The media should stop pretending the Conservative base doesn’t exist

In fact, the Conservative base is the strongest bastion of Canadian populism and inclusive nationalism that remains in this country.

The Conservative base, heavily concentrated in the West, believes in low taxes, opposes the carbon tax, wants the rights of law-abiding Canadian gun owners to be protected, and believes that Canadian Confederation is currently heavily biased against Western Canada.

The base is also a powerful political force, as a populist grassroots army of volunteers and individual donors who give the Conservatives the opportunity to be free from undue corporate influence.

The base also ensures the Conservatives a strong chance of winning every national election, as they start with almost 75 seats guaranteed at minimum, a strong foundation to build on.

And yet, the establishment media is pretending the Conservative base doesn’t exist.

That can be seen in the growing effort to push Jean Charest as Conservative Leader.

Charest was the former leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, a party that was seen as far too beholden to the establishment.

The PC’s were repeatedly beaten by the more populist Reform Party, which was strong in Western Canada and formed the largest, most powerful part of the re-integrated Conservative Party.

Charest then went on to become the Liberal Premier of Quebec, where he pushed for bigger government, supported carbon taxes and supported gun registries.

In short, Charest’s views on numerous core topics run completely counter to what the Conservative base believes.

The issues isn’t that Charest was once a Liberal, after all, even Stephen Harper and Winston Churchill were Liberals for a while. And Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump were once Democrats.

The issue is that Charest was a Liberal for many years in the prime of his political career, and his views clearly line up with the Liberal Laurentian Elitist Establishment, diametrically opposed to the Conservative base.

Pushing Charest as CPC leader would be the equivalent to expecting that the Liberal base or NDP base would vote for someone who was firmly right-wing. It simply wouldn’t happen, and neither of those parties would even consider it.

The media shows respect to the bases of both the Liberals and the NDP, acknowledging that those party bases deserve a leader who represents their core values.

Yet, when it comes to the Conservatives, the media pretends that the Conservative base doesn’t exist, and acts like they can just foist an establishment creature like Charest on unwilling Conservatives.

That must stop.

The Conservative base deserves respect, and the Conservative base deserves a leader who represents their values and has the ability to make the case for those values and win on the national stage.