Party of One by Michael Harris Read Free Book Online Page A

became involved in the race, the Harper team would be overwhelmed. Finkelstein eventually declined Day’s offer, and Stephen Harper and his team, with the help of the NCC, went to war against Day.
    In March 2002, Stephen Harper deposed Day and found himself astride a political party of his own at last. With a hostile Joe Clark still at the helm of the Progressive Conservative Party, it was not the united right that Harper had once held out for when the PCs came calling. But even if the Canadian Alliance was what Brian Mulroney said it was—“Reform in pantyhose,” it was bigger than Preston Manning’s old party. Better still, there was now just one obstacle to full unification: the party of John A. Macdonald. The consummate political tactician was a dangerous commodity once he had a clear target in his sights. As one-time mentor Tom Flanagan put it, Stephen Harper was a “predator.”
    Canadian politics on the right was about to go through volcanic changes. As long as Joe Clark was in charge, his PCs would never join forces with the Canadian Alliance because the former prime minister thought it would pull his party too far to the right. But five months after Harper captured the Alliance leadership, opportunityknocked. Joe Clark resigned. Tories chose popular Nova Scotia MP Peter MacKay to replace Clark on May 31, 2003. Alberta MP Jim Prentice finished second to MacKay on the last ballot, largely because of a backroom deal between MacKay and fellow leadership candidate David Orchard. In exchange for MacKay’s promise to review the North American Free Trade Agreement and not to merge the PCs with the Canadian Alliance, Orchard played the kingmaker and delivered his support to MacKay. Five months later, MacKay reneged on the deal. By the end of 2003, the merger with the Canadian Alliance was approved by Progressive Conservative Party members. A few months later, Stephen Harper easily dispatched Belinda Stronach and Tony Clement at the Conservative Party of Canada’s first leadership convention. MacKay got to date Stronach, but Stephen Harper got the party.
    One of the reasons Stephen Harper was able to wipe out his opposition on the first ballot in the Conservative Party leadership, gaining nearly 70 percent of the vote, was that he had made himself into a thoroughly modern, professional politician. His years at the NCC had taught him that polling, marketing, and money were the holy trinity of the new politics. 6 Seeking power was no longer a matter of debating with honourable gentlemen over great issues, but a gruesome fight to the finish with no holds barred. Ross Perot made an observation that nicely captured Stephen Harper’s quest for power in the new techno-democracy the Republicans had forged, and which Harper embraced: war has rules, mud-wrestling has rules, but politics has no rules.
    One of the problems conservatives have always complained about in Canada is the media. Whether it was the Progressive Conservatives, Reform, or the Canadian Alliance, they all believed that there was a left-wing bias in the news. Reflective conservatives such as Preston Manning thought it through more carefully. Manning concluded that the bias wasn’t just in the media but inother major institutions in society like the university. Small “l” liberalism permeated society, from the politics of professors, to the interpretations of Canadian history, to the image of the military. If conservatives wanted to operate on a level playing field, they would have to come up with a way to institutionalize their own message the way liberals had so successfully done.
    In the United States, think-tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Cato Institute performed that function for the Republican Party. They began by offering counter-facts to the ones presented in the “liberal” news, which then became news. They created the impression that journalism was as partisan as politics. Such institutes could