Jean Charest says he can win. But is that what Conservatives want to hear?

Conservative MPs just got rid of a leader who said the party needs to change to win power. Will the party rank-and-file back a candidate promising power over political purity?

Jean Charest is building his Conservative leadership bid around a promise that he knows how to bring the party back to power.

But after Conservative MPs just defenestrated the last leader for making the same promise and falling short, it’s not clear that’s the message the party wants to hear right now.

Speaking at a Calgary brewery Thursday night, Charest made his track record — at least the parts where he won — a central part of the pitch.

“I want to unite the party. And once we have been able to sit down and look at what we want to do for the country, we’ll have a very short period of time, about two years, to prepare for a general election campaign,” Charest told the crowd.

“And I guarantee, if there’s one thing I know and I have learned in politics: I know how to win.”

Charest’s opponents — chiefly Ottawa MP Pierre Poilievre, the race’s presumed frontrunner — want to use his record against him. Charest will try to use it, albeit selectively, as an asset.

What the strategy risks missing is that Erin O’Toole made a similar pitch to the Conservative caucus, and it ended up costing him the leadership.

While O’Toole campaigned during the leadership as a rock-ribbed “True Blue” Conservative, he did a complete 180 after securing the top job — campaigning as a moderate, carbon price-endorsing centrist. Caucus sources grumbled that O’Toole’s people insisted the strategy would work in the next general election, which came in Sept. 2021.