If the phrase Red Tory comes up in a word association game, Canadian political junkies will likely feel the same neurons lighting up their brains.
Joe Clark. Jean Charest. Maybe Peter MacKay. An Albertan might look to recent history and conjure up Clark’s disciple, the former Premier Alison Redford.
Charest’s recent flirtation with a run for the leadership of the Conservative party was itself proof that a Red Tory has become “a catch-all phrase for those Progressive Conservatives who call themselves social liberals, but fiscal conservatives,” as Maclean’s magazine described the term in 1997.
After weeks building anticipation that he would run, Charest, formerly the leader of the defunct Progressive Conservative party, announced this week that he would not because the party was too fusty for someone as socially progressive as he is. “The Conservative Party of Canada has undergone deep changes since I left in 1998. My positions regarding a number of social issues are based on deep convictions,” Charest said.
As Charest indicated, Red Tory had even become a catch-all phrase for former PC members who were skeptical of the Albertan wing of the new Conservative Party and its social conservatism. For most Canadians, a Red Tory is just a squishy Conservative. It’s someone like Clark or Charest who talks about keeping the budget in balance but who is not entirely discernible from a Liberal in any other way. In Charest’s case, that caricature of a Red Tory is literally true, in that he was the Liberal premier of Quebec for nearly a decade.
Historically, though, a Red Tory has been something entirely different.
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See Also:
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(2) Canada desperately needs a foreign policy focused leader
(3) Conservatives weed out unfit as ‘stinking albatross’ returns
(5) Feds’ electric-car rebate uses nearly half its three-year budget in eight months
There is not a single official candidate let lone ‘maybes’ with the first and foremost CANADA FIRST and secondly conservative firebrand that is exactly the type of person that this country desperately needs. I do not hesitate to say that I believe that Canadians would massively rally behind a CANADA FIRST CPC candidate. Scheer could have/should have bombed Trudeau back into the political stone age. If only he’d had the genuine conservative principles in his character and the backbone to voice them.
IMO Bernier made a big mistake in the later stages of the last election. He should have made it clear he was willing to sacrifice any chance at winning the battle in order to increase his chances to win the war. He should have thrown his complete support behind the CPC and urged his own supporters to do the same. FOR CANADA. He should have explained his reasons for doing so. That if they were not not defeated the goal would be to reduce Trudeaus’ majority to the smallest possible. Secondly he could have made it clear to his supporters that by his throwing his support (and hopefully theirs) behind the liberal light CPC it would at least give him the time he needed (and didn’t have this time around) aka 4 more years to get his true conservative message out coast to coast to Canadians.
This lead article pretty well sums up what I have said publicly here in the past about the CPC. Gawd what a pathetic useless liberal light cowardly lot they all are. IMHO.