Harper Tories Can't Break Into Majority Territory.OTTAWA (Apr 23, 2007)
Stephen Harper has run a pretty tight ship as prime minister and earned kudos for competence, yet his Conservatives are mired in minority-government territory.
After winning 36 per cent of the vote in last year's election, the Tories haven't moved much -- apart from a short-lived upward bounce after last month's big-spending budget.
Theories abound as to why Harper's overall positive leadership rating, especially when compared to St?phane Dion's underwhelming debut as Liberal chief, has not won more support for his party.
Pundits and political scientists alternately cite voter contentment, electoral fatigue and historical polling trends. Others raise points that aren't as easily pinned down.
"My mother doesn't like him," one Conservative insider who didn't want to be named said of Harper. "I don't know, she just doesn't like him. It's something he emanates."
Harper's personal image has come a long way since the days when his fiercest rivals wrote him off as a far-right ideologue with ice water in his veins.
"Harper is who he is," said Tim Powers, an Ottawa lobbyist and Tory backroomer.
"And like every other human being, he's not perfect. He doesn't try to be perfect. And I think people are adjusting to him as they adjusted to Martin, Chr?tien and to Mulroney.
"He's not this big, scary, fire-breathing, freak-show psychotic that the Liberal party described him as."
Powers says Harper is in reality closer to a "Tim Hortons dad" -- albeit a Tim Hortons dad who employs a publicly funded personal image stylist and still struggles to check a notorious mean streak.
A recent case in point was when Harper sabotaged his own spate of generally positive headlines after last month's budget. He was widely criticized, even by right-leaning observers, for suggesting in question period that Liberal MPs care more for Taliban suspects detained in Afghanistan than for Canadian troops.
Public doubts about Harper linger, said David Docherty, a political scientist and dean of arts at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo.
"There still seems to be a slight unease. He's been unable to capitalize on the problems that Dion is having."
That suggests that, despite initial disappointment in the bookish Liberal leader's halting first months in the job, voters aren't showing much desire to switch political stripes just yet, says Docherty.
"People, before they abandon one party, need another home to go to. And it's clear that they're not ready to go to Stephen Harper."
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Even if he does win a majority, he'll still have assholes like Jack Layton and Stephane Dion objecting to every single idea that ever comes out of Parliament.
A minority government aint so bad in my book, however the diehard Conservatives expect Stephen Harper to deliver a majority in the next election
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