samcster94
Banned
I do not know much about her except she was the first and so far only female PM of Canada. Can she be extended past her OTL government of a few months?
I think having a more successful Mulroney era is the key to this. But even then, she would face the Mulroney coalition collapsing (or at least shrinking), and so she would have a much reduced majority.
I've seen a few different approaches to this. One is to give Mulroney some success in his constitutional reforms. It'll save the PCs in Quebec, even if they die out West. Another way isin 1988 and Jean Chrétien.
Had the Little Guy from Shawinigan succeeded in his coup against Turner prior to the '88 campaign, you could see some real divisions within the Liberal Party. If you'll recall, the NDP was doing fairly well in the polls 1984-1988, and were only ten seats behind the Grits. Throw in a little Liberal infighting, some bad campaigning by Chrétien, a similar PC showing in Quebec like OTL, and you could easily set the stage for a divided left going into 1993, which greatly benefits the Tories. A favourite of some Prime Minister Lists is having Ed Broadbent become OO leader in '88. If that happened, it would be anyone's guess as to what would happen in '93, or '92 if Mulroney doesn't feel the need to run out the clock.
Interesting, no doubt. But is there a way to avoid Mulroney's economic mismanagement? Or is that the inevitable byproduct of the Progressive Conservatives being (mostly) out of power for a decade and a half?
It's fun to remember that Campbell was seen as an outsider, the type who wasn't really connected with the "establishment" and wanted to do politics differently. She was also incredibly popular when she first started, and for the first few weeks of the election the Tories were actually only slightly behind Jean Chrétien. I'm fairly certain voters preferred her as PM over Chrétien prior to the ad criticizing the Liberal leaders face.
Oddly enough she never seemed to play to her strength, that she was the outsider and Chrétien was the same-old career politician who had been around since the 60s. Plus Chrétien was a notoriously horrible opposition leader. Disunity, confusion, and massive flip flops characterized his leadership years of 1990-1993, up until he replaced his chief of staff.
Had she truly embraced the mantle of outsider, dine something really meaningful while in power, and at the same time kept the Mulroney campaign team in place, she could've won against the Liberals.
The ad had serious fallout for the PCs. Maybe Campbell still loses, but she set the stage for the party to just get beat on an unprecedented level by being coy about Chretien's Bell's Palsy. At around 1:20 in the link, they talk about all the PCs that were trying to distance themselves from it.
You remove the ad completely, or hire a different campaign team, and the ad never happens. Easy fix.
I interpret it that the Progressive Conservatives were headed to a minority not dissimilar to what the Liberals had in the 80, the 2011 election (when they dropped down to the third party), or what the UK Torries had after New Labour in 97, crushing defeats, but within reason----but to go down to two seats after having a majority government is insane.