{"id":5527,"date":"2013-10-24T09:00:40","date_gmt":"2013-10-24T13:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=5527"},"modified":"2013-10-24T18:02:39","modified_gmt":"2013-10-24T22:02:39","slug":"moore-is-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=5527","title":{"rendered":"Moore is More"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"To<\/a>
To win the leadership, Moore will need to court red Tories in Quebec.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Partly due to his one-man government, and partly due to a series of spectacular flame outs among heirs apparent, there hasn’t been a lot of leadership speculation during the Harper era, beyond the occasional question about how Brad Wall’s french is coming along.<\/p>\n

Until now<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Industry Minister Moore has Conservative Party leadership potential, say sources<\/strong><\/p>\n

[…] Last May, Mr. Moore revamped his jamesmoore.org website\u2014separate from his jamesmoore.ca site which is geared more towards his profile as the MP for Port Moody-Westwood-Port Coquitlam, B.C.\u2014which appears geared towards highlighting his work as a minister. The change caught some attention in social media, stirring speculation Mr. Moore has leadership ambitions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

With the Conservatives down in the polls and 2015 likely <\/em>(but far from certain) to be Harper’s last election, expect these type of articles to pop up more and more – and not just about Moore. The media love to speculate and politicians love to be speculated about, so anyone with even the faintest hopes of succeeding Harper is going to have their name floated at some point. Yes, even Pierre Pollievre – though most of those articles will be satirical.<\/p>\n

However’s Moore’s candidacy is more plausible than most and deserves closer scruity since, at first glance, he’s everything the Tories should <\/em>want in a leader. He’s young, well spoken, experienced, and hails from not Alberta <\/del>BC. Most importantly, Moore is squarely a red Tory – he doesn’t consider arts funding an abomination, and was one of only 4 Conservative MPs to vote in favour of same sex marriage in 2005. That vote was reminiscent<\/a> of John Diefenbaker’s time as a backbench MP when he was often the lone progressive voice from his caucus on issues such as the family allowance. These stands gave Dief the ability to tout the “progressive” half of the PC brand when he won the party leadership, key to helping him topple of Liberal dynasty.<\/p>\n

Of course, there is still a very large “better dead than red” contingent in the Conservative Party. Many former reformers didn’t expect Harper to be the biggest spending Prime Minister is Canada’s history, recognize Quebec as a nation, and introduce NDP-style regulations on big business. Should someone with more conservative credentials, say Jason Kenney<\/em>, step forward, you can be sure they would follow. Given Kenney’s connections in multicultural communities and religious organizations, his high profile, and undisputed reform roots, he would certainly be a membership machine come leadership time.<\/p>\n

Again, things can change. Leadership hopefuls can leave tape recorders in cars <\/a>and briefing books in bedrooms<\/a>. Bernard Lord looked to be the conservative saviour for a while, but now he’s just a “former future Prime Minister”. We can speculate about Kenney versus Moore, but come 2016 or 2018 or 2030<\/em>, the race to succeed Stephen Harper will most likely feature a set of candidates we’re not even talking about today. <\/p>\n

However, what Kenney and Moore represent <\/em>is likely to be what the fight to succeed Harper will be all about – power or principle, right or farther right, progressive or conservative, red tory or reformer. That battle may be years away still, and we don’t know the generals yet, but the battle lines are already being drawn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Partly due to his one-man government, and partly due to a series of spectacular flame outs among heirs apparent, there hasn’t been a lot of leadership speculation during the Harper era, beyond the occasional question about how Brad Wall’s french is coming along. Until now: Industry Minister Moore has Conservative Party leadership potential, say sources […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[983],"tags":[1379,1114,1408,991],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5527"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5527"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5560,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5527\/revisions\/5560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}