John Tory: Was the Devil you Knew Better than the Devil you Don’t Yet Know?
March 10th, 2009
John Tory’s by-election defeat last week, and the predictable end of his political career, raise questions about the Ontario Liberal’s political strategy. Believing Tory to be a weak leader, the Liberals could have let him run unopposed, or with token opposition, to return to the Legislature, where the Liberals would kick him around before the 2011 election.
By campaigning hard to defeat him, the Liberals must be thinking that for the Ontario Conservatives, the process of choosing a new leader will be time-consuming and messy, and the likely new leader will be even less electable than Tory. The process will leave the Conservatives divided and leaderless for several months during a period of bleak economic performance. The Liberals expect that the Tories will turn to the right, likely to a younger veteran of Mike Harris’s Common Sense Revolution like Tim Hudak. Or perhaps an older CSR veteran like Jim Flaherty, John Baird, or Tony Clement, will renounce the moderation developed in the context of a recession-fighting federal government, to return to CSR theology in Ontario.
Either way, the Liberals must be salivating at the prospect of the Conservatives executing a turn to the right, which leaves them alone in the political middle for the next election. This will be even more so, if the NDP’s new leader Andrea Horwath moves to the left. Bad economic performance is a necessary but not sufficient condition for defeating a government; the opposition parties need credible plans. The Liberals are betting that the majority of voters in the political middle won’t see the hard-left NDP or hard-right Conservatives as credible, thereby making a McGuinty three-peat possible.
Bhavana Gupta
March 15th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
There is talk of Christine Elliot running for leadership. I don’t know much about her, but I’ve heard that she’s more of a centrist. She is also well-educated, well-spoken and can claim to be very right-leaning by association with Flaherty. If there is truth to these rumours, do you think someone like her would be damaging to the Liberals?
Kwaku Mark
March 25th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
I disagree with your assertion that the Liberals strategy was flawed cause I don’t think they Liberals had a strategy in the first place; well their strategy was no strategy. Tory is able to implement all the flawed strategy required to defeat himself.
If anything, I think Tory built his own coffin when he decided to run in Toronto in the 2007 election against the Education Minister. Tory then dug his grave and buried himself by deciding to run by highjacking a riding.
Although the Liberals had a candidate in the riding, I suspect that not much effort was put in to defeat Tory. He defeated himself. Anyone who is on a Liberal mailing list could attest to the number of e-mails or lack therefore that were sent out requesting help during the by-elections.
Either way, it is a win-win for the McGuinty team. Both opposition parties are currently non-existent in terms of their effectiveness – that could be due to the fact that they are both leaderless.
Regarding your comments about the prospect of old CSR members like Jim Flaherty, John Baird, or Tony Clement returning to their old stumping grounds, I wouldn’t count on it. Their profile and influence at the Federal level far outweigh that of any Premier in the country. How many people can name the Premiers of all 10 provinces let alone the opposition leaders.
The only way forward for both the Conservative and the NDP is to engage in soul searching similar to what the Republicans are doing down south to engage new blood into the party, pun intended. This is time to make the party reflective of the true diversity of the Province; please don’t say the NDP are doing that cause they are not. They are simple fielding candidates in non-winnable ridings. If both parties fail, history is in the making in 2011 – McGuinty three-peat is inevitable.