As PM, Harper would have come out looking worse for the next election and he'd no longer have an electorate angry about Adscam to win. So what does Harper do when faced with this situation? He pulls back just enough to have fewer seats than the Liberals.

Harper wanted the Liberals a little ahead so Martin would have to deal with the headaches of being PM, and for Martin to be in a situation where he needed Bloc support for lack of a sizeable NDP contingent (Harper wanted Martin to deal with the separatists so Harper could claim to be the true federalist the next time around). Now, I don't think Harper expected to do this poorly$mdash;think he expected to be in the 105-115 range—but he wasn't looking to be PM yet.

In 2000 on the eve of the election, Harper outlined a two election strategy for the Canadian Alliance to become the ruling party. Effectively it called for the first election to be an introduction to the party, a chance to learn to campaign, to come together as a coaltion of many types of conservatives, and to learn that "loose lips sink ships." This would set-up the party for a win the next time around. Harper is following this strategy with the Conservatives now.

This wasn't an election to win. It was the election to showcase the new party as "modern, moderate, and mainstream," to bring the Progressive Conservatives and the Reformers together, and to learn that a campaign needs to be disciplined in message—stupid one-off comments will sink a campaign.

And in response to Ian Welsh's comments that the social conservatives will be purged, that's not part of the strategy. Harper's not going to alienate the social conservatives of any other group of disaffected voters. Harper doesn't believe in purging groups for electoral success—that's what Liberals do. He wants to make an opening for people not represented by the Liberals who share his views on a more democratic and more economically libertarian society. And he wants to include all people who share these two goals. Social conservatives in the west generally do, so they belong in the coalition. Harper will stick to his stance on keeping these out of party policy and leaving them to free votes in Parliament.

In 1994, at a Reform Party Assembly (their equivalent of a convention), social conservatives voted to adopt a policy against same-sex marriage. At the time Harper said, Those are not partisan issues. Those are moral issues. People have to be able to belong to political parties regardless of their views on those issues.

Harper has long outlined a philosphy that political parties should be a coalition of diverse groups that agree to a narrow agenda. On matters in that agenda there should be near universal agreement. On matters outside of that, everything should be a free vote.

Moreover, Harper has argued that moral issues should always be outside of political agendas. Governments shouldn't meddle in people's lives any more than they need to. Things like economic policy, foriegn affairs, and defence policy are areas in which government must have policy. They're fundamental to the existance of a state. A state has to have positions on these issues to exist. The policies adopted on these issues affect the survival of the state.

On the other hand, moral issues don't affect the survival of the state. People can be free to live lives of differing moralities within the same state. As such, these are areas of much less importance to the state. And they should be of much less pressing importance for political parties. Hence they should be left to free votes. As Harper said in March 2002, My position is the party is a big tent. On things like abortion, the party simply can't be defined by those issues, it has to be open to people with different views.

Currently, Harper has made the Conservative agenda to be on tax cuts, economics, military spending, and democratic reform. Everything else is outside the scope of that agenda. Anyone agreeing with these principles should join the coalition. He's not going to kick out social conservatives if they agree with these principles any more than he'll kick out social progressives if they agree with these principles. It runs counter to his philosphy of what a political party is.

In this light, I'm pretty sure we'll see a very similar Conservative Party platform next time it heads to the polls.