Interesting point of view.
What Canada’s Conservatives can teach Republicans about diversity
By Matthew Hays August 11
Despite the fatigue one might expect within the American electorate after two terms of a Democratic president, there’s anxiety within Republican ranks that their party may lose the 2016 election. Younger voters, voters of color and women voters (particularly if Hillary Clinton does, indeed, land her party’s nomination) will almost certainly favor the Democrats, and those demographic odds may well mean defeat for Republicans.
But there’s a way the GOP can avoid this demographic destiny: Look north to Canada’s Conservatives.
Since first winning election with a minority government in 2006, Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper — leader of the Conservative Party — has reshaped much of the direction of the country, and subsequently won a majority in 2011. Some pollsters are predicting the prime minister will once again sail into another majority governmenthttp://globalnews.ca/news/1773257/c...f-liberals-could-be-on-cusp-on-majority-poll/ in the October election, though it’s difficult to tell because of Canada’s parliamentary system and three popular parties, as opposed to the two-party U.S. system.
How did the Conservatives manage to do this? After all, Canada is a notoriously liberal country, previously led for over 13 years by a liberal government. It’s country famous for its peace-seeking reputation abroad, no death penalty, gun control, universal healthcare, official bilingualism (federal government services are guaranteed in both English and French) and multiculturalism, and home to thousands who avoided the Vietnam-era drafthttp://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/vietnam-war-draft-dodgers-left-mark-in-canada-1.2329725 (Canadian forces were not involved in the Vietnam War nor the 2003 Iraq invasion). The reverence the American left has for Canada is reflected by the view of progressives such as filmmaker Michael Moore, whose documentaries portray Canada as a veritable utopia, and who once boasted on Twitter that "Canada's poverty rate is 40% lower than the U.S.'s"
In part, Harper benefited from timing. A decade ago, the Canadian right became fatigued by years of being shut out of power due to vote splitting between the traditional Progressive Conservative Party and the upstart Reform Party. (Harper had been a key part of the latter.) The two parties mergedhttp://www.conservative.ca/our-party/our-history/ and with the right united, Harper had to figure out how to appease crucial swing voters who might be put off by his party’s potential to move away from the center and toward the political margins. So he visibly embraced racial and ethnic minorities; this may sound like an obvious approach, but given that he had played such a key role in the Reform Party, it was actually a huge roadblock.
Harper first cut his teeth in politics with the Reform Party, which, throughout the 1990s, offered the messages of limited immigration and ending multiculturalism as official policy. Supporters, who sounded a lot like Tea Partiers-in-waitinghttp://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/08/25/tea.party.canada.reformers/, often offered up little defense when asked if their views were less about immigration policy and more a xenophobic stance against Canada’s communities of color. This made his proactive campaign to attract racial and ethnic minorities that much more surprising.
The Reform Party’s rhetoric was often hostile to non-European immigration and to refugees. Harper began to change the tone by speaking in community halls and houses of worship to majority nonwhite audiences, making the case that their values —conservative, family values — were more aligned with Conservatives than with those of the Liberals or the left-leaning New Democratic Party.
“Immigrants have the same values as us,” one of Harper’s senior ministers, Jason Kenney, said in 1994. “We have to talk to them, to convince them,” he told Maclean's Magazinehttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/welcome-to-my-world/. Harper reached out to the key demographics of Canadians of Chinese and Indian descent — two communities that are, in effect, voter goldmines in key suburban districts of both Vancouver and Toronto, places where Conservatives had to make inroads.
Full article at link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/post...atives-can-teach-republicans-about-diversity/
What Canada’s Conservatives can teach Republicans about diversity
By Matthew Hays August 11
Despite the fatigue one might expect within the American electorate after two terms of a Democratic president, there’s anxiety within Republican ranks that their party may lose the 2016 election. Younger voters, voters of color and women voters (particularly if Hillary Clinton does, indeed, land her party’s nomination) will almost certainly favor the Democrats, and those demographic odds may well mean defeat for Republicans.
But there’s a way the GOP can avoid this demographic destiny: Look north to Canada’s Conservatives.
Since first winning election with a minority government in 2006, Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper — leader of the Conservative Party — has reshaped much of the direction of the country, and subsequently won a majority in 2011. Some pollsters are predicting the prime minister will once again sail into another majority governmenthttp://globalnews.ca/news/1773257/c...f-liberals-could-be-on-cusp-on-majority-poll/ in the October election, though it’s difficult to tell because of Canada’s parliamentary system and three popular parties, as opposed to the two-party U.S. system.
How did the Conservatives manage to do this? After all, Canada is a notoriously liberal country, previously led for over 13 years by a liberal government. It’s country famous for its peace-seeking reputation abroad, no death penalty, gun control, universal healthcare, official bilingualism (federal government services are guaranteed in both English and French) and multiculturalism, and home to thousands who avoided the Vietnam-era drafthttp://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/vietnam-war-draft-dodgers-left-mark-in-canada-1.2329725 (Canadian forces were not involved in the Vietnam War nor the 2003 Iraq invasion). The reverence the American left has for Canada is reflected by the view of progressives such as filmmaker Michael Moore, whose documentaries portray Canada as a veritable utopia, and who once boasted on Twitter that "Canada's poverty rate is 40% lower than the U.S.'s"
In part, Harper benefited from timing. A decade ago, the Canadian right became fatigued by years of being shut out of power due to vote splitting between the traditional Progressive Conservative Party and the upstart Reform Party. (Harper had been a key part of the latter.) The two parties mergedhttp://www.conservative.ca/our-party/our-history/ and with the right united, Harper had to figure out how to appease crucial swing voters who might be put off by his party’s potential to move away from the center and toward the political margins. So he visibly embraced racial and ethnic minorities; this may sound like an obvious approach, but given that he had played such a key role in the Reform Party, it was actually a huge roadblock.
Harper first cut his teeth in politics with the Reform Party, which, throughout the 1990s, offered the messages of limited immigration and ending multiculturalism as official policy. Supporters, who sounded a lot like Tea Partiers-in-waitinghttp://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/08/25/tea.party.canada.reformers/, often offered up little defense when asked if their views were less about immigration policy and more a xenophobic stance against Canada’s communities of color. This made his proactive campaign to attract racial and ethnic minorities that much more surprising.
The Reform Party’s rhetoric was often hostile to non-European immigration and to refugees. Harper began to change the tone by speaking in community halls and houses of worship to majority nonwhite audiences, making the case that their values —conservative, family values — were more aligned with Conservatives than with those of the Liberals or the left-leaning New Democratic Party.
“Immigrants have the same values as us,” one of Harper’s senior ministers, Jason Kenney, said in 1994. “We have to talk to them, to convince them,” he told Maclean's Magazinehttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/welcome-to-my-world/. Harper reached out to the key demographics of Canadians of Chinese and Indian descent — two communities that are, in effect, voter goldmines in key suburban districts of both Vancouver and Toronto, places where Conservatives had to make inroads.
Full article at link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/post...atives-can-teach-republicans-about-diversity/
