Even though I think his idea is completely ridiculous, I feel for Maclean's journalist Scott Gilmore, who went public with plans for a new centre-right party in light of ongoing shenanigans and alt-rightward drift that have been plaguing the federal leadership race.
The problem I have with Gilmore's idea to have a series of dinners across the country with conservatives who are just as embarrassed as he is to call themselves conservatives is the fact that the decision sprung from a feeling of shame rather than any genuine belief in any coherent political philosophy or coalescing around an issue.
To make matters worse, the thousands of Canadians that Gilmore has apparently identified have been standing around uncomfortably waiting for someone else to make the first move for years.
I don't trust such self conscious and diffident people to deal with the tough issues confronting Canada should they ever form government.
Still, I don't think Gilmore deserves the kind of accusations of disloyalty he is currently being tarred with on social media. I'm even willing to believe that he didn't do this to appease his wife, who just happens to be Liberal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, or that this is some Trudeauvian plot to split the party.
That's because Gilmore has already made enough mistakes that we don't have to resort to conspiracy theory. He's not disloyal because he genuinely and naively thought this would be well received, and he's not a pawn in a plot because Trudeau's people are more skilled than this at dividing the party.
Here are the three most glaring errors I can see.
If You Twist My Arm….
Have you ever noticed how every time someone thinks about running for the leadership of a political party in Canada, they spend months refusing offers and denying the thought has even crossed their minds while an anonymous group of activists set up a website trying to "draft" them?
I used to roll my eyes at the notion of obviously ambitious and power-hungry politicians pretending that they had to be dragged with their fingernails digging into the floor to the party's leadership. Now, however, I realize the utility of this deception, because Canadians really, really don't trust self-promoters, or anyone who appears to be in it for themselves.
And this was Gilmore's first mistake. He put himself front and centre.
Unless your last name is Trudeau, or you are one of the lucky few Canadians to achieve international superstardom, you have no business presenting yourself as the solver of Canada's problems. That's why our most successful politicians barely tinkered with the machinery that keeps our country clunking along and couldn't be picked out of a lineup by most of the people who elected them.
Conservation of Matter
I like to tell conservatives from other lands, "If your definition of conservatism is: Never change anything, ever, for any reason, then Canada is the most conservative country in the world."
It doesn't matter what you're proposing to change. It doesn't matter how minor or irrelevant the change is. Look at how the NDP gets into screaming matches over whether to remove the "New" from "New Democratic Party."
Once upon a time I and a few other enterprising young conservatives decided we were going to merge the two provincial conservative youth wings in Ontario into one, because none of us could figure out why we needed two. Unlike Gilmore, we took the additional step of a holding a referendum of Conservative youth in Ontario on the idea just so we could say we had the support of the youth members.
Even after the vote passed with a ridiculously high percentage somewhere in the 90% range if memory serves- we were astounded when a few youth members decided the merger had to be stopped at all costs once we got through drafting a joint constitution.
Our mistake was assuming that senior party members weren't going to drop everything to stop what seemed, at best, to be a formality. The passion, creativity and venom of our critics was astounding, and of course we were accused of disloyalty, being Liberals, losing the next election, destroying the conservative movement and worse.
Listen to Gilmore on CBC's The Current from this past Friday trying to defend his idea against two other party activists vehemently opposed to the idea and who are barely restraining themselves throughout. He seems utterly befuddled by the backlash. But if I and those other conservative youth did more homework than he did and still got put through the wringer, I have to ask- what did he expect?
The Future Is Now
When you look at Gilmore's website, you get the sense that he wants this party to be a community project where everyone contributes equally. He and his guests are going to sit down, have a couple of conversations over dinner, and see what develops.
OK. So let's assume that the best and brightest of Canada's conservative movement turn up, instead of a bunch of disaffected Red Tories who have had it up to here with these socially conservative yokels who keep messing things up. Assume they eventually get past ranting and raving about how everything is the fault of those OTHER guys. What then?
How many people with experience building a party from the ground up is he expecting to come to dinner? Are we going to get fundraisers, campaign managers, senators? People with relevant expertise? Are there any people with experience drafting a constitution, creating software for managing data, setting up bank accounts, and with proprietary access to the all important lists of people to call?
Does Gilmore expect that fiscally conservative, gay marriage supporting students who want pot legalized will suddenly acquire the expertise to compete with, much less defeat, hardened CPC full-timers?
Let me close by saying once again that I don't begrudge Gilmore his attempt. This leadership race is about settling- for the next couple of years at least what kind of party we actually want to have beyond the Stephen Harper Party. Everything that has happened is to be expected and, in any other place and time, would be a welcome if messy exercise in democracy without any frightened exclamations that the end of the CPC is nigh.
But we are Canadians, and we have been socialized to believe that difference of opinion inevitably leads to acrimony and disaster. So, more likely than not, conservatives in Canada will do what they do best and make their worst fears come true.
Written by Josh Lieblein
