Kim Campbell To Harper: Dump The SoCons

She believes she knows the way for the Conservative party to win majority. Her advice for Stephen Harper is to be nice to the Liberal-appointed civil servants and to marginalize the Social Conservative wing of the party, making it clear that the CPC won't implement any pro-life or pro-family policies once it wins a majority government.

PARIS - Prime Minister Stephen Harper is running a competent government but should curb his "control freak" tendencies and make clear to Canadians his government won't impose a socially conservative agenda if he wins a majority, according to former prime minister Kim Campbell.
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Campbell also said polls indicating Harper has been unable to cultivate enough public support to win a majority government suggest that many Canadians are nervous about the potential impact of the many social conservatives in his caucus with strong opinions on issues like abortion and gay rights.

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Well, Kim Campbell sure knows how to win majorities. So if she gives us such a great advice, then each card-carrying CPC member has a moral obligation to follow it to the letter.

Too bad the newspaper ran out of space, so it couldn't publish two other steps Stephen Harper must follow in order to secure a majority in the Commons: He must change the party's name to Progressive Unconservative Party of Canada (PUPC), then he must resign and appoint Garth Turner as a party leader. Then the renewed party will get every single Liberal vote there is.

And what about Conservative voters? Don't worry, they're not going to vote Liberal, are they? They'll vote what the Party tells them to or they'll stay home. Who cares? It's the Liberal voters that matter! So pretend to be as far to the left as possible to lure all the disgruntled Liberals you can get - that's the path to a majority government!

In fact - that's exactly what Kim Campbell tried to achieve back in 1993 with her undefeatable team of extremely progressive Conservatives such as John Tory and Garth Turner. In just seven weeks of the campaign Campbell and her team boosted the party support by almost -20 percentage points, adding as many as -149 seats. Kim herself showed a great performance in her Vancouver Centre riding winning an honorary second place, while her Liberal opponent ended up with less than a third of the popular vote...

Well, I guess that's enough sarcasm for this post. It's sad to see that those directly responsible for the demise of the old PC party haven't learned one simple thing: no Conservative party could ever win without help of the Social Conservatives. When the old PC party of Canada made a sharp turn to the left, Social Conservatives voted Reform. When Ontario PC party did the same under John Tory leadership, most SoCon voters simply stayed home (some cast a protest vote for the FCP). And that's exactly what's going to happen if Harper follows Kim Campbell's advice.