"Imagine if the Conservatives tell Westerners: we have a new leader who's a socially liberal anti-fossil-fuel Quebecer, but hey, he speaks great French!
While the Liberals are huddled in Winnipeg trying to understand how to fix this mysterious thing called “Western alienation,” the Conservatives are huddled somewhere in Ottawa trying to figure out how to make it worse. And I fear they are going to get there first with a leader repellent to the West and unattractive to the rest.
Of course they don’t think they’re trying to make it worse. But remember Conquest’s Second Law of Politics: “Every organisation appears to be headed by secret agents of its opponents.” ...
The Liberal political problem is fairly simple. They don’t want to annoy the West but want to win votes in big cities where people think differently from most of Alberta (and increasingly Saskatchewan) and they think the fossil fuels on which Alberta’s economy depends are destroying the planet. Tricky.
The Conservative problem is more complicated. They want to please everybody by pleasing nobody. Appeal to socially liberal young urbanites and their cranky rural base. Promise lavish spending and stimulative deficits plus tax cuts and balanced budgets. Appeal to Quebec while not appeasing it. Cut Equalization and increase it. Eliminate corporate subsidies and give them to everyone. Have internal free trade and a milk marketing cartel. Blah blah klonk. ...
The possibility of Canada splitting apart suggests that humans cannot be happy, at least in public affairs. How would you explain to someone from any of dozens of nations with bleak natural endowments, scarily hostile neighbours and a long bloody history of ethnic hatred that we, with all our blessings, have been trying to rip our nation apart for centuries? Especially if you added that the big brains around the place have now decided the answer to current alienated Western conservatism is smug Eastern socialism in the “conservative” party, they’d call a doctor.
Dr. Conquest."
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