Let me regale you with my tale of misery and woe. To put it bluntly, I feel abandoned. O’Tooles announcement last night that he will maintain the assault weapons ban has left me disillusioned and feeling powerless.
I am going to take some flack for this but I very much want to initiate discussion and intelligent comment. It’s somewhat long so please bear with me.
In the interests of full disclosure I state that I am a former infantry officer and that my politics are defined as a fiscal conservative but center-leaning on social issues (what used to be called a “red tory”).
My single largest issue that I care about is firearms rights. Both Bill C17 and the OIC banning the 1500 so-called “assault weapons” are a direct attack on law abiding firearms-owning citizens by the Liberal Party who hypocritically are more intent on scoring naked political points then they are in actually addressing the crime issues that they claim justify their approach. To my mind the deliberate misinformation and underhanded tactics used by them (employing an OIC rather than running their idea through the scrutiny and debate of parliament as legislation) clearly demonstrates their unfitness to govern. So what is the alternative?
The Conservative Party was the one that I felt most closely aligned with my policy objectives and had a realistic probability of forming a government. I have long argued that the only hope of a conservative-leaning government in the near future relies almost exclusively upon the Conservative party moving to the Center. In the current session of government the Liberals have moved significantly to the left in their policies to try to take votes from the NDP. This leaves something of a vacuum in the Centre that is ripe to be exploited by the Conservative party. But this required a clear move by the Conservatives towards the center in both policy and doctrine.
Yes, I am aware that the PPC party also aligns somewhat with my politics but they clearly have no shot at forming a government. As a simple matter of realpolitik they are not a viable option regardless of how closely they hew to a right-leaning agenda.
To that end I was very disappointed by O’Toole winning the Conservative nomination over Peter Mackay. I saw Mackay as the center-leaning candidate that could successfully execute the above strategy as O’Toole appeared too far right for the center-leaning majority of the Canadian citizenry. And so, I lost hope again.
And then, things changed. O’Toole very clearly began executing the very strategy that I thought had been abandoned by the Conservative Party. He recently began to articulate, in a very convincing fashion, the very policies that move the party to the Center. The spectacular success of this strategy is shown by the Conservatives now leading the Liberals in the polls. A healthy proportion of Canada’s citizens clearly like what they are hearing. I began to have hope again.
Yes, there are those who see this recent move by O’Toole as a betrayal of the more pure right-leaning agenda that won him the nomination. I have repeatedly seen statements on this forum where members decry his “betrayal” and claim they will now vote PPC rather than Conservative. I plead with you folks to not do that as it simply plays into the hands of the Liberals by splitting the Conservative vote. Yes, this modern version of the Conservative Party may not be as closely aligned with the purity of your personal political views, but they are the best shot the Right has of getting a government that is more sympathetic to our interests than either the Liberals or the NDP.
As a matter of pure political realism we must back the horse that has the best chance of winning. I feel the anger of those who are more right leaning than me, but we need to form a collective voting weight that gives the Conservatives their best chance to form a government. So, I urge you to swallow your pride and back the party that will form a government most closely aligned with our collective larger vision.
And what kind of government is likely? Our only hope is to create enough political weight to win a majority government. Frankly, I don’t see any chance of the Conservatives forming a minority government even if they win the most seats but fall short of a majority. There are no major players in that sandbox who would be willing to work with the Conservatives to form a minority government. I can’t imagine the NDP supporting a Conservative minority government. And if given a choice, the Liberals would rather work with the NDP. So even if Conservatives have the most seats, but can’t form a minority government, the Governor General will then turn to the next party (probably the Liberals) to form a minority government. The result would clearly be another Liberal minority government supported by the NDP (“the Horror” – Col Kurtz).
The result…… we are out in the cold again with a Liberal govt emboldened even further to take more extreme measures against gun owners (how does a New Zealand-like ban against all semi-auto firearms sound?).
So, for Gods sake, let’s intensively focus our collective voting weight behind our best option for government … the Conservative Party.
And this was all my thinking up until last nights announcement by O’Toole of his support for the assault weapons ban.
Despite the 3 point lead in the polls, O’Toole clearly feels the need to move even further to the center. The Liberals have been heavily criticizing him on the gun issue for the last week or so. Not surprisingly they see this as a “wedge” issue that can separate center voters from the conservatives. I had hoped that the polling lead would be enough for O’Toole to resist taking such a step. But that narrow lead does fall within the margin of error for those polls.
I, and the firearms community, have now clearly been abandoned for the very political expediency that I have been arguing for years. I have been hoist by my own petard!!
There is now no major party that represents me on the issue that I care about the most. I am now lost, powerless, and disillusioned. So, where do we go from here?
Although I am still reeling from the shock of last nights announcement, I feel that we still need to stay the course. I need to adopt my own advice to those who were considering voting PPC. I need to swallow my own pride and do the smart thing even if it hurts. To be “real” for a moment, I would rather have a party in government that is most closely aligned with my interests even if they have abandoned me on my most important issue. The alternatives are unquestionably worse. The Conservative Party is still our best shot at government.
Once we are “in” government we can lobby our representatives to roll back large portions of the OIC without killing it which will allow O’Toole to still say he has not abandoned the “ban” (think of an approach where the Conservative govt, after extensive consultation, redefines the meaning of “assault weapon” and “assault-like”). That would do the trick.
I can summarize this entire strategy in one simple quote - “Do not let the perfect become the enemy of the good” (Voltaire)
YMMV of course. 
