Dan Robertson/CTV: It’s important to remember that the Conservative Party has never been an exact mirror of Conservative voters. Party memberships everywhere skew more ideological than the electorates they seek to represent, and the CPC has always been to the right of the coalition it needs to win a general election. That gap is normal. Every successful Conservative leader from Brian Mulroney to Stephen Harper has had to manage it.
What changed was the size of the gap and the temperature of the people inside it…