This is a great article explaining why HM PM Harper has accomplished. There are some in the media saying perhaps the Tories should have HM PM Harper resign. That is prety silly, even for the grits msm.
Harper, on the contrary, is still rebuilding a party brand destroyed in the disaster of the 1993 election. He gathered a fragmented party in his hands while on his back he bore more than a decade of negative labels created by effective Liberal propaganda. When he began, the Conservatives had been destroyed in Ontario, were non-existent in Atlantic Canada and Quebec, and were barricaded in the West. It was a party ideologically split between a right wing led by Preston Manning and the Red Tories led by the quixotic Joe Clark. Harper has also been saddled in English Canada with whatever happened 15 years ago between Brian Mulroney and Karlheinz Schreiber, and in Quebec was even considered responsible for the defeat of the French troops on the Plains of Abraham.
Unlike Dion, Harper didn't have a brand name behind him. Harper was the brand and the party. In five years he has been able to put together this divided group, bringing it back from the edge of obliteration to the opposition benches, then to a minority government and now to a government that is still a minority, but stronger.
Of course he has made mistakes, but more in message than substance. I wouldn't for a moment compare his political resumé with Dion's.
Both are intelligent, but while Harper complements intelligence with pragmatism and a good dose of reality, Dion resorts to stubbornness and hubris. In politics, that is a lethal combination.
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What is missed in the critiques of Harper for not achieving a majority is that he has fundamentally realigned politics in this country.
As William Johnson wrote in "Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada", Harper saw a conservative realignment based on a cleavage between the private and public sectors. Quoting Harper, he relates the following:
"My hypothesis is this. Political realignment in most Western countries today represents a battle over tax dollars between two groups of the urban, professional, middle-class voters - the taxpayers of the private sector (the "Right") and the tax recipients of the Welfare State (the "Left")."
Harper had earlier defined the Left as consisting of social scientists, social researchers, political professionals, educators, bureaucrats, activists, and to a lesser degree, journalists and communicators.
Under this notion of right and left, Harper has been very successful in targetting those ridings that would support policies which would favour the Right. This has been a consistent message and theme of his campaigns.
However, this realignment has meant taking ridings which have traditionally and historically voted Liberal. This is not a quick process.
It has meant working to gain the trust of voters and regions who have not traditionally voted Tory. It has required outreach, the building up of riding associations and policies that target these groups. This is particularly true in rural Quebec and recent immigrant groups in suburban and urban areas.
The process is not complete but it is working.
JC Kelan
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