Conservatives gripped by identity crisis

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This article was published 20/01/2021 (1753 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It is not I who have left the Athenians; it is the Athenians who have left me. This sentiment of the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras, dating back more than two millennia, could apply equally well today for Canadians who have voted Conservative in the past.

Those who describe themselves as fiscally conservative and socially progressive no longer have a home. Their former party of choice has left them behind.

A widely circulated photograph of Portage MP Candice Bergen captures the problem in microcosm. She is seen wearing a hat adorned with Trump’s signature line: Make America Great Again. It is a curious choice for the deputy leader of the Conservative Party that professes a desire to build a big tent for Canadians.

For most Canadians, the MAGA hat is a symbol of bigotry, racism, intolerance and, more recently, treason. With leaders wearing MAGA hats, it appears that the big tent is white and has eyeholes.

The rot within the party began under Stephen Harper, with his “old stock Canadians” and legislation on barbaric cultural practices that helped him lose the 2015 federal election. But the ascendancy of Donald Trump in the U.S. in 2016 paved the way for Canadian Conservatives to embrace fully the path of populist demagoguery.

Current Conservative leader Erin O’Toole initially appeared to be a pragmatic right-of-centre politician. But his “Take Canada back” and “Trudeau is rigging the next election” rhetoric is sheer buffoonery. He now joins the growing parade of wanna-be Trumps in the Conservative party, including previous leadership candidates Kelly Leitch and Derek Sloan.

Conservatives have engaged in a Faustian bargain for short-term electoral success. But it won’t work here. Right-wing media, most notably Fox News and America’s most popular radio host, Rush Limbaugh, provided fertile soil for the growth of Trumpism in America. There are no mainstream Canadian equivalents, with Sun News’ attempt to create a “Fox News North” having failed miserably.

Federal Conservatives have now ceded the political center to Trudeau and the Liberals. Conservatives increasingly alienate urban and suburban voters across the country with dog-whistle appeals to Trump-supporting, Fox News-watching, Rush Limbaugh dittoheads. The Conservatives have locked those voters up, but do the math: there are not enough seats in rural Ontario, portions of the Prairies and parts of rural British Columbia combined to elect a federal government.

Recent polling data show how out touch Conservatives have become. The Maclean’s-Leger poll conducted last September found that 41 per cent of Canadian Conservatives would have voted for Trump over Biden, compared to just seven per cent and six per cent of Liberal and NDP supporters.

A more recent Angus Reid poll found the same margin supporting the demonstrably false notion that the presidential election was rigged. The core of the Conservative Party in Canada is now composed of Maple Trumpers.

The same is true at the provincial level, where Conservatives are doing their very best to drive away support. The competition between premiers Kenney and Pallister is fierce for who is Canada’s most unpopular politician. Conservatives spent a generation in Manitoba’s electoral wilderness following a less-extreme Filmon government. That could easily happen again.

In Alberta — the most American of Canadian provinces — a Conservative hegemony existed for nearly half a century, but Kenney’s support has fallen so far, so fast that Alberta appears set to elect its second NDP government in half a decade.

In both Alberta and Manitoba, Conservative support is strongest in rural regions, where Maple Trumpers are most numerous. One needs only look to the recent anti-mask protesters in rural Manitoba for evidence. Social-media posts, signage and chants were littered with slogans poached from Hannity, Carlson and Ingraham on Fox News, the unofficial propaganda arm of Mr. Trump.

Appeasing his base, even when they were guilty of abhorrent behaviour — “there were good people on both sides” — was a signature move of Trump. The response of then-health minister Cameron Friesen to anti-mask protesters endangering the health of Manitobans? “They were making some good points.”

Too many Conservatives seem blissfully unaware that embracing the toxic tenets of Trumpism condemns them to electoral irrelevance. It’s bad for democracy in Canada.

Trudeau’s Liberal government needs to be held to account by an effective opposition. That can’t happen when the largest opposition party panders to a radical fringe that lies well outside the political mainstream. Canada needs a real “progressive” Conservative party, one with more fiscal discipline than on offer from Trudeau and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, but embracing the values of equality, tolerance, and inclusion shared by most Canadians.

You don’t do that by wearing MAGA hats and telling people to “Take Canada Back.”

Scott Forbes is a professor of biology at the University of Winnipeg who has at various times voted for every current major political party in provincial and federal elections over the last four decades.