The Toronto Star's Chantal Hebert took time out from flogging PM PM to aim a few lashes at Conservative Leader Stephen Harper.

Some excerpts:

The budget debate should have highlighted the strengths of a potential government-in-waiting. Instead, it turned into a game of chicken between the opposition parties with the Conservatives running around like hens with their heads chopped off.

Next week's policy convention was suppose to showcase a reborn Conservative party tapping into the best that its two gene pools had to offer.

Instead, the gathering is poised to expose the social conservative fault line that caused so many Progressive Conservatives in the last election to snub the progeny that resulted from the merger of their former party with the Reform/Alliance. ...

Harper's Conservatives need to make major inroads in Ontario and Quebec.

Hebert doesn't seem to think that will happen.

Wary of Harper's same-sex crusade, the Ontario Conservative operators, whose help he needs to build on his modest base in the province, are increasingly refocussing their efforts on the provincial scene and a bid to limit Dalton McGuinty's Liberal government to a single term.

In Quebec, Harper has failed, so far, to find a significant constituency for his agenda.

On just about every issue — from the Kyoto Protocol to child care — his positions run against the grain of the province.

And his crusade on same-sex marriage is making it harder than ever for leading provincial politicians to associate with his party.

Harper needs another 56 to 60 seats to form government. Those kinds of gains aren't going to come from the West, already a Conservative bastion, or the Atlantic provinces.

But I suspect for the Tories, the social conservative baggage of the old Reform/Alliance is going to make it very difficult for them to get traction in Ontario and Quebec without a full Liberal implosion.