The Tories After Tory(?)

I suppose it's not quite time to speculate about things like this, but what the hell. Suppose the numbers we are seeing now, in the very last days of the campaign hold until October 10th. In his first outing, John Tory will have had his ass handed to him. Sometimes a leader can shake this kind of thing off and have a second go at it - witness Dalton McGuinty. In John Tory's case though there is the additional prospect of him not winning a seat for himself in the legislature, if this came to pass it is hard to picture him continuing as leader of the PC Party.

Now assuming those two events come to pass, where do the Tories go from there. This is significant because in the past couple of decades provided you don't really make a mess of things, Ontario voters are prepared to give you a second term. No one party has pulled off more than two terms in government since the long reign of the big blue machine from the 1940s to the 1980s. What I'm getting at is that I always felt that Dalton's prospects were pretty good for a second term. Other than the health tax, he hasn't really done anything to piss off the voters. Getting third term though may be more difficult. Because of that reality, it's worth considering what kind of leader could replace Tory.

Right now I'm wondering if the mentality of the PCs will be that a moderate (Tory) didn't work nearly as well as a hardliner (Harris) and in light of that, they may go hunting for another deep blue type of leader. It may not be that way, hell, everything I said here is complete speculation. But it is worth considering what the progressive voters of this province may be up against in 2011.

Of course with MMP, the likelihood of this hypothetical hardliner getting a majority would be significantly reduced... But you knew I'd say that, didn't you?