Michael Harris on How to Destroy the Conservative Brand

Stephen Harper, Jason Kenney and Erin O'Toole. To Michael Harris they're the unforced errors of the Conservative Party.


The Conservative Party of Canada’s slide into irrelevance has turned into a bobsled run.

Alberta United Conservative Party Premier Jason Kenney made two epic messes. Dealing with the pandemic by whistling past the graveyard. And pissing away millions of dollars trying to paint critics of the fossil fuel sector as enemies of Alberta (demonizing prophets in the name of profits).

When all was said and done, instead of being seen as the champion of Alberta, he’s come off looking like an uninformed clown on climate change and COVID-19. It’s just a question of who will get this former Stephen Harper cabinet star first: voters in the next election, or his own party.

The stubborn stain that just will not come out - Stephen Harper.

And then there are the comments and activities of former prime minister Stephen Harper, who clings to the public limelight like a fading movie star.

Recall that in the summer the persistent shadow he casts over the Conservative party intensified. He popped up in the news slamming “woke” culture and calling Justin Trudeau’s pandemic spending “overkill” — even as his consulting firm reportedly snapped up the available federal wage subsidy.

Harris writes that Harper has amassed a litany of tawdry dealings in the private sector including sucking up to Saudi prince MBS and trying to flog spyware to dictators around the world. The sort of stuff that would haunt a relatively unpopular hack trying to stage a comeback.

Enter the wobbly noodle, Erin O'Toole.



It comes down to this. The man is so politically flexible no one knows what he really stands for, including his own base. Or if he stands for anything at all, other than winning power.

O’Toole used the throne speech to rededicate his party to the fossil fuel industry and to putting everyone to work. How clever is that? Canadians just chose climate action, Indigenous reconciliation and the management of the pandemic over his plan by a wide margin. O’Toole has ignored their verdict.

Did this guy watch anything coming out of COP26? Did he miss the weather Armageddon in British Columbia? Or on the East Coast? Has he read a single report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change? Does he realize that teenagers across the country and around the world are more in touch with what is needed from our politicians than he is?

Harris says exiled/not exiled Saskatchewan senator, Denise Batters, had the measure of O'Toole when she released this statement:

“O’Toole has reversed his own positions from his leadership campaign, betrayed Conservative principles, lost seats in the election, and cannot win the next election.”

This should be good news and smooth sailing for Justin Trudeau. A demoralized, divided right was the open door Chretien was pushing on to win successive majority governments.


Comments

  1. the salamanderNovember 26, 2021 at 11:24 AM

    .. FYI re Jason Kenney.. obviously not a chess player.. forked himself

    https://t.co/xIm9pBx1rh

    ReplyDelete
  2. Northern PoVNovember 27, 2021 at 6:32 AM

    Beware ...

    Like Monty P's proverbial parrot, the CON party ain't a corpse (alas).
    It's just sleeping. The winner of the popular vote in the last two elections is a mere statistical blip* away from a majority gov't.

    *Thanks to Jr's electoral reform betrayal.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Disaffected LibNovember 27, 2021 at 12:34 PM

      I think we may find that this country can't continue very long without some type of electoral reform, NPoV. Without it, the bond between the public and those they elect to high office is vulnerable to special interests who wield far too much influence, leaving the public interest in a distant third place.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Up in Smoke. 300 Sq. Mi. of Amazon Rainforest Lost Every Day.

Image
  The Amazon rainforest is disappearing at what should be an alarming rate. 312 sq. mi. or 808 sq. kms. every day. Over the past 30 years humans have destroyed a patch of the Amazon equal in area to the states of Texas and New Mexico . The Amazon – historically a great carbon absorber, since trees take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen – now releases more carbon than it stores, which adds to, rather helps to reduce, our global climate crisis. Deforestation rates decreased slightly from 2004 to 2012. But since then, they’re back on the rise, especially in the past couple of years, since Jair Bolsonaro became president of Brazil. In 2018, as Bolsonaro campaigned as a patriotic man of the people, scientists predicted that once the Amazon lost more than 25% of its tree cover, it would become a drier ecosystem, all because deforestation changes weather patterns (due to how trees respire), which in turn reduces rainfall. Furthermore, as the forest becomes fragmented, areas surrounded...
Read more

The Cognoscenti Syndrome

  There is a group of people I think of as the Cognoscenti, people who are well educated, very informed and of rapidly diminishing relevance. Their ranks include writers such as Chris Hedges and Glen Greenwald. These are people who have honed an almost Puritanical value system, readily finding fault in any direction. They are scathing in their attacks on Republicans and Democrats alike to the point where they become nihilists. They don't endorse. They prescribe. This is where they fail. They're unable to advocate for anything that might resonate with the public whose interests they argue are being trammeled. Donald Trump was bad but Joe Biden is scarcely better. This is where their elitism comes in.  74 million may have voted for Trump but, hey, they didn't know any better. The mob that stormed the Capitol. They were just victims of the system venting their frustrations. All the racism, bigotry, xenophobia, misogyny, white nationalism - inevitable side effects of their oppr...
Read more

Who Asks "Why?"

Every time there's a conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians, all we hear is 'why?'  Why, as in, whose fault is this? It's easier to affix blame if you can truncate the event. Pick a convenient start date, something recent. In this case we'll make it either the Israeli eviction of Arabs from Jerusalem or the scuffle that took place outside the mosque in response. If those don't work, let's go for Hamas launching unguided rockets into Israel. That's even better because it tags Hamas with the blame. The nice thing about this approach is you can just keep using it. It goes on and on, just as it has for the past half-century since the '67 war. You can even date this whole mess to the beginning of the occupation of the Palestinian territories. The Israelis are said to have called these periodic wars, "mowing the lawn." The idea is that, every now and then, you have to take these Arabs to the woodshed. And then you keep your powder dry unt...
Read more