Timmy fights back:
Embattled Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak is pleading with malcontents in his own party to put away the knives.
Returning from a one-week summer vacation Monday to quell the rebellion fomenting in his absence, Hudak said he opposes another leadership review and warned party infighting only helps the governing Liberals.
There are no true absences in politics. Timmy might have been away in body, but I doubt he was ever a smart phone away from the intrigue. Vacations are for children, retirees and non-entities. A man who is potentially a few hundred thousand voters away from the second most powerful job in Canada doesn't take vacations. The pressure and workload might tapper off for a few days, the war carries on.
Which bring us to why there still is a war. A tottering and corrupt Liberal government should be catnip to an opposition party, especially a Tory one. By all historical rights Tim Hudak should already be Premier. Even assuming that 2011 was a fumble, now should be the moment when the Tory leader is priming himself to deliver the coup d'grace next spring.
But instead he's fighting rebels in his own caucus.
In politics no one likes a loser. Unless you're the NDP, a perennial Miss Congeniality in most of the country. If anything the Dippers failure to win has given them an aura of principle and romance. So long as you find granola munching hippies, unionized rent seekers and militant professors romantic. The Tories, however, are the party of practicality. Small town business people, disgruntled residents of rural regions and the odd real estate developer. The NDP's base doesn't mind losing or not having power, their daily lives are divorced from the rest of society. The Tory base does much of the work that still keeps this province functioning. They want results.
The sneaking suspicion about Tim Hudak is that he is more a politician than a conservative. Not a bad guy mind you, but he seems to lack the inherent practical ruthlessness that Tories love so much. That vital combination of bank manager and Attila the Hun. He seems anxious not to offend the Globe and Mail's editorial board. In a Liberal leader that's probably a sensible approach. Among Tory chieftains it's a fatal character flaw.
In 2011 Timmy was following the standard front runner's strategy. Be bland and let the other guy screw up. Then his commanding lead vanished as the election approached. After the defeat he received an earful from hither and yon within the party. So then Tim began to limp Right, somewhat convincingly. These recent by-election defeats were, however, proof to some that Timmy wasn't turning his limp into a firm Rightward lean.
While the argument is plausible it fails to keep in mind that by-elections are a crap shoot. A not so random sampling of the overall electorate. Their predictive power is weak and will be read any which way by the interested. Perhaps the combined reincarnations of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Mike Harris and Milton Friedman would have fared no better. Stuff happens and sometimes it's no one's fault.
The problem for Timmy is that the base doesn't trust him. That lack of trust means that every slip up becomes a mortal sin. Short of winning all five by-elections there would still be Tories calling for his resignation. They think he's a compromising wimp. Before Hudak can fix his image with the wider electorate, he needs to fix his image with the party.
The split here between the party high command and the grassroots is partly cultural. The guys running the party are typically university graduates in public policy or political science, they view issues in an often highly technical manner. Some are policy wonks, others are polling geeks and a few are natural intriguers. They live a world somewhat removed from their natural supporters. That leads to bits of cognitive dissonance.
In the lead up to 2011 the High Command developed a platform plank that called for using convicts to clean city streets. The idea was impractical and a fairly craven attempt to appeal to the base. The thing was that in addition to being dumb, the idea also sounded insincere. Like a white suburban kid attempting to pass himself off as a young black ghetto hood.
With the cultural disconnect comes the strategic misapprehension. Those running the party confuse polling with elections, just as they confuse their little world with the wider electorate. In an age when most people voted paying attention to the polls mattered. But in 2011 less than half the electorate showed up to vote in Ontario. In other words the pollsters are asking a somewhat random sampling of the adult population, but only the most motivated are actually voting. That means that the polls aren't telling party strategists what they need to know. It's also why pollsters have screwed up recent election predictions in Alberta and British Columbia. In Alberta the turnout was 57%. In B.C. it was about 50%.
Pollster have attempted to deal with this problem by asking for "likely voters." That doesn't mean much. Someone being polled might very well feel likely when asked, and then feel lethargic on election day. Put it another way: Among likely dieters how many will not buy that bag of cookies? There are too many variables at play. That doesn't even get us into the issue of pollsters calling landlines in an age when many people have only have cell phones.
Modern Canadian political strategists are faced with a shrinking electorate. In the years ahead only the most motivated will bother showing up. This is a phenomenon that has been happening in the US for decades. The implications haven't really been absorbed yet by the political class here. A shrunken electorate means more polarized campaigning. Real attack ads as opposed to the timid ones we've seen so far. It means that getting out your base is as important, or more important, than reaching out to the middle. Wondering what the Globe and Mail thinks is a poor strategy. Their editorial board couldn't even swing Toronto-Centre, much less the 905.
Tim Hudak will likely survive this bout of rebellion. The Ontario Tories are many things but they lack the suicidal instincts of the federal party back in Dalton Camp's day. The problem for Timmy isn't today's revolt, it's that an embittered base will sit on its hands come the next election.
Recent Comments