Watching the speech O'Toole seems to be a step up from Scheer who was too much of a "social conservative from the Prairies", and will likely play better in eastern Canada, delivering a more somewhat efficient vote rather than piling up huge pluralities in AB/SK. But the country has shifted leftward and it's hard to see a Conservative path to victory at this point. Large margins to reverse in the ridings of southern Ontario and not just the GTA.
Agreed. The benefit of O'Toole, is not that he's some GTA juggernaut, it's that he's culturally Anglo-Eastern, in a party that's gotten too West-centric. Independent of specific policy plays, the party spent way too much time last election talking up issues for one region that was already in the bag.
Lord knows how alienating it would be if the party picked MacKay and he spent the whole campaign talking about Maritime issues and the lobster industry, but that's kind of how it felt as an Easterner last time 
In fairness, the CPC has North Korean style margins in Alberta and Saskatchewan, so they can definitely afford to alienate them to a decent amount.
Even if the CPC massively collapsed there, who cares that they win rural Alberta with 60% of the vote instead of 85%?
Exactly. Plus, those margins were driven, not just by the Tories, but by the Liberals and NDP actively going out of their way to antagonize Western interests. The Tories have a lot of wiggle room here unless one of the Western seperatist parties manages to take off.
I disagree. Alberta Saskatchewan yes. However you're forgetting the crown jewel of the west in BC. Many ridings are close here and the fact that tories unlike toronto can win suburban vancouver ridings some of them narrowly, a western separatist party plus ppc is really really dangerous for the party.
Yes, but does suburban Vancouver have any interest in western separatism? The local economy doesn't have very much in common with Calgary's.
