The Next Conservative Leader
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Blackadder1916
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E.R. Campbell said:
The names most mentioned on this thread are all currently (or recently) serving MPs. While they may have greater name recognition with the general population they also carry an association with the current Conservative leadership (i.e., Harper) and, while the CPC will not have its *** handed to it as in 1993, there may be residual "Harper stink" should any of these MPs be the party leader in a following election, particularly if it comes soon (one to two years) after the upcoming contest. One possibility that hasn't yet been discussed in this thread is a "Cadillac candidate" in the vein of Brian Mulroney (or Pierre Karl Péladeau, or for those who look south for political infotainment - Carson, Fiorina or Trump) whose only personal electoral experience prior to assuming the party leadership in 1983 was a failed attempt for that post in 1974. Is there anyone on the horizon who fits that bill? While most on these means will not have experience with the backroom politicking of the CPC (come on ERC, tell us the truth) there are likely high level business leaders and provincial political operators who may be wondering how they can contribute to the future of the party.
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There are only two possible choices:
aka
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Canada has not been kind to provincial politicians who jumped into he federal arena, so, I suppose, not Brad Wall or Bernard Lord.
Celebrity/charisma works for some: witness the Trudeaus, Père et Fils.
We have no tradition of soldiers, not even really, really PR savvy ones like Rick Hillier, jumping into politics.
Big City mayors? John Tory (Toronto) or Brian Bowman (Winnipeg) ... possible, but unlikely, in my opinion.
How about people who left, earlier? I think Jim Prentice is both a) tarnished goods, now, and b) probably tired of politics. How about Monte Solberg?
My guess is still that it will be a serving or very recently retired MP. Someone who retired before this election, like John Baird, could be drafted back by the party's grassroots. I agree that, for a serving MP, being seen as being in Stephen Harper's "inner circle" might be a drawback in some party circles, but, remember, please that Stephen harper has, and has earned, the admiration of his party for ending the split and creating the CPC and winning three successive government. Being part of Team Harper is something that many CPC leadership candidates will announce with pride within the party.
I don't have a favourite ... yet. It was Prentice, but I think he's out of contention ...
Celebrity/charisma works for some: witness the Trudeaus, Père et Fils.
We have no tradition of soldiers, not even really, really PR savvy ones like Rick Hillier, jumping into politics.
Big City mayors? John Tory (Toronto) or Brian Bowman (Winnipeg) ... possible, but unlikely, in my opinion.
How about people who left, earlier? I think Jim Prentice is both a) tarnished goods, now, and b) probably tired of politics. How about Monte Solberg?
My guess is still that it will be a serving or very recently retired MP. Someone who retired before this election, like John Baird, could be drafted back by the party's grassroots. I agree that, for a serving MP, being seen as being in Stephen Harper's "inner circle" might be a drawback in some party circles, but, remember, please that Stephen harper has, and has earned, the admiration of his party for ending the split and creating the CPC and winning three successive government. Being part of Team Harper is something that many CPC leadership candidates will announce with pride within the party.
I don't have a favourite ... yet. It was Prentice, but I think he's out of contention ...
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dapaterson said:There are only two possible choices:
aka
I figured some (never me!) would mention the Fords and the CPC in the same post ... :boke:
In my opinion the only possible reaction is:
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Likely, but the Tories have proven they don't need Atlantic Canada to win elections, and Ontario is too proud to consider itself a have not province. Wall seems like a dark horse candidate for the next leader.
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PuckChaser said:
TFTFY
As far as Ontario being too proud to consider itself a have not province. Currently, the Wynne Liebrals will steal, cheat and lie to get the maximum dollars from the Feds and the taxpayer. They have no shame, let alone pride. They are constantly bitching out the Feds for not getting their 'fair' share. Whereas The Hairdo, IF he wins, will be more than happy to do as his mentor McWynnety wants.
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PPCLI Guy said:
She is Métis and a Quebec native, but I wonder: is she bilingual? Some people may not like it but a national party leader must be bilingual.
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recceguy said:TFTFY
As far as Ontario being too proud to consider itself a have not province. Currently, the Wynne Liebrals will steal, cheat and lie to get the maximum dollars from the Feds and the taxpayer. They have no shame, let alone pride. They are constantly bitching out the Feds for not getting their 'fair' share. Whereas The Hairdo, IF he wins, will be more than happy to do as his mentor McWynnety wants.
A new label to encompass these types of individuals " McWynnety Whiner" Let's give them a big WAAAAA....
E.R. Campbell said:
There's one politician that comes to mind when I think of "bilingual" -- Jean Charest is currently between jobs, and isn't he a Mulroney Conservative at heart? I wonder if he'd throw his hat in the ring? He's 57, Paul Martin became PM at 65, Jean Chretien at 59.
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Ostrozac said:
He's already been party leader for a federal party - and grew his caucus by 1000%. I doubt he'd come back.
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Jeffrey Simpson, who really misses the old, quasi-Liberal, Red-Tory, Progressive Conservative Party, wonders, in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail where Stephen Harper's party goes without Prime Minister Harper:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/jeffrey-simpson-where-does-the-harper-party-go-without-harper/article26845940/
I really, really think Jeffrey Simpson misses the point, the while bloody point, about the party that Prime Minister Harper created.
The old PCs are dead and gone. No one cares, not even one tiny iota what Babs McDougall and Lowell Murray, estimable folks though they may be, think any more. The old PCs, the Red Tories and even the Blue Tories like Michael Wilson are gone ... replaced by Conservatives who are not Liberals waiting their turn, as they were, essentially, under George Drew, John Diefenbaker, Robert Stanfield and Brian Mulroney.
The new Conservatives have leadership potential ~ better in my opinion than all but one, maybe two Liberals, and those Liberals are not leading the party now ~ and they will be looking to move Canada to the centre-right and their right of centre party to the same place. But make no mistake, it will be centre-right, not just the LPC in disguise like the Red Tories were.
On this issue Jeffrey Simpson is right out to lunch. (if you have a birdcage then you have good use for today's Opinion page of the Good Grey Globe.)
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/jeffrey-simpson-where-does-the-harper-party-go-without-harper/article26845940/
Jeffrey Simpson: Where does the Harper Party go without Harper?
JEFFREY SIMPSON
The Globe and Mail
Published Saturday, Oct. 17, 2015
The Stephen Harper years are over.
Either his Conservative Party will win a small plurality of parliamentary seats in Monday’s election, but then be defeated in the House of Commons, or his party will win fewer seats than the Liberals and hand over power. Either way, time will soon be up for the Prime Minister.
In defeat, Mr. Harper could theoretically stay on. But he has already been leader of the Opposition. After nine years as prime minister, who would want that job again?
Even if Mr. Harper wanted to stay, he has few friends in the party. Former prime minister Brian Mulroney had legions of supporters in the parliamentary caucus and party at large who would lie on broken glass for him. Mr. Harper has almost none.
Mr. Harper, far more than anyone else, created this Conservative Party. He shaped, organized, galvanized and directed it. It could rightly be, therefore, called the Harper Party. Where does the Harper Party go without Harper?
Maybe – and who can be certain? – the leader of the Harper Party had trouble imagining anyone else at the helm. He, therefore, spit into the political winds by trying to win again after nine bruising years in power. Hubris, after all, has walked many a leader to the political grave.
Once it became clear that Mr. Harper would fight on, possible successors went their separate ways: Jim Prentice to Alberta politics, Peter MacKay and John Baird to the private sector. No one of comparable stature took their place; no candidate of leadership potential was recruited in this election. The party’s already shrivelled talent bank was never weaker than in this campaign.
Which means that when the party thinks, as it perforce must, about the Harper Party post-Harper, it will be obvious that Defence Minister Jason Kenney has spent years preparing himself to win the leadership and is the obvious front-runner. But as time goes on, many Conservatives will ask: Do we want a social conservative from Calgary as leader?
More fundamentally, Conservatives will or should ask: Do we want something like the Harper Party to take us into the future, or do we want something broader, more akin to the old Progressive Conservatives, a party that at least gives greater space and comfort to more moderate conservatives?
For now, the answer to that fundamental question would be that the Harper Party without Harper would carry on much as before, but perhaps with a gentler style of leadership.
Moderate Conservatives for some years now have been like the lost tribes of Israel: inspired by an idea but wandering, lost in the wilderness, waiting for a messiah. They have been so marginalized that their influence is nil, their active membership in the party risible, their private gripes standing in inverse relationship to their share of power. They dream of recovering lost influence, but it is only a dream.
Conservatism, if we can call it an “ism,” has shifted rightward in Ontario, in Alberta, in the federal Conservative Party and most obviously in the United States. The shift has been proceeding apace for so long that it is difficult to see how it can be reversed.
Loss of power, however, can have a way of forcing serious debates on the losing party. Those debates will start, privately at first and then in public, as the Conservative Party considers its uncertain future, sans Stephen Harper.
He will be gone, having left a forceful legacy on his party and the country. A Canadian political party will continue in his wake, representing a coalition of people who think of themselves as conservatives because of how they view the role of the state, the obligations of citizens, the role of religion, the sense of the country’s past and the place of Canada in the world.
The Harper Party made many philosophical judgments that were aberrant to true conservative thinking. It forgot that the job of a conservative is to “conserve,” which means the physical heritage of the environment. It neglected to think of society as an organic whole and played wedge politics where politically useful.
It forgot a conservative credo that power should be exercised with caution and checked where necessary, and instead concentrated power in one man’s hands as never before, seeing enemies everywhere, butting heads with the courts and officers of Parliament, and focusing on the party “base” rather than on society as a whole.
I really, really think Jeffrey Simpson misses the point, the while bloody point, about the party that Prime Minister Harper created.
The old PCs are dead and gone. No one cares, not even one tiny iota what Babs McDougall and Lowell Murray, estimable folks though they may be, think any more. The old PCs, the Red Tories and even the Blue Tories like Michael Wilson are gone ... replaced by Conservatives who are not Liberals waiting their turn, as they were, essentially, under George Drew, John Diefenbaker, Robert Stanfield and Brian Mulroney.
The new Conservatives have leadership potential ~ better in my opinion than all but one, maybe two Liberals, and those Liberals are not leading the party now ~ and they will be looking to move Canada to the centre-right and their right of centre party to the same place. But make no mistake, it will be centre-right, not just the LPC in disguise like the Red Tories were.
On this issue Jeffrey Simpson is right out to lunch. (if you have a birdcage then you have good use for today's Opinion page of the Good Grey Globe.)
Brad Sallows
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That mirrors my thinking. The Liberal establishment wants the Conservative party to be like them, only a little slower and less connected to Big Law and Big Business.
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PPCLI Guy said:
He has an uphill struggle now: he lost his seat, last night, to Mark Holland of the Liberals.
Jason Kenney and Rona Ambrose held on to their seats, as did (relative) newcomers Kellie Leitch and Erin O'Toole, and "dark horse" but potential contenders Denis Lebel, Michelle Rempel, Pierre Poilievre, Candice Bergan and Maxime Bernier.
I see Rob Nicholson as interim leader ...
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This statement is from John Walsh, President of the Conservative Party of Canada:
Statement from John Walsh, President of the Conservative Party of Canada
OCTOBER 20, 2015
I have spoken with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, he communicated to me a request to initiate a number of actions pursuant to my responsibilities as laid out in the constitution of the Conservative Party of Canada.
I thanked the Prime Minister for his leadership on behalf of our party. Stephen Harper has changed Canada for the better, having built a durable, national Conservative movement focused on building a fair, more prosperous and globally significant Canada.
The Prime Minister indicated that he will continue to sit as a Member of Parliament and asks that a process to both select an interim leader and initiate the leadership selection process in our party begin immediately.
First, I am communicating to the newly elected House of Commons caucus their responsibility to elect an interim leader as soon as is possible.
Second, I will be convening a meeting of the National Council to create a Leadership Election Organizing Committee (LEOC) to set out the rules, dispute resolution mechanism and logistics related to the selection of a new leader.
Third, I am tasking Dustin van Vugt, the Executive Director of the Conservative Party of Canada, to initiate a transparent process to review the 2015 campaign.
While the election result was not what Conservatives across Canada hoped and worked so hard for, we respect the outcome of our democratic process. I want to take this moment to thank the hundreds of thousands of Conservative activists in every
part of Canada who volunteered their time, money and ideas, allowing our party to serve our country as government since 2006.
Statement from John Walsh, President of the Conservative Party of Canada
OCTOBER 20, 2015
I have spoken with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, he communicated to me a request to initiate a number of actions pursuant to my responsibilities as laid out in the constitution of the Conservative Party of Canada.
I thanked the Prime Minister for his leadership on behalf of our party. Stephen Harper has changed Canada for the better, having built a durable, national Conservative movement focused on building a fair, more prosperous and globally significant Canada.
The Prime Minister indicated that he will continue to sit as a Member of Parliament and asks that a process to both select an interim leader and initiate the leadership selection process in our party begin immediately.
First, I am communicating to the newly elected House of Commons caucus their responsibility to elect an interim leader as soon as is possible.
Second, I will be convening a meeting of the National Council to create a Leadership Election Organizing Committee (LEOC) to set out the rules, dispute resolution mechanism and logistics related to the selection of a new leader.
Third, I am tasking Dustin van Vugt, the Executive Director of the Conservative Party of Canada, to initiate a transparent process to review the 2015 campaign.
While the election result was not what Conservatives across Canada hoped and worked so hard for, we respect the outcome of our democratic process. I want to take this moment to thank the hundreds of thousands of Conservative activists in every
part of Canada who volunteered their time, money and ideas, allowing our party to serve our country as government since 2006.
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