Conservative Party of Canada Leadership Race Megathread-May 27th 2017

[DC Al Fine]

Chong will jump in next week.

Yay

[DC Al Fine]

Trost considering a run.

I don't know much about him other than that he's in the socon wing of the party. Any idea whether he's running for a future cabinet spot or to be the socon candidate?

Tory convention drops party's opposition to SSM, all leadership hopefuls vote for the plank.

*Sigh* Fait accompli I guess

[DC Al Fine]

Bernier now opposes supply management. Sadly, no one who has a shot at winning will agree with him.

I'm torn between a hopeless vote for social conservatism, a hopeless vote against supply management and a hopeless vote for parliamentary reform.

[DC Al Fine]

I'd say Bernier is in a much better position than Trost and Chong.

Sure, but that's almost by default

Trost is taking an unrealistic approach fighting 2005's culture wars instead of 2016's* and Chong has all the marks of a Huntsman candidate that can't convert in real life.

I do wonder how Bernier will do though. The number of actual libertarians in the party is quite small but there is a fairly large group of people out there who aren't purists but thought Harper wasn't free market enough. If he can capture that group, he will have quite a strong showing.

*I mean seriously, there are efforts to block Trinity Western's law school accreditation, and euthanasia for minors is a debate now. Trost would be wasting valuable political capital fighting yesterday's battles.

[DC Al Fine]

YUGE: Kenney is leaving federal politics and heading for Edmonton, probably to commandeer the PCAA's smoking hulk. Best of luck to him, and hopefully he joins Brown and Pallister.

I'm not in touch with AB politics. Would he cruise to the PC leadership or would he face a fair amount of opposition?

[DC Al Fine]

Re: Trost. Even with his name listed in our poll, he still received less than 1% (worse than Ambrose who wasn't even listed).

No one knows who he is...

He'll gain eventually if no other socon runs. Patrick Brown started at 3% because nobody knew him, but gained quickly because no other socon ran.

True. We'll have to see how the field shakes up. Kenney running would have put a really low ceiling on him, but if his main opponents are Chong, Rempel and Bernier...

I'm interested in how the race will measure the various factions of the right. The set of candidates didn't really allow for it when Harper won and the parties were disunited before that. We really haven't had a race like this since Mulroney won.

[DC Al Fine]

The fact that the heir-apparent Jason Kenney doesn't want the job indicates the Tories are resigned to being opposition again.

I wouldn't plan for anything until the NDP get their new leader, but yes more or less this. The Tories could do somewhat better than their 2015 popular vote and still lose lots of seats unless the NDP get their act together.

[DC Al Fine]

What exactly is Deepak Obhrai's trying to accomplish with his run?

[DC Al Fine]

I wouldn't count anyone out yet. It's early days and a lot could happen, especially with the lack of front runner or super organized campaigns.

[DC Al Fine]

Lisa Raitt's not going to win, unless there is some underground super campaign going on, a la Patrick Brown.  Is there one?

Who will win then? No one has an organized super campaign.

Peter MacKay will probably win if he runs.  Otherwise I'd guess there are 4 early fairly equal front runners: Lisa Raitt, Tony Clement, Kellie Leitch and Maxime Bernier.

Maxime Bernier is not winning. He is a laughing stock in the province that know him.

Is he? He just got reelected in his Beauce riding with nearly 60% of the vote, and the latest poll of Conservative supporters had him at 10% nationally and I presume most of that came from Quebecers.

He may be 'laughing stock' among non Conservatives in Quebec, but he seems to be very well liked by Quebec conservatives.

You're wrong. He's not popular at all outside the Beauce. His economic proposals interest me but I have zero interest in putting anywhere near first preference.

Then how do you explain the poll that had him at 10% nationally?

Name recognition, Anglo libertarians/free marketeers.

That said, and for what it's worth I do to.  I never understood this idea of those on the left who somehow believe that businesses that are owned by Canadians will be more loyal to Canada or to Canadian consumers. The sole loyalty of business people is to the bottom line, and the only way to ensure they behave responsibly is through competition.  So, opening up all Canadian markets to foreign competition is the way to make sure that Canadian owned businesses act in the best interests of Canadians.

Agreed. This is one of my pet peeves. I chalk it up (mostly) to reflexive anti-Americanism.

[DC Al Fine]

I don't put much stock in leadership polls is my point. I'm getting only a bit more spam from him than I am from Leitch.

I was wondering about why I was getting so many fundraising appeals from Leitch. Glad I'm not the only one.

[DC Al Fine]

MacKay interview with Solomon. He doesn't sound terribly interested, IMO. Besides, where would he run? He can't be outside the House for 2+ years or carpetbag in ON and get Meighen'd given our ON numbers right now.

They couldn't find an old guy in a rural Prairie seat who wants to retire?

[DC Al Fine]

Anyone have the Tory membership numbers by province? Might help with our #analysis.

They use the system for the leadership with 100 points per riding, though, don't they?

Oh yeah. So, if the Tory membership in Quebec (what little there is) loves Bernier, that's a butt-load of points right there. 

Relevant



Looks like Belinda got a lot less than her 35% score would indicate.

[DC Al Fine]

Clown car keeps growing.

Wonder how many dropouts we'll have before voting time. The Liberals had four in '06.

[DC Al Fine]

I'd quibble with the size of that 'top-tier' list. If your last experience in politics was losing an election > 5 years ago, I wouldn't call you top tier. Charest and Lord don't belong there.

[DC Al Fine]

I think this is further evidence that the Conservatives don't believe Peter MacKay is going to run.  I could also see these M.Ps (and shadow cabinet ministers) looking at running if MacKay doesn't based on their relatively high profiles: James Bezan, Pierre Polievre and Peter Van Loan.

I'm not so sure about that. For the moment no one knows if McKay will run or not and so it doesnt do anyone any harm to muse about running and getting a bit of publicity so that if McKay does NOT run - they already have a teeny bit of name recognition. Keep in mind that you need to pay $100,000 to enter the race, so I have a feeling that many of the people talking about running right now are either floating trial balloons or are stalking horses for someone else or just want a bit of free publicity.

I say show me the money! Until someone is seriously ready to pony up $100k - I don't take them seriously

Good point DL. I hadn't thought about that. If we narrow the field to candidates who actually have put up the money only Bernier, Chong, Clement and Leitch are in.

Who else will put up? I figure at least one socon (probably Trost, maybe Scheer if I'm lucky ), another red Tory (MacKay or Raitt?), and maybe 1-2 random fillers (think Martin Singh).

[DC Al Fine]

Leitch should get outta the race now.

Coming from a religious community that's a bit out of the Canadian mainstream, this scares the crap out of me. I think Leitch will be hugging the bottom of my preferences with Bernier.

[DC Al Fine]

So what are people thinking for their ballots, (or hypothetical ballots for non-Tories)? Mine will probably look like:

SoCon protest vote/Serious vote for Scheer if possible
Chong
Clement
Random filler
Bernier
Leitch

[DC Al Fine]

So what are people thinking for their ballots, (or hypothetical ballots for non-Tories)? Mine will probably look like:

SoCon protest vote/Serious vote for Scheer if possible
Chong
Clement
Random filler
Bernier
Leitch

What if Lisa Raitt runs?  She seems to be pretty moderate and a genuinely nice person as well.

She'd be lower than Chong, higher than Bernier and Leitch.

[DC Al Fine]

There's a perfectly plausible alternative explanation for Leitch: She's a politician shifting like a weathervane in an effort to carve out a niche for herself.

[DC Al Fine]

At this moment who do you think will win. I would be surprised if either O'Leary, or MacKay run,although MacKay is probably one of the favorites if he does run. The way I see it now it is probably a three way race with Bernier, Clement, and Raitt (assuming she runs) as the favorites. While Leitch probably was in the mix at one point, her chances have been hurt significantly by recent comments on Immigration. Chong and Obhrai are probably to moderate to win the leadership, while Lemieux,  Snow, Scheer and Tost are too socially conservative to win.Right now  Raitt probably wins, with Bernier in second and Clement in third.

Scheer is socially conservative but it remains to be seen how socially conservative he runs, he also says that he plans to run a broad based issues campaign and not focus just on social issues.  I'd place him with your other three front-runners.

Agreed. The main of affect of this is that he'll take all of Trost and Lemieux's breathing room. I could see Trost pulling a semi-decent result if the field was almost all people who wanted to 'move past' social issues. Scheer will run as a compromise between social conservatism and electability, and which should limit the other socons quite a bit.

[DC Al Fine]

How do you make that compromise? Either you are a social conservative who wants to rescind equal marriage and declare all same sex marriages to be annulled and you want to restrict abortion rights...or you can be electable. You can't be both.

a) Politics exists on a continium and
b)The religious right has more than two issues. The Harper government even pursued some of them.

[DC Al Fine]

Really? what issues does the religious right have in Canada apart from the following?

a. hatred of gays and lesbians and belief that they must be stripped of their rights
b. wanting to ban abortion rights and restrict contraception - likely with jail terms for women who choose to terminate pregnancy
c. a total ban on euthanasia so they can make sure that the terminally ill suffer in the most excruciating pain possible. (I've never understood why these so-called Christians seem to enjoy seeing people suffer)

I'm scratching my head to think of what else the the s-called religious right would want that are in areas of federal jurisdiction...maybe they want to ban all non-Christian immigration to Canada? Maybe they want to erect crucifixes in all public buildings?...maybe they want to find some way to force all schools to teach creationism instead of evolution?

Am I missing anything?

You forgot the part where we kick puppies.

[DC Al Fine]

Who knows. She might know more than we do, or she might be speaking off the cuff in an interview.

[DC Al Fine]

Bernier promises to eliminate capital gains tax.