Harper's throne not so secure?

Interesting post in the Star but the rumors I am hearing are a little different.

My sources, who are, granted, Red Tories and were never happy with Harper, tell me there is a significant movement to replace Harper before the next election.

Apparently the Conservatives who want power are furious at the close call (which isn't over yet) caused by a mindless political gambit.

They believe Dion fumbled to ball but see that Harper has united the Liberals behind a dangerous leader and their hold on power is shaky.

Conservatives who want a social conservative agenda have seen really nothing but bafflegab and are worried now that they agreed to wait until a majority and the majority won't happen -- so they want to act now on same sex marriage etc.

Finally, the Red Tories (those who are still there) want John Tory to run and replace Harper.

So... maybe the Party isn't quite so forgiving ...

Harper lucky to lead forgiving party
The Toronto Star
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Page: AA08
Section: Opinion
Byline: James Travers
Source: Toronto Star

Stephen Harper is a most fortunate Prime Minister. It's not just that Liberals gave him scandal and then Stephane Dion or even that Giuliano Zaccardelli, then RCMP commissioner, waded into the 2006 campaign at precisely the right moment, tipping the election to the Conservatives. It's also that Harper loyalists gamely play follow the leader.

Even if there isn't total forgetfulness in Conservative hearts, there's adequate forgiveness in their ballots.

While Liberals let disappointment with Dion keep them home on election day, Conservatives queued to vote for a government not quite as advertised.

True, the Prime Minister delivered on the letter, if not always the spirit, of priority 2006 campaign promises. He twice cut the GST, wrote cheques to parents, passed a diluted Accountability Act, poked pinholes in the overinflated crime balloon and mucked around in the quagmire of patient wait times.

Equally pleasing, the Prime Minister is still changing the Liberal pink hue that makes deep blue Conservatives see red. His administration rarely misses a chance to beat the drum and wave the flag or an opportunity to trim the arts, justice and social programs considered a nanny-state affront to honest, hard- working Canadians who apparently only vote Conservative.

That either satiates supporters or they are Gandhi patient. Nearly three years after ending more than a decade of Liberal rule, Conservatives haven't done much about those things that first lit the fire in Reform bellies. A long- gun registry that did as much to distance rural voters from Liberals as the National Energy Program did to alienate the West still lingers, even if it increasingly fires blanks. Fiscal prudence, the culture Preston Manning lugged east to Ottawa, went the dodo way of the $12 billion inherited surplus, the no- deficits-ever mantra, and the commitment to shift power back to Parliament from the Prime Minister's Office, known here as "the centre."

If those are this government's open wounds, the salt is imminent Senate appointments and the surfacing of Ian Brodie, until July the Prime Minister's right hand man, as a lobbyist at Hill and Knowlton. Along with a long climb down from the high ground, those developments share the peculiar, resilient national capital trait of reverse metamorphosis. Once votes are counted, prime ministers and those around them regress from butterflies to caterpillars.
When others were at the federal groaning board, Conservatives made gains by legitimately savaging Liberal entitlements as well as the party's way of taking care of insiders while taking care of national business. Now that it's their turn, the ruling party is answering the siren song of situational ethics.

Stuffing the Senate, a revised tactic Harper unveiled hours after securing a second minority mandate, responds to a threat that didn't exist in October: a Liberal-NDP coalition now on life-support. And Brodie, an academic before putting hand to government levers, won't be lobbying directly; he will be advising the firm's lobbyists.

Illusion and delusion are the smoke-and-mirrors of federal politics. Fooling enough of the people enough of the time is essential to taking and holding power. Or, as an Ottawa veteran made wise by scars once put it, principles are like gas; you hold them as long as you can and then let them go as quietly as you can.

It's the Prime Minister's good luck to have supporters oblivious to the smell of hypocrisy, or too polite to mention it.