What the GOP Can Learn from Canada's Conservatives

American conservatives are looking at Canada's Conservative Party election win for lessons. But as my latest column for The Week points out, it's important that they learn the right ones.

So here's a nasty cosmic joke:

Canadian conservatives spend years — decades, really — trying to capture the attention of their American counterparts. Then, finally, the chance arrives! At a moment when American conservatives are groping their way forward, Canada's Conservative Party wins a stunning against-the-odds victory in the May 2 federal elections.

Suddenly guys who couldn't get past the rope line last week are being shown to Table 1. Equally suddenly, a long line of American conservatives is queuing to explain how the Canadians did it.

Unfortunately, the explanations are, in almost every case, wrong. Well, "wrong" is such a harsh word. Let's just say: Insensitive to local realities. The errors fall into two main types.

Error 1 is to say that the Canadian example vindicates the hardline "Tea Party" mood now ascendant in the House Republican Party.

Error 2 is to say that the Canadian example suggests that U.S. Republicans should endorse a more open immigration policy.

Both errors seize on tiny particles of evidence — and disregard much larger piles of contrary fact.

Start with Error 1. It was actually a Tea Party-style drive for ideological purity that drove Canadian conservatives into the ditch in the first place. Canada elected Conservative governments in 1984 and 1988. Those governments achieved many important successes, but not enough to satisfy the party's most fervent supporters. The supporters bolted to form a populist challenger to the Conservatives — the Reform Party. In the election of 1993, the old Conservatives and the new Reformers split the right-of-center vote, allowing the Liberals to win a majority with only 37% of the ballots. The same thing happened in 1997. And again in 2000.

Those three defeats showed Canadian conservatives the need to reunite. But they still needed more. The reunited Conservatives gained seats in 2004 — but not enough to form a government. What Canadian conservatives have had to do since 2004 is prove to Canadian voters that the party could be trusted to govern effectively — that it was not lusting to use the power of a parliamentary majority to impose — wham! — something like the Paul Ryan Medicare plan on unsuspecting Canadian voters. That process has taken seven years. The Conservatives gained seats in 2004, gained more in 2006, gained more again in 2008, and at last gained a majority in Parliament on May 2.

But they gained those seats only because they painstakingly proved that the basic institutions of Canadian life were safe in their hands. The word most often used by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2011 was "stability." The Conservative platform proposed restraint in the future growth of government spending, a gradual move to a balanced budget as the recovery strengthened, and a steady reduction in taxes consistent with a balanced budget. There would be reform, but incremental reform. Nobody talked about repealing major government programs. Nobody proposed to shutter the Canadian central bank. ...

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