By Shachi Kurl, President
Feb. 4, 2022 – Quo Vadis, Conservatives? It’s a question you must think long and hard about because I fear you are headed for the brambles and thickets of political frustration a good while longer.
Take heart in knowing other parties have been through ugly, painful periods of moulting before. The 1990s were harsh times for the NDP, when it polled in the single digits. And at various points between 2006 and 2015, the currently unstoppable Liberals seemed this close to flat-lining, cycling through unelectable, unrelatable leaders who tried on ideas that didn’t resonate with voters — that is, when voters deigned to pay attention to them.
At least, for a while, the Liberals had an interim leader in Bob Rae, who, if unable to significantly improve on the party’s electoral fortunes, was game to jump off a dock buck-naked with Rick Mercer on national television (they blurred it out). But I digress.
Since then, they have figured out a winning formula. For a while, lots and lots of folks wanted to drink the elixir. Since 2019, it has tasted good enough, to just enough people, to keep them in power six years and counting.
By contrast, whatever Conservatives currently appear to want to brew, having dumped the latest alchemist in Erin O’Toole, appears to taste to the majority of the electorate like a polyjuice potion using hair of unknown provenance plucked from the drainpipe of a locker room. To the party’s hardcore base, however, it is ambrosia. Herein lies the problem.
For the rest of this piece, please view it on the Ottawa Citizen’s site where it was initially published.
Image – Greg Perry
