The party won’t expand its base by cleaving off one of its biggest pieces. And it won’t be able to offer Canadians a clear, conservative alternative if it jettisons traditional values
As the Conservative party’s leadership race gets started in earnest, there’s already plenty of commentary about how the party needs to eschew pesky social conservatives and their backwards-looking traditionalism if it wishes to win elections in modern Canada.
It’s not just unsolicited advice from the CBC or the Toronto Star either. Various conservatives are making a similar case. Social conservatism has come to be characterized as a “stinking albatross” around the party’s neck.
Big, if true, as the saying goes. But is it?
