EDITORIAL: Conservatives need to stop bickering and show leadership
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Memo to candidates for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada:
Your fellow Conservatives are not your enemy.
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EDITORIAL: Conservatives need to stop bickering and show leadership Back to video
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Your opponents are the Liberals.
If you want your party to ever form government, you must demonstrate to the electorate you are worthy of being prime minister.
Right now, your scorched earth tactics show you to be nothing more than spoiled brats. Leave the name-calling and the hair-pulling to unruly kids in the schoolyard. Start acting like a credible alternative to Liberals in a world that desperately needs great leadership.
We know politics is a blood sport. The party has long been an awkward shotgun marriage of social and fiscal conservatives.
Conservatives are in a battle for the hearts and minds of their core voters. If they want win the next election, they must appeal not just to their heartland, but to a broader base of voters nationwide. On the one hand, there are Conservatives who believe the path to victory is along a centrist line carved by former leaders such as Brian Mulroney. On the other, there are those who support the social conservative elements of the party.
Former leader Erin O’Toole learned to his detriment that you can’t appeal to social conservatives to win the Tory leadership and then move to the centre to win an election.
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Voters aren’t stupid. They can sniff out a phony.
That’s not to say the campaign shouldn’t vigorously debate the issues. The party needs to have an honest debate on what it is and where it’s going. Since the defeat of former prime minister Stephen Harper, it’s been lurching and leaderless. Until it can present a united front to the electorate, it will never win government. What we’ve seen from candidates over the past week has been dispiriting and demeaning. The party is tearing itself apart – from the inside.
The goal of a leadership campaign should not be to divide and conquer. When it’s all over, the candidates must get behind the new leader, preferably not with knives in their hands.
Canadians want a prime minister who will represent them on the world stage with intelligence and courage. So, stop bickering and show some dignity.
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