Give me strength

Toronto Star:

As the Conservatives have swept higher in the polls, with the prospect of winning grown suddenly very real, those around leader Stephen Harper have started saying something previously unimaginable. No, it's not the likelihood of a majority government, nor talk of a transition team — Harper's big mistake in the last election. Nor does it have anything to do with who might fill which cabinet post. The words that have crept into senior Conservative parlance are more subtle than that, a beguiling allusion dropped so easily into conversation it might pass unnoticed at first: Stephen Harper, late of the Reform party and the right-wing National Citizens Coalition, is really just like — wait for it — "Bill Davis." "I think Harper probably is closer to a traditional Progressive Conservative," says one senior Conservative. "I actually think he's more in the tradition of a Bill Davis."