Posted on 05/30/2003 1:30:24 PM PDT by Clive
TORONTO (CP) - Former prime minister Brian Mulroney received a hero's welcome at the federal Tory leadership convention Friday, using his first speech to a party convention in 10 years to slam his old foe, Jean Chretien.
Mulroney, who was often criticized for being too close to former U.S. president Ronald Reagan, was particulary scathing about the current state of Canada-U.S. relations under Chretien. The next Conservative leader, and by extension the next prime minister, he said, looking down at the five leadership candidates seated in the front row of the hall, "should have as his first obligation the capacity and the duty to refurbish the relationship (with the U.S.)"
Mulroney also implored the candidates vying to succeed Joe Clark in Saturday's leadership vote to lead with conviction and not be slaves to public opinion.
"For a generation raised on the bizarre proposition that leadership should be equated with popularity, how goofy can you be?" Mulroney told a packed hall of more than 2,000 cheering delegates at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.
"When leadership is often the absolute antithesis of popularity, measured and published weekly, this can be a daunting challenge.
"In fact, political capital is not supposed to be hoarded. Rather it must be spent on great causes for one's country."
Mulroney, 63, spent all his capital during back-to-back Conservative majorities starting in 1984. He retired as one of Canada's most viscerally unpopular prime ministers.
But the rehabilitation of his image has evolved during the ensuing years as the Liberal governments of Chretien embraced some of Mulroney's most gut-wrenching policy shifts, such as North American free trade and the GST.
The emotional welcome accorded Mulroney at the convention stood in almost embarrassing contrast to the tepid response Clark received during a two-hour farewell tribute Thursday night.
Mulroney earned six standing ovations during his hour-long address and was mobbed by delegates as he left the hall. Clark, also 63 and a former prime minister, didn't get a single standing ovation during his farewell speech a night earlier.
Mulroney spent some minutes praising Clark's contribution as foreign affairs minister and constitutional minister during his governments, but used the bulk of his speech to defend his government's policies and to attack Chretien and Liberal heir apparent Paul Martin.
Aside from the souring of Canada-U.S. relations, Mulroney accused Chretien and Martin of lowering Canada's stature on the world stage.
Mulroney also spoke bitterly of Reform party founder Preston Manning, whom he says sowed the seeds of the conservative split in the country during the 1988 election.
"At the very moment the centre-right was gaining effectiveness in Canada . . . Mr. Manning chose to launch a new party and split the vote," he said.
He added that Chretien and Martin probably go to sleep at night thanking Manning to this very day.
Mulroney's views on reuniting the right have been in the news recently as he has emerged to give several media interviews, but his comments Friday did little to suggest an end to the current impasse.
While the next Tory leader must "turn the page" and "act selflessly" to build a winning coalition, said Mulroney, he also put the boots to the Canadian Alliance.
"Regional political movements have come and gone throughout our history," he said.
"They have all . . . eventually collapsed because they failed to articulate a broad, generous and inclusive vision of Canada. Regional rancour is no substitute for nation building and Canadians know this instinctively."
To that end, Mulroney said Conservatives will have to win seats in Quebec to restore the party to power.
Yes. but still a "Red Tory"
He was Prime Minister as head of the Progressive Conservative party.
Margaret Thatcher said of him: "He puts too much emphasis on the adjective"
The Progressive Conservative party is an amalgamation of the former Conservative Party and an upstart populist Progressive party, in a similar manner that the Canadian Alliance is an amalgam of the upstart populist Reform Party and moderate conservative elements of the Progressive Conservative party who had become frustrated by the progressive wing's grip on the party and the Reform Party itself was an amalgam of the always present conservative western populism and the more conservative wing of the conservative wing of the Progressive Conservative party.
Confused?
So are most Canadians.
What happens in Canada is that Canadians are generally content to allow themselves to be governed by middle-of-the road parties who are largely composed of eaastern elites (the descendents of the Family Compact).
The leadership of these parties generally think that they have their fingers on the pulse of Canadian opinion but over time they listen more and more to each other and less and less to ordinary citizens until what amounts to intellectual incest sets in.
At this point, the citizens are becoming more-and-more disenchanted until Western populism, which is always festering in Alberta (rightist populists) or Saskatchewan (leftist populists) breaks loose and heads east.
As it passes the Lakehead, the eastern establishment begins to take notice and starts to react. First they try to ignore the movement, then they try to make a joke of the western hayseeds, then they try to demonize them, but if Canadians get bloody-minded enough none of these efforts work, so the mainstream parties start to steal their ideas.
In this way, the elites are forced back in touch with the pulse of ordinary Canadians' thinking. Populism always wins but almost never by taking the government.
Its idaas win but the populist movements fail in their attempts to become mainline parties and so are either marginalized like the NDP or are absorbed by mainline parties like the Progressives or the Reformers.
Still confused?
I have grossly simplified this scenario by excluding the French-Canadian component.
Bienvenu au Canada.
Every country should have a leader who once got a little too much alcohol in him on a campaign trip, and made an unscheduled stop in a homeless shelter to berate the occupants for being unemployed in a city where the unemployment rate was about 0.2%.
This one went west instead of east except that a branch of it swept Quebec for somewhat the same reasons as described in my post 5 and disintegated as a political party, also as described.
The remnants of it are now mainly in the Parti Quebecois.
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