Book puts Tories on course for success in federal election
Conservative Leader Stephen Harper surely has a new aggressive step and new look as the January federal election campaign gets under way.
He’s articulate, measuredly forceful, non-apologetic for Conservative beliefs, and looks like a fighter with his turtle-neck sweaters.
Make the turtleneck a trademark, Stephen!
It could well be part of his smooth and appealing make-over comes from reading a new book that’s taking Conservatives by storm.
I know for sure Harper has a well-thumbed copy of Rescuing Canada’s Right: A Blueprint for a Conservative Revolution by Tasha Kheiriddin and Adam Daifallah.
So does columnist Mark Steyn, who penned the foreword, and the likes of former Ontario premier Mike Harris, Reform party founder Preston Manning, and columnist and former speechwriter to President George W. Bush, David Frum. All praise it as essential reading.
I frequently pound away that while Republicans in the U.S. have won seven of the past 10 presidential elections, Conservatives in Canada have lost seven of the past 10 of our federal elections.
Why, faced with a party and government that isn’t really Liberal at all, but is actually Nihilist, having no real values, simply willing to twist everything to win elections, can’t Conservatives duplicate the feat of their brethren south of the border?
In Rescuing Canada’s Right, the two authors tell exactly why we principled Conservatives lose elections and amoral Liberals win them.
Kheiriddin and Daifallah assess the values of all Conservative prime ministers back to Sir John A. Macdonald and generally find them sadly lacking. The term today is Liberal Lite, I believe.
Certainly, in recent years, no Progressive Conservative leader came close to Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher, who dramatically turned both their nations and the free world right-side up. Indeed, these two leaders, with the help of Pope John Paul, demolished the slave state empire of the Soviet Union—and without firing a shot. They did it economically, even while sending their own economies soaring.
Manning did try to inspire real Conservatism in Canada, as did Stockwell Day as leader of the Canadian Alliance. They were undermined by a vicious, distorted campaign by the Jean Chretien-Paul Martin cabal.
Even though I don’t agree with all of Kheiriddin’s and Daifallah’s assessments—Brian Mulroney surely was on the right track, and in retrospect, most of us would now admit that—the book is a page-turner.
The authors have well-deserved harsh words for that self-styled guru of ‘Red Toryism,’ Dalton Camp.
Camp was definitely no true Conservative, but was truly Liberal Lite who suckered in the nice, if ineffectual, Robert Stanfield, and the not-so-nice and absolutely ineffectual Joe Clark.
Kheiriddin and Daifallah contend the route to victory in Canada is to build a rock-solid Conservative alternative to the nihilistic Liberals and go out and sell it without apology to voters. That’s what the GOP does in the U.S. No softening up or backing down when the Lib-Left termites start hurling slurs.
They point out in the U.S., Conservatives raised stacks of money to found think-tanks and develop policy. At the grassroots, they pushed their messages on talk radio and through Conservative publications.
They built media stars such as Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Bill O’Reilly. When they found leaders, policies were already there as were the movement’s rapid-deploy communications and electoral campaign arms.
Speaking before the Canadian Club of Calgary recently, Manning drew a pyramid of what a Conservative masterplan and machine should look like. This book does the same.
At the foundation of the pyramid is money—and it will take lots of money from rank-and-file Conservatives, not simply big business—then come the think-tanks churning out policy, pressure groups pushing public opinion, training sessions for young Conservatives, right to the pyramid peak with a leader who can sell a new vision.
Everything fits neatly into place.
This work is a call to action. It should be in every true Conservative’s Christmas stocking on Dec. 25.
It strategically points the way to a Conservative Canada, and a Canada that can regain its self-respect within its borders and around the world.
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