Anthony Koch: I’m a Conservative who wants to win! That doesn’t make me a Liberal

Final preparations were underway at the BMO Centre in Calgary on Thursday, January 29, 2026 as the 2026 Conservative Party of Canada convention was set to start. Gavin Young/Postmedia

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I am sick to death of being told that wanting Conservatives to win elections somehow makes me a Liberal. It’s one of the stupidest ideas ever to infect the Canadian political right (and there have been some doozies in recent years), and it has become an excuse for failure.

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Apparently, if you care whether Conservatives can actually form government, you’re a “Fake Conservative.” If you think candidates should avoid obvious own goals, you’re a sellout. If you think messaging matters, you’re weak. If you suggest that screaming into the void isn’t a political strategy, you’re accused of wanting Liberal-lite.

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Spare me.

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I haven’t spent years arguing for the end of mass immigration, stronger borders, tougher criminal sentencing, Conservative state power, free speech, institutional reform and a restoration of Canadian identity because I secretly want to become a Liberal.

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I want those things because I believe them. The difference between me and some people on the online right is that I actually want them implemented.

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That requires winning.

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Somewhere along the line, a segment of the conservative movement stopped caring about victory and started treating politics like an ever increasingly exclusive ideological club. They don’t measure success by how much of their agenda becomes law. They measure success by how many people on X tell them they were “based.”

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It is juvenile and unserious, and it is one of the biggest reasons conservatives lose elections they should be winning.

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Believe it or not, politics isn’t about racking up likes and retweets. It’s about taking power away from people who are fundamentally changing your country in ways you don’t like, and using that power to fundamentally change your country in ways that you do.

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Every election Conservatives lose means another government that expands the bureaucracy, entrenches activist institutions, appoints ideologically captured judges, shapes the public service, influences schools, spends billions of dollars and changes the country in ways that are often difficult to reverse. While that’s happening, the professional losers on our side are congratulating themselves because their latest Instagram reel, TikTok video or tweet “did numbers” online.

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What an achievement!

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Some conservatives have become so addicted to performative outrage that they genuinely cannot distinguish between courage and stupidity. They think exercising self-control is a sign of weakness, any semblance of message discipline is ideological surrender, and that every unforced error is “telling the truth.”

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No.

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Sometimes it’s just an unforced error.

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The left wins because it understands something parts of the right stubbornly and brazenly refuses to accept: politics is about acquiring power and using it.

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The Canadian right, meanwhile, has cultivated an entire class of commentators and activists who seem almost offended by the idea of broad public appeal. They sneer at persuasion, they mock professionalism, and they dismiss anyone who accurately describes the state of play as insufficiently conservative.