Earlier this week, one of John Tory's rivals in the race to replace Ernie Eves as Ontario Progressive Conservative leader pulled out the heavy artillery. Responding to the perceived front-runner's unveiling of a chunk of his platform, Frank Klees tried to tag him with that cruelest tag of all: "Liberal."
"Quite frankly, that policy statement could have been written by Dalton McGuinty," Mr. Klees said. "I read that and thought if what we want is a Liberal government under a Tory name, then this is the document for us."
It was a line of attack that Mr. Klees and fellow candidate Jim Flaherty (who's already used the L-word in all-candidates' debates) will be pulling out again and again in the weeks leading up to their party's September 18 vote.
Mr. Tory has almost everything going for him -- more money, more public support, and almost certainly more memberships sold than his rivals. The only way that either will be able to beat him will be by convincing enough true-blue Conservatives that he's way too red -- a mushy centrist prepared to sell out Mike Harris's legacy even more than Mr. Eves did.
It should not be a difficult case to make. Mr. Tory is not, by any stretch, a staunch small-c conservative. Anybody who's followed his career -- from his Red Tory days working for Bill Davis to last year's centrist bid for Toronto's mayoralty -- knows this. So does anyone who's looked at his platform, which advocates some measure of private health care delivery but is otherwise almost entirely at the centre of the spectrum.
But to believe that this will actually tilt Conservative voters toward Mr. Klees or Mr. Flaherty, you have to subscribe to the notion that they're more concerned with principle than political expediency (always a tenuous proposition in any political party). That's because, purely from the perspective of returning the Conservatives to power, Mr. Tory's lack of philosophical disagreements with the present government happens to be his biggest asset.
There is no reason to believe that Ontario is keen for a radical change in ideological direction. The reason for the severe backlash against Mr. McGuinty's government has nothing to do with it being too right-wing or too left-wing, and everything to do with a sense -- fairly or not -- that it is dishonest and incompetent. A good number of Ontarians also appear to have taken a visceral dislike to the Premier himself; as pleasant and inoffensive as he is face to face, Mr. McGuinty has long had a tendency to rub people who don't know him personally the wrong way.
As such, the best way to beat him would probably be with a leader who trumps him on likability and perceived competence, but occupies roughly the same middle-of-the-road ideological space. Mr. Klees and Mr. Flaherty don't fit that bill; Mr. Tory does. And if his advantages would be considerable in winning over voters, they'd be astronomical in filling his party's empty coffers so that it could start promoting itself again.
A year ago, Mr. McGuinty was the toast of Bay Street. But that's what happens when you're about to take government: So long as you're not running on a platform of hiking taxes and nationalizing industries, the business crowd is keen to make nice with you. The truth is that for all his better efforts, the Ottawa native has always had trouble relating to Bay Street types who see him as an unwelcome outsider -- and now, many are downright hostile over his unexpected tax hike.
Mr. Tory, by contrast, is as close to Bay Street as any prospective leader can possibly be. And as his mayoral campaign proved, his appeal extends even to the business types normally identified as Liberals.
Asked if those same deep-pocketed folks might be inclined to quietly back Mr. Tory's Conservative efforts, a senior Liberal doesn't mince words. "I have no doubt," he says. "They love him. He speaks their language.
"They don't have a clue where the Liberals are going, and they don't have a read on McGuinty," he adds. "They crave stability, and Tory is it."
Others are less keen to go on the record, especially this long before the next election. But Liberals are suggesting in private that Mr. Tory is honing in on Mr. McGuinty's Bay Street market.
Not everyone, of course, is buying it. Strategist Warren Kinsella, who backed Mr. Tory's mayoral bid but has maintained strong ties to the McGuinty crowd, suggests that any Liberal movement toward Mr. Tory is a myth. "Give me the name of one prominent Liberal who is supporting John and I'll show you someone who isn't a Liberal," he says.
Mr. Kinsella may well be right. But the issue at hand isn't dyed-in-the-wool Liberals so much as Liberals of convenience, whose support for the party has always been more opportunistic than ideological.
The question now is whether the Conservatives are willing to be a bit opportunistic themselves. If so, all the attacks in the world won't help his leadership rivals stop Mr. Tory.
