Aftermath
I’ll take an expanded Conservative minority over a Liberal majority, minority, or coalition, but I can’t summon up the energy to pretend that last week’s election was anything to celebrate. Why can’t Conservatives win full stop? Are they still perceived as a western party, simply Reform rebranded? Gerry Nicholls suggests that this is proof that incrementalism doesn’t work, or at least works only on a geologic time scale, and not one appreciable to humans. He thinks we’ll be going through the whole circus in about a year’s time. I think that’s pessimistic; as I write in a column aimed at Americans trying to make sense of our election, Harper can probably govern as if he had a majority, simply because the wrath of all Canadians will fall upon anyone who triggers an election in the near future.
Social conservatism was roundly ignored in 2008, and motivating the base enough to come out and vote Conservative might have made a difference. It worked in Winnipeg South in 2006 and then again in 2008. Rod Bruinooge is an example who should be studied by CPC riding associations that lost by narrow margins, as I explain in a column for the Edmonton Journal.