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If the CPC had won Monday's election, it would have allowed a graceful bowing out of Harper with a somewhat managed transition to a new leader sometime in the next four years. As it is, however...
One of the effects of losing is that a party tends to fall back on its base. The PCs in Ontario are an example: since they lost they have twice elected the most reactionary candidate available, and be damned to electability. The Ottawa CPC has managed the remarkable feat of falling back on its base while governing - and by "base" I mean old right-wing Tories and Reformers, with relative moderates (culturally middle-of-the-road (one hesitates to say progressive) and economically conservative - real Red Tories left the room long ago) tolerated but not particularly listened to by the centre of power. Harper's personal biases would seem to be a sort of quirky libertarianism (whence the episode of the long-form census) combined with an insular suspicion of those who are unlike him and a deep need for control. His "economics" background, really political economy, has not left him with any real economic intelligence.
It's not much of a secret that the party is host to a brigade of loose cannons whom the PMO has stifled in the name of electability and "singing from the same songsheet". As they have a leadership contest with that central control removed, it will be a free-for-all; the party emerging from the chaos will be more distinctly right-wing and even less electable than the current one.
Conservative factions and policies are pretty well by definition the representatives of the rural interest, though that interest has shifted between the days of the Cavaliers and the squirearchy and the present. Even a century ago, though, the rural population was much greater proportionally than it is now.
The other two constants are that it represents the old (not because the old regress into conservatism but because the mainstream views of yesterday become the reactionary ones of today - an old socialist would probably be on the extreme left on some things but likely also be rather to the right on things like intersectionality), and who at the moment are growing in number; and, as John Stewart Mill said, the stupid ("I did not mean that Conservatives are generally stupid; I meant, that stupid persons are generally Conservative"), of whom there is an unending supply. Canada has had bright Conservative leaders, Meighen being the obvious example, but the party as a whole has reflected a relatively slow part of the electorate. Successful Tory governments, or Tory governments with successful or historic achievements, are rarely very conservative; they are usually, in Disraeli's phrase, "Tory men with Whig measures". Wellington brought in Catholic Emancipation, Peel the repeal of the Corn Laws. The catch is that when they do bring in such measures, their electorate can abandon them: the rule of the relatively moderate Mulroney Conservatives spawned the revolt of the Reform Party. (Shifting to a VAT was long overdue from a tax policy perspective; free trade with the USA, whatever one may think of it, was a break with the Conservative past (consider the Reciprocity election) and in its way forward-thinking; by comparison Harper's TPP is a third iteration of the same, now old, tune.)
Back in the day of the Stanfield Conservatives, you could make an argument that there was a high degree of continuity between the Liberals and the Conservatives. There were Red Tories who were in many ways to the left of the more business-oriented wing of the Liberal Party, and they tended to disagree mainly on what might be considered fine-tuning issues. (The Tories also housed the few philosophical conservatives in the tradition of George Grant as well as the monarchists.) The party that stood off a bit to one side was the NDP. That has now been reversed; it's clear that there is a gulf in values between the CPC and the other main parties, while the NDP and the Liberals blur at the edges.
The scale of the turn to the Liberals, reflecting a population more worried about the CPCs than attached to a specific opposition party, constitutes a resounding rejection of Harper's project of turning the country in a conservative direction, coming on top of the recent Ontario and Alberta elections. (While the CBC was babbling on about Central Nova last night, a riding where the Liberals had been projected to win as they did, and if interest mainly because of its earlier history, I was looking at New Brunswick Southwest, a riding which had been projected to go Conservative by a fair margin. What had happened was that the CPC had performed as expected, but the Liberals had gained about 10% in the vote coming from the NDP. It was a harbinger of the rest of the evening.) This is a similar dynamic to that which led to the Liberal majority in Ontario last year.
I am cautiously optimistic regarding where this government will go. An early test will be the strength of the Cabinet and to what degree it is collegial (there hasn't been a really collegial Cabinet since the Pearson years). A second will be in what way, and with what urgency, the Liberals move to dismantle at least the most objectionable parts of Bill C-51 (actually no longer a bill, but rather S. C. 2015, c. 20): there was some apparent movement on how much of it they would repeal during the campaign.
One of the effects of losing is that a party tends to fall back on its base. The PCs in Ontario are an example: since they lost they have twice elected the most reactionary candidate available, and be damned to electability. The Ottawa CPC has managed the remarkable feat of falling back on its base while governing - and by "base" I mean old right-wing Tories and Reformers, with relative moderates (culturally middle-of-the-road (one hesitates to say progressive) and economically conservative - real Red Tories left the room long ago) tolerated but not particularly listened to by the centre of power. Harper's personal biases would seem to be a sort of quirky libertarianism (whence the episode of the long-form census) combined with an insular suspicion of those who are unlike him and a deep need for control. His "economics" background, really political economy, has not left him with any real economic intelligence.
It's not much of a secret that the party is host to a brigade of loose cannons whom the PMO has stifled in the name of electability and "singing from the same songsheet". As they have a leadership contest with that central control removed, it will be a free-for-all; the party emerging from the chaos will be more distinctly right-wing and even less electable than the current one.
Conservative factions and policies are pretty well by definition the representatives of the rural interest, though that interest has shifted between the days of the Cavaliers and the squirearchy and the present. Even a century ago, though, the rural population was much greater proportionally than it is now.
The other two constants are that it represents the old (not because the old regress into conservatism but because the mainstream views of yesterday become the reactionary ones of today - an old socialist would probably be on the extreme left on some things but likely also be rather to the right on things like intersectionality), and who at the moment are growing in number; and, as John Stewart Mill said, the stupid ("I did not mean that Conservatives are generally stupid; I meant, that stupid persons are generally Conservative"), of whom there is an unending supply. Canada has had bright Conservative leaders, Meighen being the obvious example, but the party as a whole has reflected a relatively slow part of the electorate. Successful Tory governments, or Tory governments with successful or historic achievements, are rarely very conservative; they are usually, in Disraeli's phrase, "Tory men with Whig measures". Wellington brought in Catholic Emancipation, Peel the repeal of the Corn Laws. The catch is that when they do bring in such measures, their electorate can abandon them: the rule of the relatively moderate Mulroney Conservatives spawned the revolt of the Reform Party. (Shifting to a VAT was long overdue from a tax policy perspective; free trade with the USA, whatever one may think of it, was a break with the Conservative past (consider the Reciprocity election) and in its way forward-thinking; by comparison Harper's TPP is a third iteration of the same, now old, tune.)
Back in the day of the Stanfield Conservatives, you could make an argument that there was a high degree of continuity between the Liberals and the Conservatives. There were Red Tories who were in many ways to the left of the more business-oriented wing of the Liberal Party, and they tended to disagree mainly on what might be considered fine-tuning issues. (The Tories also housed the few philosophical conservatives in the tradition of George Grant as well as the monarchists.) The party that stood off a bit to one side was the NDP. That has now been reversed; it's clear that there is a gulf in values between the CPC and the other main parties, while the NDP and the Liberals blur at the edges.
The scale of the turn to the Liberals, reflecting a population more worried about the CPCs than attached to a specific opposition party, constitutes a resounding rejection of Harper's project of turning the country in a conservative direction, coming on top of the recent Ontario and Alberta elections. (While the CBC was babbling on about Central Nova last night, a riding where the Liberals had been projected to win as they did, and if interest mainly because of its earlier history, I was looking at New Brunswick Southwest, a riding which had been projected to go Conservative by a fair margin. What had happened was that the CPC had performed as expected, but the Liberals had gained about 10% in the vote coming from the NDP. It was a harbinger of the rest of the evening.) This is a similar dynamic to that which led to the Liberal majority in Ontario last year.
I am cautiously optimistic regarding where this government will go. An early test will be the strength of the Cabinet and to what degree it is collegial (there hasn't been a really collegial Cabinet since the Pearson years). A second will be in what way, and with what urgency, the Liberals move to dismantle at least the most objectionable parts of Bill C-51 (actually no longer a bill, but rather S. C. 2015, c. 20): there was some apparent movement on how much of it they would repeal during the campaign.
