A House Divided

"Boy, those Conservatives with their infighting! Aren't they just hilarious? Aren't we Liberals going to just cruise to re-election in October?"

Well, look who's getting the last laugh now, Liberals. We had Sandra "Snooki" Pupatello, one of Dalton's toughest consiglieres, quit this week, and now we've got Donna Cansfield getting the vapours over a planned power plant.

Is she Donna Cansfield, or Donna Can'ts-field?

If you have a vague recollection of another of Dalton's cronies having a power plant-related credibility blackout, you're right. In Cansfield's case, though, it's a little more hilarious because she was originally a member of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, but "her involvement in the education community led her to oppose the policies of the Mike Harris and Ernie Eves governments." That's a nice way of saying, "the teacher's union made her an offer she couldn't refuse."

Now, if avowed Red Tories like Cansfield who took the step of leaving the PC Party are now opposing Dalton's policy, what does that say for that other Liberal talking point about how red Tories should support Dalton?

Look, we know that Dalton's cronies are out there trying to recruit people like John Tory, Jr. on the pretense that the Liberals are somehow the real home for centrists. But only a few posts ago, I pointed out that Dalton plans to copy Stephen Harper's election tactics. Why? Because he knows what people like Sarah Thomson and Donna Cansfield and Belinda Stronach and Garth Turner and Mike Colle do not, and that is that THE CENTRE IS DEAD and hoping it will come back isn't going to work. 

That's Dalton's problem in the first place. Given the choice, he'd be as right-wing as Hudak, maybe right-er. There's a chance that he will do exactly that in the alternate universe where he wins the election in October. Or maybe he'd confess his undying love for unions and proclaim Dalton Days like the NDP did. But he can't do either of those things and instead tries in vain to capture "the centre" because it's what his puppetmasters tell him to do. His party is way more divided than ours ever could be, with people in his own party telling him, likely to his face, that he's the reason they're so far behind in the polls, and it's all happening in spite of-or because of- his efforts to make everyone like him.


A word to the Red Tories out there who may be considering following Thomson's lead and joining Dalton. You will not "remake the Progressive Conservatives." You are stepping into an abyss. Accept that there is no way back to the way things were.