As the Conservative leadership race starts to heat up, and some of the previously announced strong contenders start to drop out, a noticeable gap is starting to form in who will present themselves on the ballot, which is a lack of an actual Red Tory candidate. For a party that got its ass handed to them on issues like the environment, and the rights of women and the LGBT community, you would think that maybe, just maybe, they might look to the progressive side of their own ranks and see that there is a lot of room to grow the party in that direction. After all, it's the swing voters among the more "blue Liberals" that helped get them to a majority government in the past, and when the Venn diagram overlaps with that particular portion of the base, you would think they might want to till that fertile ground. But that doesn't appear to be the case.
Many of you may immediately be saying "But what about Peter MacKay? Isn't he a Red Tory?" And the answer there would be no, he's not. He may have started out in the Progressive Conservative party, but his voting record as a Conservative in the Harper government was never that of a small-p progressive conservative, particularly when it comes to issues like GLBT rights, where MacKay did not stick his neck out unlike other members of the party like Gerald Keddy, Lisa Raitt, or James Moore. And that's not even touching his particular comments about ex-girlfriend Belinda Stronach, or his tone-deafness about appointing more women to the bench (which led to this classic Beaverton article), even though he was quite happy to see that his wedding party all got judicial appointments.
While Michael Chong has not yet made up his mind about joining the race something he says will happen this week it was also reported over the weekend that those close to him say that he won't jump in the race unless he sees a "clear path to victory," which he may not see if everyone starts lining up behind MacKay as the Chosen One. Chong came in fifth during the previous leadership contest, but along the way was derided as a Liberal by his party for proposing a very Red Tory policy position that carbon pricing was indeed a conservative way to deal with the issue of climate change because it relied on market forces to drive innovation and change. Imagine that market mechanisms, which Conservatives claim they support, being used to solve a major global problem! The novelty of it all! Of course, the party is not exactly known for its economic acumen, even if they like to brand themselves as such. Instead, they are right-flavoured populists who have decided that good economic sense should be trumped by inefficient tax cuts (like the GST cut) and boutique tax credits that don't change behaviours and only complicate the tax code (as they cry out that there is too much "red tape" strangling business).
What is particularly interesting about Chong's potential path to victory or lack thereof is the fact that we have seen over the past couple of leadership contests under these same rules, meaning both the 2017 federal Conservative leadership and the 2018 Progressive Conservative leadership contest in Ontario, is that it was the social conservative wing of the party on either level that were the ones who played kingmaker. We saw federally that the votes for Brad Trost and Pierre Lemieux went to Andrew Scheer and not Maxime Bernier on subsequent ballots, and that provincially, it was the votes from Tanya Granic Allen that benefitted Doug Ford and not Christine Elliott. That means that they are likely to remain significant in this particular contest, whether they start out supporting Derek Sloan or Richard Décarie (if he manages to get into the race it remains an open question if he won't be red-lit by the organizing committee), but their votes would have to go somewhere, and a Chong campaign would have an uphill battle trying to grow the membership enough to overcome that advantage. After all, there was a movement during that 2017 campaign whereby a number of people who normally vote Liberal or NDP to take out a Conservative membership to vote for Chong as a means of blocking the likes of Kellie Leitch, for all the good it did.
In the meantime, the supposed front-runners in the contest have been falling all over themselves to declare that they're all for GLBT rights, in spite of their past voting records (come on guys C-16 on trans rights was not that long ago), and not one of them has offered a clear explanation as to why or how their views came to change. And never mind that they haven't exactly made themselves available to march at any Pride parade in the interim either, which is the absolute bare minimum. After Décarie's declaration that he feels that being gay is a choice, certain members of the caucus, Marilyn Gladu among them, felt that he has a right to have his opinion respected (even if she didn't agree with it). Suffice to say, there have been no profiles in courage when it comes to showing that they have a streak of Red Toryism that will be willing to stand up to any of the social conservative base that control so much of the party's fundraising and volunteer efforts.
And that is perhaps the real answer to the question the Red Tories have been slowly driven out of the party because so few of the caucus or the grassroots party's leadership is willing to make the case for that particular value set amongst Conservatives. In the race to embrace further populist positions and parrot the kinds of memes found in online culture, the party is moving away from what was ostensibly one half of its founding predecessors, which eventually keeps any potential leadership candidates from championing their cause. So far, both MacKay and O'Toole say they're going to "unify" the party, but if the Red Tories have already been sent packing, will there be anyone left to unify?
Photo Credit: CBC News
