Patrick Brown is splitting the vote

Conversations about starting a new political party on the right often go like this.

Actual conservative: I’m fed up with the PCs. We need a new party in this province.
Red Tory: What? Like the Reform Party? You’re just going to split the vote and allow the Liberals to rule forever!
Actual conservative: You’re right. Guess I’ll just crawl back in my hole and come out in four years to vote for whatever guy is wearing a blue tie.

Fiscal conservatives have been sounding the alarm over debt, deficits, public sector pensions and salaries and more since at least the 1980s. Now we’re at a fiscal crisis point in Ontario. Politicians keep saying they’re listening, but they never actually deliver responsible spending. Yes, sometimes they balance the budget. But balanced budgets alone aren’t the solution. Even Sweden balances budgets. The point is reduced spending. Reduced intervention in the economy. Reduced tax code complexity. Reduced influence over our day-to-day lives.

Social conservatives have been faithfully going to the polls to cast their vote for the latest saviour who is going to halt the decline. Who is going to respect their values. Who is on their side. How has that worked out? Can we name one policy area where socons have made headway in the last 40 years? We are in a country where two women can marry each other and men can use the ladies’ bathroom. Where schoolchildren are given condoms, and you can abort your child at 35 weeks. Now you can also euthanize grandma.

Democratic reformers have not had much success around here, either. While British Columbia voters can recall their politicians and initiate their own legislation, Ontario voters can, um, post cranky memes on Facebook or start their own blog. Other than that they pretty well have to bottle up their disappointment until the next election, then put a check-mark beside the next candidate who will let them down.

What Red Tories don’t realize is that big-tent politics is a two-way street, to mix some metaphors.

It may be a Trump-esque simplification, but the current way PC politics work in this province is Red Tories set policy, pick candidates, and manage the central campaign. Actual conservatives knock on doors, lick envelopes, and vote. It’s a terrific arrangement if you just want to win and don’t care about the direction of the province. Personally though, I’m starting to feel a bit used. Particularly when you factor in the same approach seems to be employed at the Federal level.

So when a conventional conservative tells me I need to suck it up and vote PC otherwise his candidate won’t get in, I have to ask ‘what have you done for me lately?’ What have social conservatives gained by playing that game? When have fiscal conservatives been paid back in government shrinkage? Where have democratic reformers ever benefited by putting another Liberal-lite in charge?

While this has been going on for years, Patrick Brown is taking it to a whole new level. He is not even paying lip-service to the party’s base constituencies. He is going out of his way to muzzle their friends in caucus, thwart their nominations at the riding level, and offend them with his policy pronouncements.

He is the leader, and he is entitled to remake the party however he wants if he can get away with it. That doesn’t mean the rest of us have to stick around and like it, though.

I don’t believe we all have to agree 100%, but there is a point at which this becomes abuse. I think we’re there, and it’s time we split.

Craig Dellandrea can be found standing in line at the consulates of Switzerland, Monaco and Lichtenstein applying for refugee status. He can also be reached at craigdellandrea@sympatico.ca