Harper’s triumph: a realignment of historic proportions

[CHIMO]

With his impressive election triumph Monday, Stephen Harper has completed a remarkable reconstruction of a Canadian political landscape that endured for more than a century. The realignment sees both old parties of the moderate middle, the Progressive Conservatives and the Liberals, either eliminated or marginalized.

In their place are the widely separated NDP on the left and Harper Conservatives on the right. It was Mr. Harper who led the Canadian Alliance’s merger/takeover of the old PCs almost eight years ago. It was Mr. Harper who worked to destroy the Liberal Party and who saw much of that happen in Monday’s election.

The new dynamic leaves the centre, the area of the spectrum where the bulk of the population resides, formally unrepresented. Although the Conservatives and the New Democrats will tailor policy appeals to the middle, their ideological convictions increase the potential for polarization.

Not long in power, the forging of the new dynamic sees this Prime Minister already meriting a special place in the pantheon of Canadian leaders. Such a place is owed to him for another reason as well. No other federal leader has started from so far back and from so far outside the middle of the spectrum and emerged such a winner. A decade ago, Stephen Harper was heading up a small right-wing group called the National Citizens Coalition. He took over a Canadian Alliance shoehorned in the West and nowhere in the polls and in competition with the old Tories. He led the unification drive and won the leadership of the new Conservatives. He built a superior organization, won two minorities and a now a majority, crushing the Grits in the process.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/lawrence-martin/harpers-triumph-a-realignment-of-historic-proportions/article2008719/