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Last weekend Tim Hudak was elected leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, but the real winner of the three month leadership contest was Randy Hillier. Hillier’s uncompromising commitment to principled conservatism was immensely popular among party members, as was his determination to champion those principles in spite of the hostility of some of his opponents. It was the sort of gritty performance that conservatives in the province and the country desperately need.
Hillier’s early elimination from the ballot does not do justice to how popular both he and his message were in this race – not even close. Although no official tally was taken, several of those present when the preferential ballots were being counted confirm that he was the overwhelming second choice of party members, some estimating his support at as high as two-thirds.
Had he been able to overcome his single greatest handicap – what one might call the “electability factor” – Hillier would certainly have been chosen leader of the party instead of Hudak, probably by a landslide.
Throughout the campaign, Hillier churned out policy proposals that challenged conventional thinking on a wide range of issues. But it was the principles behind the policies more than the policies themselves that resonated so well with the party’s members. His message was clear: to win, conservatives have to run as conservatives.
History seems to confirm this simple observation.
Under the principled leadership of Mike Harris, conservatives formed back-to-back majority governments in Ontario in 1995 and 1999, winning most of the seats in suburban Toronto and several in the supposedly impregnable 416 area code itself.
By 2002 the pundits and pollsters were telling Ontario’s conservatives that they couldn’t win again running as conservatives. “Times have changed,” they said, so the party chose Ernie Eves as its leader, largely because of his red-Tory credentials and his repudiation of many of the Harris policies he had previously supported. Under Eve’s leadership conservatives won only 24 seats in Ontario in 2003 – none in the 416 area code.
In 2004 the same pundits and pollsters repeated their warning that conservatives couldn’t win in Ontario running as conservatives, so the party chose John Tory as its leader. Under his leadership in 2007, it won just 26 seats – once again, none in the 416 area code.
The conclusion is inescapable – when conservatives run as conservatives they win elections. Sure, they lose elections too, but they win more than they lose, and at least when they do lose they aren’t perpetuating the bogus notion that society is, by default, liberal. If it is, it’s only because conservatives have been afraid to offer voters a clear and credible conservative alternative to what has become the liberal status quo. If they would only offer that alternative – if they would adopt a truly conservative platform and defend it with courage and conviction – they would demolish the false liberal consensus as Harris did in Ontario in 1995 and as Thatcher did in Great Britain and Reagan did in the U.S. in 1979 and 1980 respectively.
During the campaign the split between those in favour of an unapologetic conservative agenda for the party and those who fear it was in stark evidence. The principle objection raised by some candidates to many policy ideas advanced by Hudak and Hillier had nothing to do with the policies themselves, but how they would be portrayed by liberals, especially in the mainstream media.
Case in point: Both Hudak and Hillier proposed to dismantle the Ontario Human Rights Commission and transfer the responsibility to enforce the province’s Human Rights Code from that corrupt patronage haven to real courts, where rules of evidence apply and the constitutional rights of everyone, including the accused, are respected. Frank Klees and Christine Elliot, the two other contenders for the party’s leadership, both acknowledged the problem and the need to fix it, but argued that it would be a mistake to make this part of the party’s platform because the liberals would use it to portray conservatives as being against human rights.
Klees and Elliott were right, of course – liberals would say that about conservatives. But here’s the thing they and so many contemporary conservative “leaders” in our country don’t seem to understand: liberals are going to do that anyway.
When we conservatives talk about controlling spending, liberals accuse us of not caring about poverty;
When we talk about reducing taxes, they accuse us of favouring the rich;
When we talk about cutting red tape and regulation, they accuse us of not caring about people’s safety;
When we talk about health care reform, they accuse us of not caring about the sick and infirm;
Whatever we conservatives propose, one thing is certain - liberals will vilify us and call us names. If we run away and hide every time they do, we end up standing for nothing, and as Margret Thatcher once observed, non-one wants to support a party with the courage of no convictions.
The road to long-term electoral success for conservatives does not lie in mimicking liberals – it lies in being conservative, developing genuinely conservative policies that address today’s issues and defending those policies in the public square.
The argument that conservatives must choose between principle and pragmatism is false. For conservatives, principle and pragmatism are one and the same.
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