HERE WE GO AGAIN

In February of 1998, Daniel Johnson, Leader of the Quebec Liberal Party, announced that he was resigning.

As a political event, what did that mean to me?

Nothing.

I was with my family in Disneyland, Anaheim, California, having left the Premier’s Office in the Alberta government a week earlier.

But what did Johnson’s resignation mean to the national conservative movement in Canada?

Everything, as it turned out.

It meant that Jean Charest, Leader of the federal Progressive Conservative Party was likely going to provincial politics in Quebec City, and he was without question the single biggest opponent of discussions about a reunification between the traditional Progressive Conservatives and the breakaway Reformers.

Johnson’s resignation as Liberal Leader in Quebec City, and Charest’s almost-certain departure, meant that the door to a unite-the-right movement had opened a crack.

Ironic that it all happened when I was, literally, in Fantasyland.

The road from February of 1998 when Charest mercifully got out of the way, to January of 2006 when a reunited federal conservative movement finally returned to government, was long, frustrating, maddening, expensive, bitter, divisive, exhausting…and successful.

I will let the historians debate how and why Preston Manning broke the conservative movement in half in the mid-1980s, and I will let other historians describe how those of us who founded the United Alternative movement (including Preston Manning) put it back together over the course of the eight years from 1998-06.

But I will share one cautionary tale.

The attitude of the federal Progressive Conservatives to the breakaway Reformers was  “Good riddance! Better off without you!  Just a bunch of losers and malcontents…”.

The attitude of the federal Reformers was “Washed up Red Tories.  No hope, no future.  Just go join the Liberals and get it over with.”

There was both some truth and some falsehood in both those sentiments.

But my cautionary tale isn’t about the breaking down of the institution of the old Progressive Conservative Party – it is about the rupture between lifelong friends, who then found themselves on opposites sides of the divide.

The personal bitterness that erupted was shocking.

During the schism from the late 1980s to roughly 2003, a Progressive Conservative could not be caught dead at a Reform Party event;  a Reformer would be shunned if seen at a PC event.

You literally got the feeling that North Korea-like ‘minders’ were also on the prowl for those who would speak to the devil on the other side, even if that devil was his or her law partner, business associate, or neighbor.

Looking back, it was almost twenty years of acrimony and finger-pointing that became far too personal.  And too many of us misguidedly thought we were forced to choose sides, or drop out.

I bear all this in mind as we gear up for the provincial election in Alberta this spring.

The parallels are eerily familiar.

In this case, it is the public policy disasters of the current provincial government over the past five years that has led to the dramatic challenge of the Wildrose.

And now provincially, as then federally, the camps are forming, the lines are drawn, and conservative friends bump into other conservative friends and keep moving.

It is not for me to say who is right, or wrong.

I have a lot of friends in the Alberta government, and I am going to keep talking to them.

And I have a lot of friends in the Wildrose, and I am going to keep talking to them.

I’ve seen all this before.

Did I mention that today is Ground Hog Day?

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