[LINK] "The mystery of the vanishing Red Tory"

[rfmcdonald]

At one point in Canada, the Red Tory--briefly put, a member of the Conservative Party opposed to neoliberalism and interested in social cohesion--was a powerful force. Not now in Toronto, though. Why? John McGrath explains in the Globe and Mail.

If you think the NDP and Liberals are shocked, talk to some downtown conservatives. The kind who talk about how much they love Spacing magazine or Nuit Blanche, the ones who are working on the Smitherman and Rossi campaigns – who thought this election would be sewn up on the centre-right.

The shock and confusion is palpable, as if these poor bastards woke up in an artillery barrage: “Hey, if we had a better idea of what was going on we wouldn’t be 20 points behind, right? I mean, fuck me,” says one Smitherman adviser.

One place to start, bewildered Smitherpeeps, is amalgamation. Even the people who served in the Harris government acknowledge it. “There was a perception that our party was anti-Toronto, or even that we hated Toronto,” says Janet Ecker, who was Minister of Finance when the Tories were chased out of Toronto into 2003.

Toronto Toryism couldn't possibly grow out of that scorched earth. Their flirtation with post-Harris moderation came in the form of John Tory, who may have lost to Miller in 2003 simply because people wanted a change from the conservative (and hilarious) Mel Lastman. Tory’s run against McGuinty in 2007 failed to impress suburban voters – who freaked right out over his school-funding proposal – and, more importantly, the city of Toronto, which saw the spectre of more upheaval over schools when we'd already had years of strikes under Harris. The high walls of the Liberal fortress remains unbroken, and Kumbaya verses and pot smoke still waft from the NDP camps. And for those who are too young to remember what the fuss was about, there is that beast of bombast, former Harris-ite John Baird, who alternatively drops the F-bomb on the city or rails against its “elites.”