Andrew Coyne's Lament for the Late Conservative Party

It's something I've heard from some of my Conservative friends - a mix of anger, frustration and disappointment at what has become of their party under the leadership of Stephen Harper. But Andrew Coyne sums it up best in the latest MacLeans:

Think back to the late 1990s, and what the Reform party then stood for. Not just balanced budgets, but balanced budget laws. Referendums—on tax increases, on constitutional amendments, on citizens’ initiatives. Tight controls on spending. A flat tax. Abolition of corporate subsidies, and of their “regional development” dispensaries. Reform of employment insurance, of the Canada Pension Plan, of the CBC. A federation of equal provinces and citizens. An elected Senate. Free votes in Parliament. More power for ordinary MPs. Open nomination races at the riding level, free of interference by the leader’s office. Fixed election dates.

By the time Stockwell Day was running for prime minister in 2000—the Canadian Alliance having replaced the Reform party, and Day having replaced Preston Manning—a third or more of these were already gone. But the pace only quickened from there. By the time of the 2004 election, the newly formed Conservative party was still vaguely interested in abolishing corporate welfare, and still mentioned tax cuts. But mostly it was interested in telling you what it wouldn’t do: it wouldn’t cut spending, for instance, or much else that might upset someone, somewhere.

The party’s founding policy convention in 2005 took things still further: gone was any mention of referendums, for example. Spending cuts were out; subsidies were in. The courting of Quebec nationalists, which Harper had once warned against, had begun in earnest. Probably the delegates thought they were making a prudent set of concessions to reality, in a bid to establish themselves, once and for all, as a centrist party, ready to form a government. But in fact they were only softening things up for the next round. The accession to power, after so many years, did not mark the end of the party’s concessions. It merely provided it with the means to make still more, each more jaw-dropping than the last: on Quebec, on Afghanistan, on confidence votes, on foreign takeovers, on fixed election dates, on appointing senators, on corporate bailouts, until at last we arrived at last week’s establishment of a regional development agency for southern Ontario.

So they’ve given up everything they ever stood for, and what have they got in return? Pretty close to nada. They’re stalled in the polls, again. The fabled majority remains firmly out of reach. Those disposed to mistrust them are as suspicious as ever, while their own followers are now thoroughly demoralized. They have not moved to the centre; they have only succeeded in shifting the entire political spectrum to the left. The Quebec experiment, likewise, is in tatters, Quebec more nationalist than ever. The destruction is total. The failure is absolute.

Once, long ago, there was an answer: a new party. But you can only do that once: no one’s got the energy to climb that hill again. The harsh fact is that there is no longer anything resembling a conservative party in this country, nor any prospect of forming one. And conservatives have only themselves to blame.