More cracks are appearing in the conservative coalition that keeps Stephen Harper in power as prime minister.

The latest stress point is a damning critique of Harper’s economic policy by the head of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, a right-of-centre organization that is usually friendly to, if not always onside with, the federal Conservative government.

Entitled “Judging Harper by his own fiscal standards,” the essay by Gregory Thomas, federal director of the low-tax advocacy group, appeared in this week’s Globe and Mail.

It clinically but ruthlessly takes apart Harper’s economic record.

The federal budget? Still not balanced. The federal debt? Up by almost one-third since Harper took office. The tax system? More complicated than ever.

Unemployment is higher since Harper took office, Thomas writes. But more to the point, he says, fundamental reforms promised by the Conservative leader have failed to materialize.

Harper pledged to end subsidies for business. The subsidies have grown. He challenged the equalization system that sends money from Alberta to poorer provinces like Quebec. The system continues.

Thomas says a fair person would have to acknowledge that Harper has been in office during the worst recession since the 1930s. But as he correctly points out, such mitigating factors would never have mattered to the old Stephen Harper.

“He didn’t get to be prime minister by being fair,” Thomas writes. “He built a reputation as a conservative hardliner on his merciless critiques of Brian Mulroney, Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin, even Preston Manning.”

This is not the first time that Harper has been chided from the right. Gerry Nicholls, a consultant who used to work with Harper in the ultra-conservative National Citizens Coalition has made similar points.

But the Western-based taxpayers federation, while technically non-partisan, has a long history with the Harper Conservatives.

Former federation head, Jason Kenney, is now Harper’s immigration minister. Kenney’s unshakable credentials among both social and fiscal conservatives, as well as his contacts in so-called ethnic communities, mark him as a front-runner to succeed the prime minister should he be forced to relinquish his party’s leadership.

John Williamson, another former federal director of the taxpayers group served as communications aide to Harper. He is now a New Brunswick Conservative MP.

The board of directors of the taxpayers federation includes the chief litigation director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation, a right-of-centre organization that has funded court challenges against programs it considers socialistic, such as medicare.

Another board member heads the Canadian LabourWatch Association, a vigorous anti-union group.

In short, even though it has only 84,000 supporters nationwide, the taxpayers federation is a microcosm of Harper-style conservatism.

Which is why its decision to launch a direct attack on the prime minister just three weeks before a Conservative Party convention is so interesting.

For Harper, this is not a good time.

The Senate spending scandal, centred on high-profile Harper appointees Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin, has angered old-style Reformers. These are the ones who expected Harper to deliver a cleaner and leaner government.

Social conservatives in Harper’s caucus are also restive. In a brief but telling rebellion this year, they dared to challenge his long-time refusal to reopen the abortion debate.

Publicly, most fiscal conservatives have tended to keep their peace. Even when Harper deliberately boosted government spending in order to create jobs, an action the right views as heresy, grumbling remained muted.

But the Senate scandal appears to have emboldened his critics.

“He really rose to prominence as a purist,” Thomas explained to me in a telephone interview Wednesday. “I remember going to meetings in the West and people would say ‘I’m a Stephen Harper conservative.’

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“His brand was that he was uncompromisingly tough on fiscal issues.”

And now? “His supporters will say he has a plan,” Thomas says. “Seven years on, we say: What plan?”

Thomas Walkom’s column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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