"Stephen Harper is now engaged in trying to do what no Conservative leader has been able to do for over a hundred years -- build a viable, long-term coalition that can win victories and survive defeats without immolating itself on a a bonfire of mutual recriminations."


- Tom Flanagan, Harper's Team: Behind the Scenes in the Conservative Rise to Power, Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007 (p. 290)