The Conservatives are rolling out a new electoral strategy wherein they make explicit their desire to win a majority government. While quite certain this is based on polls telling the Tory brain trust that Canadians are tired of minority government, I'm left with one simple question: Why, if the Tories equivocated on the issue in the past because they sensed that Canadians would turn turtle if confronted by Conservative ambition, would they think anything has changed?
In the best of all possible worlds, any constituency would want to elect a benign, intelligent majority in order to implement an agenda that reflects broadly the interests of the electorate (while at the same time being held to account by a loyal opposition). But this ain't the best of all possible worlds; this is Canada. The math indicates that well over half the voters in this country disagree with the Tories' agenda and/or don't trust them to implement an agenda they do agree with.
In a long article published in Policy Options last spring, Robin Sears laid out various strategic scenarios following from the bedrock reality underlying the current imbroglios. I spoke to Sears last week, and he had plenty new to say about the current deficit realities facing the parties as they confront the electorate. Big deficit numbers tend to put left-of-centre parties and candidates on their back foot. That said, the numbers are the numbers and there's a certain intractability to the splits riding by riding, which indicate to Sears that if there's an election this fall we'll end up right where we were in November 2008.
That means minority Tory rule or coalition. This in turn begs the soap opera question: Can Jack and Mike find a way to make it work? More on that later.
