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Politics : Canadian Political Free-for-All -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gulo who wrote (3145)	10/17/2003 6:13:19 PM
From: SofaSpud	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 37260

Four rules to guide merger David Frum National Post Friday, October 17, 2003 David Frum, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, helped organize the Winds of Change unite-the-right conference in May, 1996. - - - The agreement between Stephen Harper and Peter MacKay to form a new conservative party out of the old Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservatives is obviously a huge political event. But it is also something else: an act of personal courage by two men, each of whom has risen to become a party leader, and at least one of whom has just surrendered that leadership for the sake of his principles and his country. Obviously, these men had their motives. So they should. Politics is no place for people with aspirations to sainthood. Nevertheless: We have just witnessed the least selfish act in modern Canadian politics. Honour to them both. The key compromise was Stephen Harper's. He accepted MacKay's preferred rules for choosing the next party leader. A Quebec riding with six active Conservatives will cast as many votes for leader as an Alberta riding with 15,000 paid-up Alliance members. In return, the constitution and policy of the new party will be determined the old Reform way: one member, one vote. How all of this will work out in practice remains a little fuzzy. But that's OK. Helmut Kohl used to reassure people who worried about the technicalities of German reunification: "What belongs together will grow together." That should be the new party's attitude too. This process of growth will test the maturity and discipline of both parties. All of these elements will need from time to time to bite their lips and keep their eyes on the prize. Some principles to guide the new party through the difficulties ahead: 1. Look forward, not back. That's a cliché, yes, but no less true for being a cliché. The Tories and the CA have for a long time been divided more by cultural differences than by policy differences. The memory of the split will linger for a generation. This new party will contain people who think that Brian Mulroney was misunderstood and under-appreciated -- and it will contain people who think that he was a deceiver and a sell-out. Arguments like that should be left for the historians to settle. If the members of the new party can agree on what should be done now, they do not need to agree on what was done 20 years ago. And since they won't agree, it's best not to talk too much about it. 2. Let party members decide policy -- but let the voters decide the issues. The CA has been understandably suspicious of polls, focus groups and the wizardry of modern politics. As a result it has often been suspicious of the Harris organization in Ontario, which made maximal use of that wizardry. But going into an election without the techniques of modern politics is like going to war without modern weapons: It is just asking to be slaughtered. The one-member-one-vote system is an excellent way to decide a party's answers to the problems of the day. It's not such a good way to identify what those problems might be. People willing to spend their weekend listening to political speeches and voting on policy resolutions are pretty unusual -- admirable, but unusual. Their perceptions of the nation's needs are likely to be quite different from those of their neighbours. And since the neighbours won't come to the convention, there's only one way to find out what's on their minds: go ask them. Asking them should not be seen as a betrayal of grassroots democracy. Asking them is essential to party democracy. 3. The Conservative Party of Canada must be a conservative party. The Red Tory tradition -- which fused left-of-centre economics with an emotional attachment to the British Crown -- meant a lot in 1957. It still meant something in 1976. But in today's context, a red Tory is just an ordinary left-liberal. Red Tories may get good press, because the Canadian press's favourite kind of conservative is a conservative who isn't conservative at all. But they can't win votes, and they don't really try. What did David Orchard do to help elect Joe Clark in 2001? How many of the people to whom Orchard sold memberships cast a PC ballot that year, or any other year? How many of them have ever made a donation to the PC party or served on a riding association executive? Orchard's people are New Democrats. They already have a party of their own. They are not entitled to two. Meanwhile, Ralph Klein, Mike Harris, Gordon Campbell, Jean Charest, and now Roger Grimes have demonstrated at the provincial level that a strong right-of-centre message can win elections in today's Canada. 4. Don't slight the social conservatives. Or the economic conservatives. Or populist conservatives. Through the 1980s, the leaders of the Progressive Conservative party shrugged off the accumulating grievances of the membership: "Where," they tauntingly asked, "are you going to go?" Guess what? The members found someplace to go. Political parties are coalitions -- they have to be, or else there would be 30 million of them, one for every Canadian. As such, they have to be managed in a spirit of mutual accommodation. Coalition-management is an incredibly difficult task: Coalition managers have to find ways to give the members of the coalition what they need -- to show them respect when they must deny them something that they want -- and all without sacrificing electability. Coalition managers who are too accommodating lose elections, as John Turner did in 1988 by his failure to bring his party's nationalist wing to heel. Coalition managers who are not accommodating enough can blow their party to smithereens as ... but I'm forgetting Rule #1. The task ahead won't be easy. But it sure will be easier than it looked a week ago. And for that, everyone who cares about the future of conservatism in Canada -- everyone who cares about competitive democracy -- should say: Thanks Stephen; merci Peter. nationalpost.com