Is Stephen Harper about to rise, Lazarus-like, from the political dead?

On the face of it, the very idea seems like absurdity in hot pursuit of farce. After all, following the debacle of 1993 — when Canadian voters nuked the former Progressive Conservative Party of Canada — the party was definitely in need of a Moses. It’s just that no one was suggesting that it should be Brian Mulroney.

Why would they? It was Mulroney who created the perfect storm of electoral revulsion that resulted in Kim Campbell being blasted into oblivion, along with all but two members of her caucus. The lesson? It’s not normal for the guy who organizes the Charge of the Light Brigade to be given a new command.

So it was with moderate surprise that I read this week that, according to a “respected senior Conservative”, the name of one Stephen Joseph Harper was being advanced in Tory circles as a possible contender for the Conservative leadership.

Which is like saying Donald Trump has a shot at being the new Archbishop of New York. This bit of speculation was retailed by no less a pundit than the National Post‘s John Ivison. (I checked to make sure this wasn’t an April 1st leftover, and that Ivison was not moonlighting with 22 Minutes. Negative on both counts.)

The theory that accounts for the bizarre prospect of Harper Redux is that the CPC is a party in danger of bifurcating like a worm chopped in two by a garden spade. One part of this wriggling creation would be the Reform and Canadian Alliance element of the party which swallowed the old PCs after the “merger”. The other part would be the Red Tory excommunicants who have had no part to play in Canada’s decade of Tea Party Republicanism under Harper — except, with one or two noteworthy exceptions, as his accomplices.

The potential return of Harper, despite his loss of sixty seats and the government in the last election, is being driven by the urge to preserve the unity of the party — i.e. Western Canadian control of the conservative movement. And what is he supposed to be guarding it against? The heretical influence of progressive ideas from the old Joe Clark Brigade.

“These guys (the Harperites) are ideologues,” one knowledgeable source told me. “They hate Red Tories. Harper courted Peter (MacKay) for the merger. As soon as they had him, they shamed him continuously. No Red Tories allowed.”

Now it could be argued that Mr. Photo Op needed no help from Harper & Co. when it came to shaming. He did a superb job of embarrassing himself — from his broken promise to David Orchard on merging the party of John A. Macdonald with the neocon zealots of the Canadian Alliance, to his serial stretchers on the doomed F-35 fighter jet program.

There’s more, of course. There was the fishing camp imbroglio which saw the then-defence minister ordering up a Search and Rescue helicopter to get him back to work, the way the rest of us might hail a cab.

For reasons that look pathetic today, MacKay thought Libya was a great victory. He also used his office to publicly trash Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin, after Colvin tried to blow the whistle on the still-unresolved Afghan detainee issue. As minister of justice, MacKay seemed not to understand the difference between constitutional and unconstitutional laws. And who can forget the saga of Belinda and the rented dog?

Now hear this: If Harper ever did that — if he ever chose to run for the leadership — he’d be diving head-first into the woodchipper. Now hear this: If Harper ever did that — if he ever chose to run for the leadership — he’d be diving head-first into the woodchipper.

Peter MacKay is no Red Tory. He’s just a creature of the security, intelligence and armament sector with a case of terminal political ambition.

That said, perhaps Harper is sufficiently distressed at watching his misbegotten political heritage deconstructed brick by brick by PM Trudeau to contemplate the unthinkable — a run for the leadership. All Harper has left to his legacy at this point is his reverse takeover of the party, and he may not want to risk MacKay or anyone else dismantling his last remaining political accomplishment.

Now hear this: If Harper ever did that — if he ever chose to run for the leadership — he’d be diving head-first into the woodchipper. It would serve only to complete the destruction of the party which started with its shellacking in the 2015 election. (I don’t think there was a run on Stephen Harper “Miss Me Yet” buttons at the recent Manning Conference in Ottawa. Maybe Ray Novak bought them out.)

If MacKay’s legacy is a run of disappointing retreats from principle, the Harper legacy remains an unreconstructed nightmare. In the twilight of the fossil fuel era, Saudi Arabia is making plans to sell that country’s state oil assets for two trillion dollars and to reinvest the money in diversified enterprises. The Chinese are proposing a fifty trillion dollar international global electricity network using wind and solar power. What was Harper’s vision? Bet the farm on dirty, expensive oil and hope the prices remain sky-high.

This is also the prime minister who didn’t even recognize the environment as an issue in the last election, while the rest of the world famously hammered out the Paris climate deal, which both the United States and China will sign this month.

This is the prime minister who looked like Attila the Hun on a day his ulcer was kicking up. He loved nothing better than sending in the troops and planes. While President Obama and all the major western allies were negotiating a deal to direct Iran’s nuclear program away from the production of nuclear weapons, Harper was still banging the War of Civilizations drum.

His domestic legacy was abominable, from proposing snitch lines to issuing cultural denunciations over so-called ‘barbaric acts’. He so offended First Nations peoples and environmentalists that not a single pipeline was built during his tenure — despite the fact that he carried a brief for the oilpatch, handed over the NEB to industry representatives and gutted Canada’s environmental protection legislation.

Despite his incessant enabling of his media courtiers, this “fiscally conservative” PM grew the size of government, couldn’t balance budgets to save his life and added $150 billion to the national debt.

Though Harper touted a “values-based” approach to public life, he had an astonishing ability to appoint felons to key positions. He hired Bruce Carson as a PMO advisor, despite knowing of his criminal record. He also appointed Arthur Porter as the civilian watchdog of CSIS. Porter flamed out in spectacular fashion, dying in Panama as a wanted fugitive. Just this week, Harper’s former parliamentary secretary, Dean Del Mastro, was taken off to jail after he lost his appeal of his election overspending case.

Harper was the prime minister who created his own personal ministry of propaganda, paid for by Canadians. He censored and muzzled and bullied and berated anyone who opposed his notion of government by personal fiat. His exemption for political parties on the copyright of all news footage had journalist Don Martin remarking that the then-PM was flirting with “fascism”.

You have to admit: Until Harper, the words “Canada” and “fascism” were seldom linked.

The Conservative Party of Canada could do something far more constructive for its future prospects than to look to the past for a saviour. The party might accept Harper-era hacks like MacKay or Kellie Leitch as new leadership material, but Canadians never will. Nor will voters buy the proposition put out by Harper loyalists that Harper was just a misunderstood statesman whose tenure will be viewed kindly by history.

He was a rogue, an outlier, an authoritarian and an anomaly. The real job is not to dry-clean the Harper years, but to reject them.

The sooner his much-diminished party realizes that, the more quickly they will begin down the long road back to political respectability.

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