fifty-six percent of the vote, Harper received solid support for his mandate - thus far comprised primarily of Liberal bashing - while not completely trouncing his opponents. Stronach, for her part, showed ability to attract newcomers to the party and attracted a respectable thirty-five percent while Clements was a distant also-ran, garnering just nine percent of Conservative voters despite his apparent advantage of coming from Ontario and having held a significant government portfolio.

Harper's win does demonstrate that a majority of Conservative voters believe in the job he has done helming the now defunct Canadian Alliance Party and anticipate he is the best or perhaps only member with a hope of defeating the federal Liberals in the next election. While fifty-six percent on a first ballot does not qualify as a landslide, it certainly says a number of things about the party and the likely direction it will pursue.

To many, particularly disgruntled former Progressive Conservative party members, Harper's solid first ballot victory completes what many were already characterizing as a Canadian Alliance takeover of the historic Progressive Conservative Party. While it remains to be seen whether the new Conservative party will reflect Alliance more than PC values and platforms.

And that might be just part of the problem.

Certainly the two parties shared many similar fiscal principles; indeed with the mass of mismanagement by the federal Liberal party, the only fiscal policy any party has really needed in the past year is: we ain't the Liberals. And Harper is able to distance himself from some of the more radical Reform/Alliance budgetary principles espoused by his predecessor Stockwell Day, like the disastrous 'flat tax' proposal floated early in his tenure.

But like Day, Harper is still viewed by many Canadians as a social conservative, a distinction that plays well in some parts of the country but definitely not with the majority. Openly Christian, a label that unfairly causes many politicians grief with political observers, Harper has had difficulty shunning his image of a western, small town bible thumper, an image that does not play well in vote-rich Ontario.

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