I thought the Western, or Albertan, PC ideology was already moving towards the pro-business Right at this point, that it was always going to go down the path of the GOP.
How does Stansfield prevent this? (And wasn't he a Blue Tory in his fights with Diefenbaker's original Red Tories?)
Diefenbaker was of the Western tradition, which doesn't really have a place for Red Tories (or Blue Tories, for a while). And he just flat out hated Stanfield, which is a major reason the PC Party didn't handle the late '60s and early '70s very well.
As for the West itself it was always more influenced (politically) by the States than the rest of Canada—usually in a populist/libertarian/weird direction with a leavening of social conservatism and a gradual pro-business swing.
Ontario was the centre of both the Blue Tory business/financial conservative wing and the Red Tory progressive wing (technically Ontario & Atlantic Canada—which goes a long way explaining Stanfield—for Red Tories), and Quebec was the land of limited alliances with the PC Party.
As for how Stanfield prevents this, that one is simple. If an explicit Red Tory PC Party wins a majority then the Blue Tories and the Westerners will have to follow in line. At least for the near-future.
Assuming Bill Davis stays on top in Ontario and the federal PC Party can win a second election, then the Red Tory faction of the PC Party has the same leverage as the Blue Tories mustered IOTL '80s.
Lange/Douglas era NZ Labour is a bad example of a permanent realignment, they never figured out a way to stay united after the original eighties reforms, and were largely considered to have moved slightly to the Left by the time they regained power in '99.
Not really. If Douglas had been kept on and if Lange had had any measure of daring they would have won in '93, and remained the government. As for Labour/NZ now they don't look
anything like their 1980s version which was fiscally conservative (re: Douglas) and socially liberal—they swung way left economically not a little.
If you follow modern NZ politics it's hilarious how much Labour activists blame National/Ruth for NZ problems and gloss over their 1980s selves.
What is the point of a stronger Canadian military after WWII? Why do all the Canuck Rightwingers on this board think that it's an imperative?
Surely as long as their contribution to NORAD isn't effected by Canadian budget cuts then the military isn't of the utmost national importance.
As a Red Tory I'm well to the left of the current Conservative Government, most of the Liberal Party and (setting aside economics) I have more in common with the NDP than any other party since they're the only guys left thinking about issues in a group/community setting as opposed to the individualism of the Liberals and the modern Conservative Party (where modern = the last thirty odd years, not just Harper). There are very few issues where I could be called right-wing in a Canadian political setting.
As regards the military, it's actually a two-part issue. The first is Pearson's spearheading of Canadian diplomacy tied to Canadian peacemakers (as he meant, peacekeepers were a post-Pearson idea). The second is the systematic destruction of the Canadian diplomatic corps and the military which led to a massive decline in Canadian influence in the world.
Canada doesn't need a military for NORAD or any self-defence reasons. It does need one (as long as the External Affairs department retains its 1960s quality) to keep the oversized/respected role Canada played in world affairs pre-Trudeau.
What's necessary are some new supply ships, 1 or 2 LHA's, and maybe a few more Leopards. Perhaps F-35 or Superbug for the Air Force. We should be able to two Afghanistan-type theaters
Yeah, no. In a modern setting the Canadian military is about as relevant as Costa Rica's (i.e., zip). I wouldn't have any problem with a revamped Canadian military, but it's far less useful then it would have been in the Cold War post-1960s when it began to decay and at this moment in time there are rather more important things to be blowing billions on.