*Crossposted to my personal blog.
Earlier this week, I wrote in the Libertas Post that:
"The Tories are gambling the needs of their traditional base—which adheres to bedrock conservative principles—against the desires of a new base that they're hoping to attract. The Conservatives are betting that their base will not become so upset as to stop supporting the party, even as it attempts to move towards the center on certain issues to win the support of voters with centrist/Liberal leanings."
Well, even though ( especially in this case ) I would probably like best to be proven wrong, the facts seem to be conspiring in favor of my analysis.
Paul Wells for Macleans.ca, writing about the Conservatives' approach to the will-they-or-won't-they on contraceptives and abortion in their maternal health initiative:
"Got it. No doors closed, including to contraception. But what about abortion? Here, too, the language was peculiar and meticulously deployed. Harper: “But we do not want a debate, here or elsewhere, on abortion.” Oda: “And as we have been saying all along, we are not opening the abortion debate.”
Well, what the hell does that mean?
Julie O’Neill’s story, the second one I link above, seems to take “we do not want a debate on abortion” to mean “we do not want abortion.” That would certainly be one way to read it, probably the obvious way. In fact John Ibbitson’s story, the first linked above, says that’s how Lawrence Cannon reads it: Ibbitson says that on one of the chat shows later this afternoon, Cannon “insisted that this government would not fund new family planning initiatives that include the option of abortion, though other G8 governments might choose to do otherwise.”
[...]
Rather, I think this is more telling. At least since 2005, when Stephen Harper says he does not want to re-open the debate on abortion, he has always meant he did not want to limit access to abortion where it is now available. See for yourself. “Throughout his political career, the prime minister has been clear on this issue,” Dimitri Soudas, Harper’s spokesman, said in December 2008. “We will not introduce or support legislation on abortion.” "
Read it all here.
Stephen Harper has already made it plain that the fiscal conservative/libertarian block of the party base isn't calling the shots. We've kind of resigned ourselves to that fate. In fact, if you look at this speech ( h/t Paul Wells ) that Stephen Harper made back in the heady days of the Canadian Alliance party, you'll see that he was already outlining a plan to shift the Conservative focus to more social conservative issues, albeit while maintaining position on economic issues, in 2003.
Well, the economic issues backslid, and badly. That's undeniable. But the social conservatives could maintain at least some hope that their issues would remain at the forefront of the 'agenda'. indeed, Paul Wells ( again ), in a lengthy article for Macleans, notes the apparent rise in social conservatism within the party.
However, as the above quoted text would seem to make clear, whatever hopes the social conservative wing of the party might have, this is not likely to translate into any significant stands by the Tories. Incrementalism might have been the name of the game at some point, but I would seriously caution SoCons from having faith in that particular process considering how it failed their libertarian brethren in no uncertain terms.
I'll close by noting an article by John Ivitson for the Post. In it, he outlines three, count 'em, three, areas where the Tories have recently flip-flopped: the ten-percenters issue, the contraceptives issue, and the decision to cut rural internet access funding.
These aren't all isolated incidents. It forms a pattern that the various composite segments of the Tory base simply can't ignore or whitewash any longer. The Tories will fail you when it suits their purposes. Get used to it.
