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Everyone's favourite appropriately-named party leader hasn't been having a great time over the past few months. Ever since John Tory's upsetting dual loss in October's provincial election, the vultures have been circling over him. Both established and grassroots party members have been calling for Tory's head, and they'll finally have a chance to oust him at the Progressive Conservative Party's General Meeting at the end of the month.
The anti-Tory camp's main argument is, simply put, that Tory is a loser. GrassrootsPC, an anti-Tory website, argues that the man has lost a provincial and mayoral election—and that he even lost his own seat. The website is the brainchild of Rueben Devlin, the party's former president, and he certainly seems to think that leadership matters—but that there's no leadership in John Tory, and that he would fumble again in the 2011 election.
Tory, on the other hand, has set up his own website: TogetherWithTory.ca. The website is filled with features that humanize Tory—pictures of him with old men, smiling with other prominent party members, and looking statesman-y in front of small children, all super-posed for some delightful little photo-ops. Of course, this is all countered by Tory's letter to the party on the main page, one that addresses the reader with a kind, down-to-earth and compassionate greeting: "Dear Party Member."
Of course, if Tory is kicked out of the party leadership, the party may end up with someone who's more true to conservative values. John Tory is something of a Red Tory, and if his replacement comes from Stephen Harper's inner circle, as some have suggested, the party could become more of a conservative option for those inclined to vote that way. Of course, Mike Harris was more conservative than Tory, and his name and style of governing were pretty much sacrosanct amongst PCs in the last election.
At this point Tory has lost his fair share of elections. Then again, John Diefenbaker lost five municipal, provincial, and federal elections before finally getting a seat in the House of Commons—and he eventually became Prime Minister. For nearly six years! Could there be hope for the embattled Tory leader? We'll find out on February 24th.
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Tory might not be doing so great, but the rest of the party isn't doing that well either. If they pick a new leader (I'm thinking it's 60-40 chance that they will) I don't think they'll win the next election anyway. The Harris legacy has some deep roots...deep roots that pissed a lot of people off!
I wouldn't say either John Baird or Jim Flaherty are true to "conservative values," at least not as I'd define them. Flaherty's last budget was the most spending of any in our country's history, and John Baird clearly has no interest in conservation.
Tory's own policy on public religious school funding lost the election for the Tories. McGuinty, for all his hypocrisy, rode it all the way to an election victory. For that and the fact he couldn’t win his own seat, he should be tossed.
He certainly hasn't much luck running political campaigns. Having the recent provincial election and Kim Campbell's disaster on his resume shouldn't get him hired to run another.
Seems as though he really should look into another line of work. The religious school policy was a horrible idea from the start, no doubt about that, but he had a really tough fight for his riding and at the very least, the loss of his seat shouldn't be held against him.
Though I am no fan of Flaherty's, this line is silly:
"Flaherty's last budget was the most spending of any in our country's history".
As the budget continually grows (due to among other things, increased tax revenue and inflation), its hard to think of a scenario when this won't be true. In order to measure its place as a spending budget, you need to measure spending per dollar of tax revenue, and I would expect that this budget wouldn't come close.
I'd also take issue with the author's assertion that Red Tory values are not true "conservative" values, since, Federally and in Ontario anyway, the line of Red Tory premiers and prime ministers is a lot longer than the line containing those you would deem true conservatives. The author might benefit from noting that Bill Davis ruled for a lot longer, and had a lot greater influence on the development of Ontario, than Mike Harris.
That said, the observation that there is a constituency of Harris-style Tories uncomfortable with the more moderate conservatism espoused by Tory is undoubtedly correct, however, the author (and numerous other commentators on the same point) always treat the Tory-types as a minority, despite the fact he won the leadership quite handily, over Flaherty, who was seen as a Harris legacy candidate. In the face of this, its hard to argue (as you have done) that Tory is somehow out of step with mainstream party policy or values.
The refrain to me is simpler and more universal: political parties always turn against a loser, and that, whether fair or not, is what Tory appears to be.
Mark0, respectfully, I disagree. Losing his own seat should be held against him.
One of his major policies was to provide public funds for religious schools. It's a policy that he devised, himself. It’s a policy he should have known would be divisive. He saw what happened when he was a protégé of Bill Davies during the last big religious schooling crisis in Ontario. You know the one--the crisis that brought the end to a very long run of Tory rule in Ontario and almost broke up the party.
With this policy blunder, he then chose to run in a riding against a Minister of Education, a left of centre former school trustee, who happens to have pretty good relations with the teacher’s unions. He chose to run in a riding that has quite a few teachers in its western half. It’s a riding that is very close to more than a few neighbourhoods with teachers (for example where Kathleen Wynne lives). He ran there with a policy that would really motivate teachers to volunteer and/or vote against him. Guess what happens? Volunteers swamp the neighbourhood and he loses.
There we have it. John Tory, the likeable, middle of the road Red Tory saddled with one bad policy of his own making who couldn't win in a riding where he lived for most of his life.
He really should have known better.
Sure he mishandled one issue, but I can't imagine anyone who would have gotten better results. He's managed to make the party look like a reasonable alternative after Harris, that's impressive.
Give him one more chance.
mboadway: I'm not saying that it wasn't a huge embarassment, but running against Kathleen Wynne in that particular riding meant that he had a huge uphill battle from the start. My reasons for saying the loss shouldn't be held against him stem from the fact that despite the religious school policy, he already had a difficult (but possibly winable) campaign. The huge loss was attributed largely to the religious school policy, which he should be blamed for 100%. It was a larger policy (not riding-specific reasons) that he lost his own riding. He chose to run in his own home riding, which is admirable and something that should be more important than it is in political circles. The religious school policy is the source of his failure and should be given more consideration than his loss in the riding.