Sweet biscuits, the Conservative party was in a mood to party last weekend.
And who can blame them?
May 2 gave them the first majority Conservative government since 1988 and made Stephen Harper the first party leader to achieve a majority in his fourth try after one defeat and two minorities.
By the end of the current term, if he stays, he will be the longest-serving Conservative prime minister in history next to Sir John A. Macdonald.
What is not to party about? And so they did.
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Supportive media shills were in full voice as the National Post, created more than a decade ago as a Conrad Black organ to promote his anti-Liberal views, devoted vast amounts of space last weekend to trashing the Liberal legacy and promoting Conservative prospects.
Then came even better news.
Carleton University pollster André Turcotte told the Manning Centre that a post-election poll showed Canadians increasingly see Conservative values to be their values.
Party Grand Old Man Preston Manning conveyed the news June 10, foregoing 69th birthday celebrations to tout the fact that the vision of a conservative Canada that he and father Ernest Manning first articulated in the 1970s is finally coming true.
Of course, there were those saner heads who warned delegates that all this recent success and polling trends do not a natural governing party make.
There is uneasiness among some rank-and-file members about massive deficits, Liberal-like policies and Quebec-centric politics.
Calgary-based immigration minister and Conservative power broker Jason Kenney, in particular, warned that unless the party exercises the discipline of power needed to stay true to its conservative principles and not become seduced by the power of big government and vote buying, it could lose its base.
He may have had Treasury Board president Tony Clement in mind after the auditor general reported last week that $50 million in border security funds went into his northern Ontario riding last year, though it is hundreds of kilometres from the Canada-U. S. border. Clement won his riding handily in the wake of the spending spree and now is in charge of cutting government spending.
But enough of that cynicism.
History suggests that Kenney was right to warn about complacency.
In 1958, when he won the largest parliamentary majority in history with strong Quebec support, John Diefenbaker proclaimed a new Conservative era. Five years later, he was in opposition.
In 1984, when Brian Mulroney won an unprecedented 211 seats, he bragged about a new Conservative era. Nine years later, his party was reduced to two seats and eventually a hostile takeover by the Reform party.
So the Harperites should not be complacent.
But this majority does feel different. Diefenbaker won because the Quebec premier delivered 50 seats.
Mulroney won because Quebec was fed up with the Liberals.
In neither case was there a sustainable machine.
This Conservative majority, the first that did not depend on Quebec MPs, was built from the ground up in Ontario, rural Canada and ethnic ridings. It did not depend on a swath of unexpected seats.
It may well be far more sustainable than previous Conservative majorities. Party on.
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