The decline of the federal Conservatives founded in 2003

Sorry it is not bashing to point out that social conservatives are more likely to be electorally successful in Alberta and Saskatchewan and parts of BC than they are in the centre or east. They are more likely to stand for the Conservatives in those places as well.

There is also a social democratic tradition in the same places (as dormant as it sometimes may seem to be). Very different from the East on both ends. In some ways it is refreshing and more honest having more on the edges and less in the mushy middle but it certainly exists.

I think we need to step back from all these bashing accusations and really consider what overdoing it means. When you make a charge generally, your argument will be judged on the weakest point you make. There are clear cases of Alberta bashing here but you discredit those who would want to call those out when you take a position like this where a region cannot be questionned for what is an observable fact agreed on by literally all sides.

As for Ontario, social conservatives exist but they tend not to do well and are more moderate when they do. They are a political weakness not a strength everywhere except for a minority of places. When they exist they tend to hide it as the political culture here tends to be more Liberal, centrist, mushy and indistinguishable. Our politics are dominated by opportunists without any political ideology at all. I find this gets in the way of progress and do not consider it a selling point here. It is however a fact all the same.

It is patently ridiculous to suggest that Ontario politics is as socially conservative as politics is in those two provinces and even more ridiculous to accuse people of west SK or AB bashing to raise the question. 

Posts like this do more damage to the reputation of those provinces than the actual bashing here that actually does exist.

Please consider the dangers of crying wolf. Seriously.

This bashing accusation stuff is overwhelming political discussion and making attempts to deal with prejudices more difficult. We have it with the extremes of anti-semitism accusations at anyone who questions anything the state of Israel does and we have it with regional politics in Canada, particularly Quebec, Ottawa, the West in general and AB in particular. We need to stop this as it will blow up the country.

We need people to raise legitimate and uncomfortable points of view that you may not like while at the same time reserving terms like "bashing" for the real thing so that we can do something about it. Otherwise, every disagreement will  be a "somebody-bashing" exercise.  We talk about trends here and that can include regional politics. To make it so we cannot talk about trends like Conservatives in the rural part of the country being a thing without causing offense; northern NDP politics; Conservative Prairie politics; urban Liberals; centrist Maritimers etc -- becuase these are not abosulte and there are exceptions is to kill off much analysis that must happen here.

If you continue this line, you might get back a long list of quotes from social conservatives who agree as well as support the notion speaking about Canada's bible belt. 

Let's start that off with this:

Robert Alexander Grambell, Toward defining the prairies: region, culture and history (2001)

Also look at this:

https://pressprogress.ca/here-is-a-list-of-67-conservative-candidates-who-will-vote-against-womens-reproductive-rights/

Sure not all anti-choice Conservatives are in AB and SK but the three top Prairie provinces are 3 of the top 4 provinces for this list and SK is double the rate of Ontario. Is Press Progress SK bashing or are they publishing news becuase it exists? Interesting is the point about NB. There is a Conservative part of NB different from the rest of the Maritimes. It is a rural, Anglophone and evangelical Christian part of the province. NB is the fourth province to have more than 1/3 Conservatives be openly anti choice. Not so in the rest of the country.

Yeah, social conservativism is a thing on the prairies and no point denying it.

Back here we have the Liberal disease. 

I have no problem with people criticizing Alberta. Just be honest. It does a great disservice to spread hatred and fear against people from Alberta. It is doubly wrong when much of that hatred is exaggerated.

From that Walrus article that I provided in the previous post we get a totally different picture than what is presented in this thread. Fear mongering based on lies and distortions is just as bad as the social conservative agenda that we need to stand up against.

From that article, here is the truth about Alberta.

1. Alberta is right wing. It is the most right wing province in Canada.

2. Alberta as a whole is pro oil and gas and against environmental reform.

3. Alberta has a major problem with racism. They tend to strongly support regressive immigration laws.

4. Alberta as a whole is socially liberal and not socially conservative. 82% of Albertans support same sex marriage. 82% support pay equity and feel that more needs to be done to promote financial equality between men and women. 84% are pro choice. 85% support doctor assisted suicide. 92% support the legalization of marijuana. These numbers are very much in line with the rest of Canada. Based on these numbers, one can conclude that social conservatives represent roughly 14-15% of the general population. Social conservatives are a very small minority in Alberta.

Ontario elected Doug Ford. Doug Ford has a regressive sex Ed agenda. Yet no one obsesses with the social conservative menace that Ontario is inflicting one the rest of the country. The argument given is that Ontario as a whole is socially liberal in their outlook. Well so is Alberta liberal in their outlook. You cannot attack Alberta for electing Jason Kenney and be conspicuously quiet about the very same problem in Ontario. Ontario votes Progressive Conservative and they need to be held accountable for what they have done. Alberta is responsible for the actions of Jason Kenney and the policies he puts forward because they elected him. But the policies of Jason Kenney does not reflect the social values of the people any more than Doug Ford's positions are an indication of the social values of the people in Ontario. You simply cannot have it both ways.

There are social conservatives in every region of Canada. Yet this thread singles out one region of Canada only and demonizes them as a national threat. Atlantic Canada is the most socially conservative when it comes to abortion rights and access, but the social conservative threat according to a few stems from Alberta. Ontario has in place an awful sex education agenda but Alberta is singled out as our national problem. And yes, this is a bias against Alberta.

The religious right do not hold a monopoly on hatred and bigotry. They are major promoters and bigots look to the religious right to justify their hate. Jason Kenney has an agenda to target LGBTQ people. The religious right support these initiatives, but Kenney's bullying has more mainstream appeal than just from the small minority of religious fundamentalists. Gay bashing  is still alive and real.  That is why LGBTQ positive education is so vital and important in the school system because homophobia is still a serious issue that needs to be taken seriously and programs put in place to combat it. This problem is not limited to social conservatives and it is a national problem and not unique to Alberta and the prairies.

All political parties have social conservatives. They are everywhere. Justin Trudeau made it Liberal policy that no one can run for the Liberal party as a candidate who opposes a woman's right to choose. He did this because social conservatives are a problem in the Liberal party. If the Liberal party was free of social conservatives then he would not have had to implement that policy. They are in the NDP as well.

Most people in Alberta do not elect social conservative candidates in their ridings based on their social values or religious affiliation. The vast majority vote Conservative and UCP because they like the idea of having smaller governments so that they don't have to pay as much in taxes. They get to keep more of their money. In fact, that is a major reason why most Canadians who vote for the Conservative party want them elected. They simply want smaller governments and lower taxes. And if that party that promises them small government and more take home pay does bad things like picking on LGBTQ people, it is sad and unfortunate but if it doesn't affect them personally, then they really don't care. Many Canadians are really not that politically minded. They aren't bad people, they just don't care if it doesn't affect them personally.

The Conservstive party elected Andrew Sheer. Andrew Sheer is a social conservative. If Andrew Sheer or any other major political leader who is socially conservative is clear that he or she is not going to open any contentious issues up for debate then their own personal values become less potent. Stephen Harper kept his social Conservative MPs muzzled and in the back benches. Many political advisors within the Conservative party understand the damage that hot issues like abortion access can have. It is on their best interest to avoid those issues. Remember, 84% of Albertans are pro choice.

Social conservatives have always been around. Despite their deep history and roots in our country, they still only represent a very small and insignificant percentage of our national population. They tend to get elected in safe right wing regions of our country like in Alberta because they also run on a fiscally conservative platform which appeals to people who like to pay less in taxes. The walrus article addressed the issue of racism and immigration. The majority of Albertans are racist and the Conservstive party promotes immigration law reform. There are many issues which are not social conservative related which explains why they support right wing governments.

While all the social issues are extremely important  and worthy of discussion and full accountability by Conservstive leaders on where they stand and the direction they intend to take their party, the obsessive fixation about social conservatives in Alberta singles out the region as being the force of evil and overlooks the same problems closer to home for some of the posters. It fails to look at the national scope to these problems. It demonizes the people of a province who most of whom do not even identify with what they are being accused of by some on this thread.

feel free to attack Alberta but only do so with integrity.

Thanks Misfit for the great post.

Ontario elected Doug Ford. Doug Ford has a regressive sex Ed agenda. Yet no one obsesses with the social conservative menace that Ontario is inflicting one the rest of the country. The argument given is that Ontario as a whole is socially liberal in their outlook. Well so is Alberta liberal in their outlook. You cannot attack Alberta for electing Jason Kenney and be conspicuously quiet about the very same problem in Ontario. Ontario votes Progressive Conservative and they need to be held accountable for what they have done.

From my perspective the people of Ontario sent 36 right wing assholes from the Conservative party to Ottawa to destroy what I believe in. The people of Alberta sent 33.  BC sent 17.  Altogether it seems that their are right wing voters everywhere in Canada. If I want to point at crude right wing voters then lets talk about Eastern Ontario in places like Brockville.

@Sean,,,

I think we might want to be careful, though, about conflating voting habits with support for social conservativism.

Someone mentioned above that there was a New Brunswick Bible Belt, mostly anglo and Conservative, where SoCon values are popular. Well, my recollection of anti-choice politics in the Maritimes is that it goes a little bit beyond just one eccentric region of New Brunswick. Unfortunately, information about this is hard to find on-line, but as I recall, successive New Bruckwick governments waged a campaign against abortion-services in New Brunswick, starting with Frank McKenna, a LIBERAL who never seemed to pay much electoral price for that position.

I also have a vague idea that abortion-access has been hobbled in other Maritime provinces, though, again, it's hard to find information about that.

Sticking to New Brunswick, sure, compared to Albertans, they generally send fewer Conservatives to both Fredricton and Ottawa, no one is denying that. But that's not neccesarily the best yardstick for how they actually approach social issues in practice.

voice of the damned wrote:

Sean wrote:

Ontario is such a Conservative place that people here have been voting to keep the fuckers out for 15 years. Oh yeah - when was the last time this was done in Alberta? Any time since 1935?

If we're talking about social conservativism in particular, an overview covering the entire period since 1935 is a little problematic for your argument, because people like Peter Lougheed and Don Getty weren't really social conservatives in any widely recognized sense of the term. Likely no more so than most other Canadian governments at the time.

Social Credit under Aberhart was certainly SoCon, though economically radical(that being the reason they were elected in the first place), albeit in a kooky sort of way, with an economic theory rooted in anti-semitic conspiracy theories and a program that was highly unconstitutional. It is the case that, under Aberhart, they were probably the government in Canada at any level that was most hated by big business.

 

I think it is pretty ridiculous even having to defend an observation that the Prairies are associated with much higher than Canadian average levels of social Conservatism. 

This is apart from the point that we are not even in a debate about the existence of social conservatism in Alberta and SK we are in a debate about whether a person raising this is  lacking "integrity" and somehow attacking the place for even raising the topic. 

Western Canada (yes all of it) has tended to be more polarized meaning that it has been the home base for many social Conservatives as well as socialists. They do Liberal to a lesser degree. This is not a criticism by any means (who here is defending Liberals?) but it is observable in the political conversation that goes back many decades.

There is a perception of Alberta and more recently Saskatchewan as being through and through conservative but nobody is suggesting that here. It is however more likely to have a political conversation that speaks to ideology on left or right than centre. This may be based on the fact that the politics on the Prairies tends to populism more than establishment -- becuase they are not establishment and are reacting agaisnt it. It is more populaist that conservative but the streak of socila conservativism is still more pronounced there an most places in Canada -- even if it is not a majority -- it is a tendency and manages to dominate politcsat times.

The heart of the social conservative voices in Canada keeps coming from there. Ford is a bit of a a faux populist but has shown little social conservatism and more establishment mean Ontario-style Conservativism. the social conservatives when they come up in Ontario they usually do not do well. 

To say that the Prairies are different is not an insult.

Oh, and here's some information on abortion access in New Brunswick as of 2014...

Access to abortion in New Brunswick is governed by Regulation 84-20 of the Medical Services Payment Act, created by the Frank McKenna government in 1989. The regulation states that medicare will only cover the cost of an abortion if a woman first jumps through a number of procedural hoops: She must obtain written approval from two doctors, certifying that an abortion is "medically necessary." The abortion may only be performed by a specialist, and only at one of two authorized hospitals.

Granted, I think the situation might have changed since 2014, but still, I am unaware of any western province that has ever had such a law on its books. The closest I think they ever came was when Klein tried pandering to his SoCon wing by saying he'd defund abortions that were medically "unneccessary", and then asked the doctors' association to define that term. When the doctors refused to provide such a definition, the proposed law was squashed, and has never been resurrected.

Can't guarantee that Kenney won't try something on this front, nor would I deny that there are some access-issues in the westen provinces. Still, if those provinces were particularly SoCon in relation to the rest of the country, you would expect them to have the worst record when it comes to abortion, pretty much the most beloved issue in the SoCon catechism.

https://tinyurl.com/vjo5bm6

Jesus Hallelujah people are politically organized and run for office in an organized and determined way. But they don't represent the general population in Saskatchewan and Alberta.

On the prairies, it is learned from a young age that Conservatives are cool and social democrats are nerds and losers. Conservatives attract the ignorant vote, people who are racist, redneck, your pipeliner, biker types. Yes, they also get the social conservative vote but they are a small minority of the overall picture.

Social conservatives have their small pockets where they are stronger, but overall the are pretty much non-existent as an issue. In fact, I am more worried about the ignorant, uneducated, pipeliner, truck driver, biker appealing types who are in-your-face bigots, racists, sexists, and everything else that I despise because these are your main threat on the prairies.

You see more social conservatives on the national stage coming from the west but their social values do not represent the vast majority of people, only their fiscally conservative and racist agendas, and nobody ever talks about social issues. It is all Trudeau bashing, immigrant bashing, environmentalist bashing, vegetarian bashing, and pipelines.

We have social conservative MLAs provincially. I am sure that they would like to see abortion access denied and our sex education curriculum changed etc., but those issues do not ever come up or hardly ever. If they were serious issues here, then you would hear about them, but you don't. And if the social conservatives were in the numbers that you imagine them to be then we would have no abortion access in Saskatchewan, and sick sex education curriculums that you Ontario people face with Doug Ford. Saskatchewan is not a backward province. We do not register on the radar for anything remotely associated with a socially conservative agenda. Alberta makes the news because they have a premier who is a bigot and wants to regress Alberta from a status of normalcy to a regressive and backward status. If Alberta people were socially conservative like you imagine, then there would be no programs in place in Alberta for Jason Kenney to take away.

Your Jesus hallelujah types are organized and get national attention because they are right wing and run on a fiscal platform that appeals to the majority of people who want to pay less in taxes and have more take home money for themselves.

Nobody on this board likes social conservatives. Although they get elected within the Conservative party and they are organized to push some clout within the Conservative party, they do not represent much of a base within the Conservative party. That is why Harper muzzled them.

And this ignorant undereducated mass vehemently loathes and despises Justin Trudeau. You could put the most obnoxious Jesus Hallelujah in the helm of the party and he would win because he is not Justin Trudeau. It doesn't mean that they are Jesus Hallelujah people, it means that their leader is from western Canada and is NOT Justin Trudeau. This demographic is quite scary and intimidating, actually. If you talked about this then you would be speaking to central core of what is wrong on the prairies. When you fret incessantly about social conservatives ad nauseum, you are merely discussing a perception that is perpetrated by the media. It is all smoke and mirrors. Social conservatives are militantly organized and know how to get elected in right wing regions of Canada. They create an illusion that the prairies stand for their ideals. They represent only a small yet vocal minority who very rarely, if ever, get their own way because they are really that insignificant of an entity. Saskatchewan has historically lead the nation on social and progressive issues. We are not  socially backward like you try to make us out to be. Aside from that blue collar, red neck demographic, most of us are more classy and sophisticated than you portray us as being, so yes, your bashing us on social conservative ideals does misrepresent us and perpetrates fear and hatred. It is dishonest and it misses the target of what is really wrong out here.

One more thing... 

Misfit wrote:

Aside from that blue collar, red neck demographic, most of us are more classy and sophisticated

I'm not sure if we should be equating "blue collar" with "rednecked".

I suppose the typical image of a right-wing religious conservative might be someone working on a farm or driving a pick-up truck for somebody else, though most of the people I know who would fit the bill are more middle class, maybe petit-bourgeois, in the classical terminology.

Certainly, I think most labour unions would consider "working class" to be a non-pejorative term, and would not want it and its synonyms equated a priori with people fight against equality on the social-front.  

Pondering wrote:

I'm talking about the Conservative Party not the people of provinces in general with the exception of the point that Alberta dominates the Conservative Party. It wouldn't matter if PEI were 100% social conservative or libertarian because PEI does not dominate the Conservative Party. 

Not in a leadership race. The Conservatives elected Scheer in a weighted vote by riding.

Voting was on a one member one vote basis using a ranked ballot; however votes were calculated so that each electoral district had equal weight with each electoral district allocated 100 points.[35] Candidates were assigned a point total based on his or her percentage of the vote in each electoral district. To win, a candidate must receive at least 16,901 points which would be a majority.[2][36]

Given your use of PEI as an example it delivered the second highest percentage of first ballot votes to Scheer for the four ridings compared to other ridings by province.  A higher percentage of Quebec Conservatives voted for Scheer on the first ballot than the percentage of Alberta Conservative voters who voted for him.

But the biggest thing to keep in mind is that Bernier received the most first ballot votes across the country and held his lead until the 12th "ballot" redistribution. So which one of them represents the true face of the evil social conservatives?

Bernier won the first ballot vote in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, NFLD, NWT, Nova Scotia, Nunavit, Ontario, Quebec and the Yukon. Scheer won the other three provinces on the first ballot, Sask, NB and PEI.

With a weighted system for ridings then all the members in Calgary Center get the same weighted vote as all the members in the riding of Charlottetown despite my guess that there way more members in Calgary Center.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Conservative_Party_of_Canada_leadersh...

As hopeful as the premise in the thread title is, it is not as accurate as we all would hope it would be. No that I suggest changing it becuase it still is nice to see.

I said this in anger in another thread but the gist is very true: when the Conservatives get extreme they eventually get into power. When the left gets extreme they get taken out of the conversation.

There are three reasons for this:

1) the conservatives have so much uncritical power (Capitalized who hold no standard or condition for their support other than the damage they do to government and social justice) that they remain the alternate government and fall into power whenever the Liberals mess up no matter how extreme they are and

2) the conservatives are presumed to be the most credible and best on a whole raft of issues where they are not sufficiently criticized and objectively keep turning in a poor performance on (like managing the economy). The result is that they get forgiven their nuttyness.

3) They are not a building party. They are a wrecking party. Any anger with government (even if theya re themselves the cause) helps them

This is why they never will be in decline. They are the political partners of an economic system of exploitation and reward those who win in the game they built rigged against anyone else.

Pondering did you miss the part of how close the last election was? Had it not been for Ford they would have won. The rest of your article runs from this same faulty premise.

Pondering wrote:

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

Pondering did you miss the part of how close the last election was? Had it not been for Ford they would have won. The rest of your article runs from this same faulty premise.

It wasn't Ford, it was that Scheer was offering the same policy which continues to be the only one the Conservatives have on offer. Cut taxes.  

I think you are underestimating the significance of climate change and income inequality. 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/stephen-harper-conservative-leadership-1.5437504

The most successful run in the history of Canadian federal politics is the Liberal Party dynasty that ran from Mackenzie King's first victory in 1921 to John Turner's defeat in 1984 — an era that was held together by successful successions. Liberal prime ministers were in power for nearly 51 of those 63 years.

Don't think it can't happen again because it can. If neither the Cons nor the NDP can gain the trust of Canadians we could be looking at Trudeau for years to come. The Liberals will not be squeezed out by the other two parties hugging the centre. It just makes the Liberals look like they are in the right place. 

In the past, swing-voter Canadians percieved the Conservatives and Liberals to be centre-right and centre left with the NDP farther on the left.  Liberals for programs and Conservatives to rein in the spending, big government small government but both so moderate a balance could be kept by alternating between the too. That left the NDP as the good ol' conscience of parliament but too nice to run the country.

Whether or not people consciously think in those terms the party balance is gone. There is no PC party despite McKay's attempt at revival. He claims he will unify the party but that isn't possible in a manner that will satisfy both Conservatives and Canadians.  

He will have to have a position on whether or not MPs will continue to be allowed to voice pro-life sentiments and propose legislation. Canada is the only developed country without any laws on abortion. Polls consistently show strong support for limitations on third trimester abortions. Trump attended a Campaign for Life march. They believe that babies are being murdered. They were instrumental in electing 50 MPs. They are Conservative members and volunteers. They will not be happy under McKay. This issue will come up during the next election. It brands the party as regressive and old-fashioned. They grudgingly succumbed to pressure on LGBTQ and say they won't re-criminalize cannabis. That hardly seems modern. 

There is no climate plan that will satisfy both Conservatives and other Canadians. Alberta will be pissed at anything credible and consider themselves betrayed, or the plan will be so weak it will be ridiculed. 

Cutting taxes is getting way too old-hat. While people still don't like paying taxes they don't want services cut. Conservative governments have lowered taxes so much they have no room to cut more without rapid damage to services like health and education. 

I've been reading about O'Toole. He has significant support but the threat he poses is more rooted in the debate he is forcing. 

 

You have not been here recently I guess. The Conservative loss was in Ontario because of Ford. They were close enough that Ontario would have put them over the top. 

What you are saying is laughable when it comes to climate change and income inequality -- becuase Ontario just voted for that a year earlier and would have if the consequences of Ford's government were not almost all we talked about politically laast year. Also the rest of Canada collectively moved so much closer to the Conservatives that if Ontario had done the same we would have a Conservative government

I put to you that if the NDP or Liberals had won in Ontario in the last provincial election the federal conservatives would have swept the province like the provincial conservatives did.

Many people in the province are not politically savvy. The impact of the actual changes Ford did affected people in serious ways.

I know many, many, many people who vote NDP who voted Liberal to stop the Conservatives. They paid a heavy price -- these people do not like Liberals but they did this becuse of the degree the province is suffering under Ford and a deep fear that a federal Conservative government at the same time would screw us beyond repair. But it was not just a move between the Liberals and the NDP. While Canada moved 4% towards the Conservatives Ontario moved 2% away -- a swing of 6% in the opposite direction -- and that does not count strategic voting which was rampant.

But if you want objective proof here it is:

2019 Conservative results compared to 2015

BC 4% gain  

AB 10 point gain

SK 16 point gain

MB 8 point gain

Ontario 2 point loss

Quebec 0.7 point loss

NB 7 point gain

NS 8 point gain

PEI 8 point gain

NL 18 point gain

North roughly 5 point gain

It is fantasy to think that what Ontario was going through did not completely change the result of the election.

The average gain for the Conservatives overall was only 4% becuase Ontario is that big. Quebec barely budged and BC only gave them 4%. After that the gain was about 10% which would have been a massive majority. Even with BC and Quebec where they were it would have been a big majority had Ontario even matched the swing of  BC never mind the other provinces...

Yeah, by electing the Ford Conservatives - we took one for the team.

So now that you see these figures -- you should be terrified of the Conservatives winning the next election. Likely Ontario will go Liberal before the next election and federally it will swing to the Conservatives.

Perhaps this can become a general Conservative party thread?

There is an article in the Hill Times that is quite interesting:

https://www.hilltimes.com/2020/02/17/senior-conservatives-seething-over-conservative-funds-refusal-to-share-scheers-700000-overbudget-expense-details-with-the-national-council/235761

In this article it states that Conservatives are upset about Scheer being over budget. There is a comment from a staffer: "a party staffer explained to them that it was because of the pre-writ campaign work."

The Hill Times did not notice the implications of this. If pre-writ work was buried in to expense budgets it means money was spent that was not accounted for as campaign work.

There are few barriers to what is spent before a campaign. 

1) that the money spent not be for the campaign directly

2) that it be accounted for properly 

There are no limits to pre-writ spending.

So this issue of having an expense budget bury the costs of what was to help a campaign, raises good questions about what exactly did they pay for before the campaign and why is this not from a budget that accounts for that directly?

Misfit wrote:

This should have been put into a separate thread called alleged or possible Conservative election financial fraud unearthed. This existing thread title is wacky and has already been debunked.

Why not just change the thread title as it makes no sense?

bekayne wrote:

Hmm.  So the Conservatives are getting a nice 5-point bounce and the Libs, NDP, BQ & Greens are all down.

Pondering wrote:

Just because people disagree it does not mean it has been "debunked". I am more convinced than ever and I am not at all alone.

I think it's ridiculous to have this pointless debate about whether the Conservatives are likely going to become a 3rd party while the Conservatives are clearly in first place in recent opinion polls and after they just won the most votes in the election we just had 4 months ago. It is possible that one day a few opinion polls will show that the Conservatives have fallen into third place. Until that happens your fanciful theory will be a pipe-dream not even worthy of serious debate. Until the Conservatives fall into third place this thread will remain pointless conjecture. As it is, current opinion polls are showing that the Conservatives are in first place. These opinion polls and the recent election completely debunk your baseless "theory."

Pondering wrote:

JKR wrote:

 I think it's ridiculous to have this pointless debate about whether the Conservatives are likely going to become a 3rd party

There are tons of pointless threads on this forum. If I went into each of them to tell everyone that their debates on foreign affairs etc. are pointless do you think they will stop so there aren't so many boring topics on the first page? I get so tired of having to scroll endlessly to find the threads I'm interested in. People just have no consideration!

Maybe you should ask yourself why you participate in pointless threads. It's not like I dragged you in here. Maybe it isn't so pointless. Maybe you want to express your disagreement, or maybe you are a slave to your emotions and can't resist. Maybe I'm click-bait. Only you know what your motivation is for continuing to engage in a discussion that is pointless to you. 

Nobody is saying this thread is pointless becuase it is boring or uninteresting. They are saying it becuase they think it is wrong. People will skip over an uninteresting topic but one that they disagree with is going to get a response if they think it is a topic that is interesting.

It would be very interesting if the Conservatives would decline. You are getting counter arguments becuase the idea of a long term decline and potential disapearance of the party that is in first or close second place, governs most provinces, and has the greatest finanical base is ridiculous.

Hopefully this will not be a topic beaten like a dead horse when there is no evidence to even merit the discussion in the first place.

But still, people will be interested enough to tell you the idea is baloney.

Pondering wrote:

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

It would be very interesting if the Conservatives would decline. You are getting counter arguments becuase the idea of a long term decline and potential disapearance of the party that is in first or close second place, governs most provinces, and has the greatest finanical base is ridiculous.  

The P.Q. used to run Quebec, the CAQ didn't exist a few years ago. The Bloc all but vanished for years. I recall how editorials and posters alike mused about the demise of the Liberal Party. The party that has governed Canada for most of its history was declared all but dead.

The Conservative party has split into factions in very recent history and seems to win elections only as the default when the Liberals finally disgust people so much they just can't give them another term. 

Declaring something ridiculous or pointless is not a counter-argument. 

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

Hopefully this will not be a topic beaten like a dead horse when there is no evidence to even merit the discussion in the first place.  

Your notion that it is impossible or so improbable as to make discussion pointless is ridiculous. Calling a discussion you are participating in meritless only proves that you have a complusion to participate in discussions you consider meritless. You might want to do some introspecting about that. 

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

 But still, people will be interested enough to tell you the idea is baloney. 

Which yet again is not a counter-argument. If that's all they got it's like swatting flies. 

We do not care about the label.

The point is that Conservative ideology in Canada is not in decline and supported by vast amounts of money. It could change names if the brand took a hit but this is not happening now. They could take over another party and make it a Conservative party. But there is no decline that can be predicted in all seriousness. If tomorrow the Conservatives faced an epic scandal then Conservatives would either flock to the Liberals (like in BC) and make them as Conservative (Liberals who are not conservative would leave for the NDP making that party Liberal) or they would create a new one named Conservative like they did in Sask. Either way there is no break in having a Conservative party that is well funded and well supported. At the moment there is no push for either as the brand is not in decline.

At this moment Conservatives are debating the leadership but the party is not at risk in terms of the name. If it were the replacement would be almost instant.

The Liberals are in trouble as they have been for a while due to the difficulty of appealing to both right and left flanks. One bad leader and the Liberals are on life support again due to this division.

The Conservatives are not short of supporters or money any more than they have been for the last 100 years.

Again the premise of the thread is ridiculous.