If the Conservatives are looking for an outside rescue, writes Michael Harris, they could do worse than approach someone with solid party credentials and a reputation for integrity — someone like Jim Prentice. (iPolitics/ Matthew Usherwood)

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Even Pierre Poilievre must be suffering from overactive sweat glands these days.

With Stephen Harper a five-alarm fire, the Duffster radiocative and Nigel Wright already cold and blue, the Conservative party is in clear and present danger.

The “strong, stable” Harper government has suddenly become a laboratory of exploding beakers, melting wires and light bulbs detonating like June bugs in a campfire. It’s series of experiments gone horribly wrong: mind control confused with communications, cheating portrayed as competing, the elevation of flat-earthers and felons in the corridors of dogma, dissent depicted as an offence to Harper orthodoxy, one-man rule palmed off as democracy.

The burning question is, can anyone douse the flames? Given that the Tory convention in Calgary is just weeks away, an answer is needed urgently. Instead, we get fiddle-music — the usual entertainment when Rome burns.

So let me venture an answer to the question of who can rescue Conservatives from the inferno. For starters, it’s not Stephen Harper. When in a tight spot, his answer is to double down on what got him there. Even when he appears to change course under pressure, it is usually only to double back later and resume the quest.

Nor can anyone in cabinet come to the rescue.

As the former leader of the PCs, Peter MacKay should be the heir apparent. But having knifed David Orchard before indenturing himself to Harper, MacKay utterly abandoned progressive conservatism — all in return for a chauffeur and a seat beside the Reform boys who make all the decisions. The only people who could vote for MacKay are the ones who haven’t read a newspaper in seven years and really like rugby. The man from Nova Scotia, like the fake F-35s he’s made a living getting in and out of, is a mock-up of his former self.

Jim Flaherty might covet the top job — but Julian Fantino has a better chance of landing it. Flaherty didn’t see the 2008 recession coming and his economic projections are a combo of vintage kid’s games — pin-the-tail on the donkey and blind-man’s bluff. Nor has building the largest deficit in Canadian history burnished his resume. Finally, a guy who writes the budget in invisible ink would have a harder time than most convincing people of his commitment to transparency. Finance minister or not, this dude’s numbers don’t add up.

The man who most wants to replace Stephen Harper, whose eyes bulge and glisten darkly for the job, is Jason Kenney. He has pursued his dreams of ascendancy with all the zeal of self-flagellation. Lots of journalists have thrown bouquets to Kenney as Harper’s most accomplished minister — sort of a kiss of death, if you think about it.

The essential reason that no Harper cabinet minister can ride to the party’s rescue is that they are all part of the problem. If Canadians no longer want the organ grinder, why would they want the monkeys?

But it takes more than being a bouncing rubber ball of ambition to drag the party out of the flames.

Jason Kenney is the one who erased the immigration applications of 280,000 people whose only crime was paying their fees and waiting patiently in line for years to come to this country. He is the minister who bitch-slapped judges and invited them to keep out of the government’s business when their decisions collided with Harper gospel.

And who can forget Kenney’s foray into the entertainment business, when his department provided Sun TV with fake new citizens when they couldn’t find any real ones for their “news” special? Unless blinded by the shoeshine and the smile, nothing but ex-officio votes for Mr. Curry-in-a-Hurry.

The essential reason that no Harper cabinet minister can ride to the party’s rescue is that they are all part of the problem. They all bought in to the model Harper built for winning and holding power. But the model was flawed, the principles it espoused were inimical to civil public life, and now people are throwing off this Steve-Power that he tried to pass off as conservatism and democracy. If Canadians no longer want the organ grinder, why would they want the monkeys?

There’s history at play here, not just the histrionics of leadership politics. Today’s Conservative party is an alloy of two strains of conservative thinking — hard-right Reform and more centrist Progressive Conservative. Who could have known that the marriage of the two would turn into omnipotence for one and spousal abuse for the other? Under Stephen Harper, the influence of Red Tories has been reduced to zero. Which isn’t to say that some of them didn’t get good posts — they did. It’s just that they no longer thought or acted like the people they once were. In fact, they didn’t think or act at all. They just obeyed orders.

Ironically, it is the Red Tories, the ‘progressive conservatives’, who could turn out to be the party messiahs. The Conservative Party of Canada still has some stellar assets.

One of them is Senator Hugh Segal — not as a contender himself but a wise counsellor. Segal combines the political rigour of a moderate conservative with the credentials of a true intellectual. He knows who he is but there is room in his world for other voices.

Another is former Harper cabinet minister Jim Prentice, who embraced science as Environment minister instead of smothering it, and who decided the Harper-cult being built in Ottawa was not for him. Talent with scruples.

Finally, there is Michael Chong, the quiet man from Fergus, Ont. with the first-class mind and sense of integrity to match. He gave up his minister’s perks when Stephen Harper declared Quebec a nation — a decision taken by the prime minister alone, without consulting cabinet. Chong knows that better than most; he was minister of Intergovernmental Affairs and he knew that what the PM had done was not exactly democracy in action. Again, talent with scruples.

And so, Tory conventioneers will find themselves in an odd position when they gather in Calgary at the end of the month. The prime minister will try to exert control over the one thing he probably still believes remains in his iron grip: the party. He will send out the message that the dreaded media will be there in force, trolling for loudmouths and malcontents with bad things to say about his leadership and the state of the party — just like in the old days of Reform.

In other words, he will advise his trained seals to bark and balance balls on their noses for the cameras according to the leader’s script — the way he got caucus to chant his name when he let the media in for a photo op after Nigel Wright’s chequebook rescue of the Old Duff. If the grassroots do that, they will simply be throwing a few more logs on their burning house. They will deepen the disconnect between Harper Conservatism and the country. And they will guarantee more Brent Rathgebers — because there really are some conservatives left in Canada.

And all for a man who will be gone like a ghost by next spring if the polls are still bad.

Michael Harris is a writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. He was awarded a Doctor of Laws for his “unceasing pursuit of justice for the less fortunate among us.” His eight books include Justice Denied, Unholy Orders, Rare ambition, Lament for an Ocean, and Con Game. His work has sparked four commissions of inquiry, and three of his books have been made into movies. He is currently working on a book about the Harper majority government to be published in the autumn of 2014 by Penguin Canada.

Readers can reach the author at [email protected]. Click here to view other columns by Michael Harris.

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