Social conservatives still hopeful about other possibilities for leader
Deborah Gyapong
OTTAWA (CCN)



Jason Kenney’s decision to exit federal politics left a gaping hole in the Conservative leadership race for social-conservative Tories hoping for a strong standard bearer.

But social conservatives say they remain hopeful other good social-conservative candidates will run. “The good news is there are still two possible social-conservative leadership hopefuls,” said Campaign Life political strategist Jack Fonseca.

Former Speaker of the House Andrew Scheer, a Catholic and presently MP for Regina-Qu’Appelle, Sask., is considering running and so is MP Brad Trost, an evangelical Christian who represents the Saskatoon Riding and is serving his fifth term in Parliament.

Kenney, a former cabinet minister who held several major portfolios including immigration and defence, was seen as one of the most formidable potential candidates. Instead, the devout Catholic and prolife MP with, according to Campaign Life Coalition, a perfect voting record on life and family issues, has decided to run for the Progressive Conservative (PC) Party leadership in Alberta, with the goal of uniting the PCs with the Wildrose Party.

“I think Jason Kenney will be an asset wherever he runs,” said Campaign Life’s Ottawa lobbyist, Johanne Brownrigg. “He has an over-arching human side that brings out the best in politics. He has more substance than Trudeau’s style, and he’s clearly proven he’s able to handle difficult portfolios. He has a history of bringing people together.”

Brownrigg also said Kenney brings tremendous charisma to politics.

“I think he saw that he didn’t have much opportunity federally because he’d be another white male from Alberta,” said REAL Women of Canada national vice president Gwen Landolt. “I think he saw the end of the tunnel being blocked off for him federally.”

She noted Kenney also has a “difficult journey” as head in Alberta, because the PC party is more of a “red party” than a social-conservative party, and Wildrose has a new leader in Brian Jean.

Landolt agrees with many Ottawa pundits who think Kenney may have exited the federal scene because he anticipates the Conservatives will spend a long time in opposition. “He’s no fool politically,” said Landolt. Right now Trudeau is at 60 per cent of the popular vote.”

Fonseca said he believed Trost might be even stronger than Kenney or Scheer because he voted against changing the Conservative Party policy’s support for traditional marriage at the recent policy convention in Vancouver, while both Kenney and Scheer voted for the change.

“It came as quite a shock [Kenney] had distanced himself from traditional marriage,” Fonseca said. “I’m no longer sure we can count on him being a pro-family candidate. However, hopefully his prolife principles continue to be strong and he can do some good at the provincial level in Alberta.”

A Conservative insider, who wished to remain anonymous, pointed out the vote was not in support of same-sex marriage, but merely removed support for traditional marriage from the party platform.

He said he himself is a Catholic who not only supports traditional marriage, but also opposes divorce and remarriage and artificial birth control, but in today’s world, “it’s difficult to get a hearing for any of these views.” Fifteen years ago, the majority of Conservatives and a majority of Liberals supported traditional marriage, but now only a minority of Conservatives does, he said.

“Despite the changes, social conservatives have not adjusted at all their tactics,” he said, noting they have gone from a majority position to that of a persecuted minority.

Both Fonseca and Landolt said social conservatives make up about 40 per cent of the Conservative Party.

But the insider said social conservatives may represent 40 per cent of party activists, but a smaller proportion of those who vote Conservative, and an even smaller proportion of the Canadian population as a whole.

The insider said it may be unfortunate to have two social conservatives from Saskatchewan battling each other for the leadership. Scheer is bilingual, he noted, while Trost is not.

“Without Jason in the race, I don’t see a candidate on the right strong enough to rally the troops,” he said. He predicted the candidate most likely to win the leadership will be Peter MacKay if he decides to run. Declared candidates so far include MP Michael Chong; MP Maxim Bernier and MP Kellie Leitch, all of whom marched in the Toronto Gay Pride Parade. The fact they and other possible Tory candidates did so dismayed both Landolt and Fonseca.

Fonseca warned if the party leadership shows social conservatives they “despise them” or “spit in their face” and say they “don’t care about their values,” they risk “destroying the party and going back to the 1990s situation where there were two parties on the right.”

Social conservatives will either stay home, stop voting, donating, or getting out the vote and the Conservatives “will never win an election again,” he said.

Fonseca points out 33 per cent of eligible voters did not vote. “A lot of them are moral conservatives who would tend to vote for the Conservative Party but have come to view all politicians as equally corrupt and two- faced.”

Landolt said Canada has not yet been affected by the anti-establishment mood that led England to vote for Brexit and is dominating politics in the United States with the emergence of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Trudeau is the quintessential establishment candidate, both in terms of his family, and what he represents, she said. The insider points out MacKay has a similar pedigree on the Conservative side.

Fonseca said a strong, “unabashedly prolife and pro-family leader” could help “swing many Catholic voters back to the Conservative Party.” Under Harper, many “saw no moral difference between the Conservatives and the Liberals.”

“A strong prolife leader like Brad Trost or Andrew Scheer could bring many of those Catholic voters back,” he said.

“I don’t think the party has a choice but to make room for social conservatives, otherwise the party will cease to be,” said Fonseca. “As much as the party establishment wants to believe social conservatives do matter, the truth is, without social conservatives in the conservative movement, that movement collapses and so does the party.”