A Story I Thought I’d Never See (Conservatives Win in Canada)

A bigger win would have been nice, but who would have thought you would ever see the words “conservative” and “wins” in an article about Canadian elections?

Stephen Harper Wins Conservative Minority

Canadians awarded Conservative Leader Stephen Harper with a minority government Monday, putting an end to more than 12 years of Liberal rule.

Results show the Conservatives took 124 seats, versus 103 for Paul Martin’s Liberals.
“Tonight, friends, our great country has voted for change,” prime minister designate Harper told a crowd of supporters at his home riding of Calgary Southwest.

“And Canadians have asked our party to take the lead in delivering that change. Tonight I am saying to all Canadian that we will respect the trust you have given us, we will keep our word, we will honour that trust, we will deliver on our commitments.”

But Harper fell short of the 155 seats needed to lead a Tory majority, meaning he’ll have to wheel and deal and curry favour of at least one opposition party to support him in the 308-seat House of Commons.

….. Martin ended up in the fight of his political life against Harper. His Liberals took a pounding in the polls with voters upset over allegations of government scandal and a rash of urban gun violence, including a brazen Boxing Day shootout that killed a 15-year-old bystander in downtown Toronto.

Harper capitalized on those concerns, promising to get tough on corruption and to crack down on gun crime with mandatory minimum sentences.

Just before the New Year, the RCMP announced an investigation into an income trust announcement by the Liberals. That’s when the Grits dropped sharply in the polls and the Conservatives rose — at one point leading the Liberals by 18 points in a Strategic Counsel survey.

In the end, Harper succeeded in convincing voters that it was, in fact, time for change.

But although Harper never suggested it himself, Conservatives were hoping a majority was in the cards. In the end, Canadians may have heeded Martin’s message of caution, trimming the Tories’ power and forcing them to cooperate with other parties in the next Parliament.

But hold the champagne, everyone:

The Conservatives have a big challenge ahead of them. The 10 minority governments that Canada has seen have never lasted longer than two years, limited by their ability to get bills passed.

So unless the Conservatives are able to form a coalition with another party, another election could be on the horizon.

Oops, I meant everyone except Captain Ed, who gets to sample the bubbly because he deserves a major share of the credit for exposing the corruption that ultimately led to tonight’s result. Instapundit agrees: “And Capt. Ed Morrissey ….. can claim a major role in this development with his breaking of the publication ban on the Gomery investigation“ (link added by me).

ALSO, this from David Warren (look familiar?):

The Internet has broken the stranglehold the Liberal Party had over sympathetic media, and created an information environment in which you had better be darned sure what you are saying is the strict truth, because there’s an army of fact-checkers out there. Moreover, an army that cannot easily be intimidated by off-the-record threats from Party lawyers, or made to desist by peer pressure. For even when (as we saw in the delayed release of Gomery testimony) a legal ban on publication can be obtained, the information simply passes through electronic space across the border, and we can all read the banned material on such sites as Captain’s Quarters from the USA.

….. (added at 11:15 a.m.) For the moment, to put it nicely, the same thing has happened to the Liberals in Canada, as has happened to other long-serving single-party regimes elsewhere in the world. Technology has caught up with their ability to manage information; and a sheltered population is losing its fear. The more the ruling party tries to scare them, with heavy-handed old-media campaigns, the worse things get — for the ruling party.

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UPDATE: This piece from Tim Worstall in April 2005 on the Gomery Enquiry, the “publication ban,” and Captain Ed’s place in it is great background. I believe that when someone writes up the history of blogging, Morrissey’s end-run around the “publication ban” will be seen as one of its pivotal, and proudest, moments.

UPDATE 2: A great backgrounder on the Canadian political situation from Paul Jackson at American Thinker.