JOHN TWIGG -- Federal Tory coalition has many questions waiting to be answered

The fragility of a 'big tent' conservative party (There is a long history of right-wing parties splintering and merging in Canada)
CBC News ~~ Duane Bratt & Bruce Foster ~~ July 25th

This is a well-researched article, and well-reasoned around the various versions of Conservative and other right-side party mergers, coalitions and shotgun marriages to fight a common partisan political enemy. Or two.

But what does that mean for the current paradigm in the looming Canadian federal election?

It would seem that the Andrew Scheer-led Conservative Party of Canada has been doing quite well at forming local coalitions against left-side incumbents (judging from their candidate nominations), and Scheer and his advisers also have been doing well to position themselves as electable such as by producing a passable policy on climate change (even though the supposed climate crisis is bogus, the preponderance of people believing it's real must be assuaged). 

They have been assembling a fairly wide-ranging platform that so far has avoided angering large swaths of voters as well as not giving the Liberal backroomers some easy targets for policy barbs (such as on say abortion or gay rights).  On the other hand, the election is still about 90 days away so we can expect the Liberals will be launching lots of pointed barbs at Scheer and the Tories closer to voting day.

And that's where coalition-building becomes so important: for the Scheer Conservatives to win they will need a team, and a platform, strong enough to hold together when the caboose goes around a corner at high speed.

Can the Scheer team build a platform with enough appealing planks in it to keep most supporters aboard even when the going gets rocky? And the Liberal strategists surely will be rattling every cage, pounding every door and flooding their already-captive mainstream media with propaganda designed to derail Scheer's shaky coalition.

It remains to be seen how the campaigning will play out, and the war of issues managers takes place, perhaps spiced up by Warren Kinsella shooting barbs for the federal Green Party.

And what will happen in vote-rich Quebec?

Scheer's French is reasonably fluent, especially for a guy from Regina, but will he also have a strong enough Quebec lieutenant to attract some extra votes from Quebec's notoriously self-serving voters?

Will the Jagmeet Singh New Democrats be a force?

Likely not, which means some usual left-side voters will be migrating to the Trudeau Liberals, making Scheer's climb even steeper - unless he suddenly rediscovers his party's Red Tory roots and adds a few planks to try to pull in a few migrant votes from the centre-left (pun intended insofar as illegal border-crossing may be a mixed issue for several parties).

Maxime Bernier, leader of the People Party of Canada

And then there is Maxime Bernier's fledgling Peoples Party of Canada, which may prove to be merely a puny vanity project, or it could step up a notch and become a crucial vote-splitter in a dozen or so swing ridings.

The gist of the article (The fragility of a ‘big tent’ conservative party) is that Canada has had a long history of Conservative and right-side movements splintering at the starting gate, and rarely running together, and in 2019 we seem to be seeing a re-run of that.

It hearkens back to the formation of the Reform Party of Canada, which brought together populist western alienation forces (which included quite a few progressive activists) but inevitably became dominated by the blue-Tory social-conservative clique of and around Preston Manning which never did form a bond with a national mentality from all regions.

Should Scheer go after Bernier or pretend he doesn't exist?

Good question. We'll soon see.

If Scheer can paint the Justin Trudeau Liberals as a disastrous incompetent cabal needing to be urgently evicted, then yes he could form a majority, especially with the left-side movements so splintered.  But if the right-side splinters too then we could get a dysfunctional minority like those pizza parliaments seen often or late in Europe, which is a slippery slope to bad government.

What should Scheer do?

Strategize very carefully about what is needed to build a big strong tent well able to withstand the political winds sure to come, and big enough to welcome in a wide range of differing views.

What issues should his platform feature? That's a topic for another day but meanwhile he'd be wise to ask his pollsters this question:

“What mix of which issues do I need to pull in about 40% of the popular vote in about two-thirds of Canada's constituencies?”

Should I be wet or dry on the climate? Should we tax the rich a bit more, or ease back on balancing the budget in the short term? And which ridings should I focus on to win at least half of the seats? (recalling Donald Trump's focus on electoral college votes).

Ah yes, Canadian politics - a blood sport lots of folks enjoy watching, but also this: how many people will turn out to vote and why or why not?

As always, pulling out the supporters to vote on E-Day (and in advance polls) can make a critical difference.