How To Tory

Sean Speer, a Tory wonk, recently wrote an interesting piece in the National Post about how the Conservative Party might go ahead there and win the next election. He pointed out the theory that the Party has a "high floor" (the largest base vote of any party) but a low "ceiling". In other words, its vote does not increase in real terms. The key he believes is the 6 million voters or one third of voters who did not vote. Appeal to them and you can easily win the 5 or 6 % more of the vote you need to get a majority. However, he was short on specific ideas on how or what to say or do to do this.

I have two ideas:

1. You must appeal to their economic well being. No that does not mean another government program. It means ideas that will make us more productive and competitive and therefore put more money into the pockets of all Canadians. The number one reason that we were taught in Poli Sci class that people do not vote is discontent with the system or as a wonk would say "inefficacy". The number one reason for that feeling is that people feel that their economic interests and concerns are being ignored by their leadership in favour of, take your pick, climate change, illegal immigrants, SNC Lavalin, Aux Donuts, etc., etc. Time to put forward ideas that appeal to that feeling. Call it "populism" if you want or Trump Light but, Trump and, to a lesser extent, Johnson and the Australians just proved it works and that leads perfectly to my second idea...

2. Double down on the base. Only the denizens of our "Beltway" would look at the Tories of 2019 and conclude that we lost because we were too conservative. I believe it is the opposite. Just as many GOP conservatives stayed at home losing the RINO Romney a close race to Obama in 2012, many natural Tories stayed home because they believed that Scheer was not only a poor Leader but that the Party did not stand for real conservatism any more. It stood for "Elect Me". If just about 1 million of the stay at home voters were natural Tories, we only need to bring back just over half of them to win a majority. And, if that's not enough, we should attract many Blue Liberals who stayed home or naturally "independent" voters along the way. This further, maybe, half million would give us a landslide. Better, the chances of a truly populist conservative, with bold ideas that are easily understandable in either official language, "activating" enough non-voting Liberals, Independents and New Democrats (oh we could get some of them, too, especially in the West) coming out to vote just to stop him or her are very slim indeed. Think Hillary. Did Trump "activate" any Democrat stay at homes to support her?

There is no reason to be a Trump "clone" as Johnson proved. But we do need a moderately competent (remember when they told us Ford could not win and BoJo was a clown?) and  modestly charismatic leader to put forward a few basic bread and butter but always definitively conservative ideas with a fresh coat of paint to win. (A perfect example -  Opportunity Zones for poor districts across Canada such as those in the US. Also a great example of the "Grand Bargain" where you achieve a conservative goal but help people that are not traditional conservative voters.)  This is surely not too much to ask. But if a similar approach is not taken, we could nominate the Second Coming of MacDonald and we would not win. Remember, approximately 20% of Trump voters never voted before and Johnson took seats the Tories had not won since WW1. We can do something like that here and with  (as the Aussies showed) far less exotic leadership. (BTW, just who is the PM there anyway?)