Between Stephen Harper and the social conservative wing of his party, there can be no lasting peace. Even a truce on the abortion issue would come at a prohibitive political price.

There is no doubt that mounting internal unrest over the prime minister’s refusal to revisit the issue comes with consequences for the Conservatives.

If the religious right mobilizes to get as many of its own onto the 2015 Conservative election roster, that could pave the way to more than a few divisive local nomination battles.

Between now and the next campaign the conflict could also hit the party in the pocketbook. Social conservative activists are more likely to punish the Conservatives by withholding precious dollars from their coffers or by staying home on election day than by shifting their support to a pro-choice opposition party.

And yet as unpalatable as such a trench war might be, its potential damage pales in comparison with that of the backlash Harper would expose himself and his party to should he reverse himself on abortion.

Such a reversal would not only pit the Conservatives against a majority of the electorate, it would also inflict irreparable damage on the prime minister.

Harper has repeatedly promised that he would not oversee a reopening of the abortion debate in Parliament. Even if he suddenly discovered some public policy virtues to changing his mind, the very act of breaking his word on an issue as highly charged as that one could cost him more support than sticking to his commitment.

It is hard to think of a stronger signal that Harper is losing his grip on the Conservative coalition than a belated decision on his part to throw a bone to the anti-abortion movement.

On that score the prime minister’s larger predicament may be that, at the very time when he needs most to offset the internal pressures of the religious right, his support is slipping within his party’s secular constituencies.

That starts with fiscal conservatives, many of whom have been unimpressed by the government’s mixed messages on public spending since 2006 and troubled by the nonemergence of a more focused economic agenda since it has secured a majority.

There are mounting concerns that the Conservative trade offensive is floundering. The status of negotiations on a Canada-EU free trade agreement is unclear and there are unanswered questions as to why a controversial investment treaty with China has yet to be ratified six months after the government signalled its intention to sign it.

On energy, the perception that the Conservatives mishandled what they cast as the central economic file on the Canadian agenda is becoming more entrenched with every frantic government move to salvage the environmental reputation of the Alberta oilsands and — by the same token — their marketability.

The notion that it may take a Nixon-to-China approach to the issue and the election of a party with greener credentials to recast Canada’s energy agenda is gaining traction these days.

Then there are the “provincialist” Conservatives who believed that Harper was one of their own and that, on his watch, the federal government would avoid meddling in areas of provincial jurisdiction. For that constituency, the plan to micromanage labour training from Ottawa that was the centrepiece of the last federal budget came as a shock.

Finally, in the absence of the continued support of progressive Red Tory voters there may be no fourth mandate for the prime minister. And that’s another front on which all may not be as well as Harper could wish.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

The thousands of anti-abortion activists who came to Parliament Hill to vent against the government’s refusal to address their grievances had barely left on Thursday when Justin Trudeau posted pictures of himself standing next to a benevolent-looking Brian Mulroney on his Twitter feed.

Harper may have zero time left for the former prime minister but much of the Red Tory family still takes its cue from an ex-leader whose policy legacy continues to compare more than favourably to his own.

Read more about: