Uncritical analysis

If there's anything more painful to read than Larry Zolf at his worst (or anywhere near it), it's a columnist who should seemingly know better repeating Zolf's blatherings without considering the lack of logic. Which brings us to Martin O'Malley:

Harper and his Conservatives are expected to call a federal election next year, probably in the spring if the political breezes are right. Harper should win at least another minority government and remain prime minister another two or three years. If he parlays this into a majority, Harper could be prime minister another six or seven years, at which time Ignatieff and Rae will be senior citizens, pushing 70.

As Larry Zolf said here a week ago, Harper is looking good, even after breaking a major campaign promise not to impose a tax on income trusts. As Zolf explained, "despite the controversy, the Tories will retain their social conservative base. The Christian evangelicals have nowhere else to go. They know the oil and gas will keep on flowing in Alberta. They know that many in the oil patch will continue to support their views on gay marriage and abortion."

So the logic is apparently that by keeping the socon base, PMS will somehow manage to win another minority government, or maybe even a majority a couple of years hence. Which is a nice little theory, with just one glaring hole.

After all, the socon vote has been fairly thoroughly unified behind Reform, the Alliance and the Cons for the past decade and a half, with nothing even vaguely resembling a majority government resulting. Instead, 2006 was the first time the Cons have managed to couple the hard-right vote with enough more moderate support to win even a historically tenuous minority. And it's precisely that moderate support (based largely on discontent with the Libs) which has virtually no reason to stay with the Cons now - and indeed has been bleeding back even before the Libs figure out who's going to be leading them.

Now, I'm sure Harper's plans weren't for things to work out that way. But surely O'Malley has been paying enough attention to know that the Cons have tried to govern from the far right in a hostile Parliament for the very purpose of securing their base...and that the result has been a distinct failure to win over more than a handful of Canadians who haven't already cast a ballot for the Cons (and indeed a precipitous drop in Quebec which all but rules out a Con majority on its own).

Which means that barring a surprising turnaround (which would seem to demand a shift in strategy which the Cons have shown no indication of implementing) or complete implosions by both the Libs and the NDP, the Cons can't realistically hope for more than a minority government anytime in the foreseeable future. And no matter what line Zolf and O'Malley seem to want to push, it'll take a lot more than the socon base to move them in that direction.