Conservatives’ Carney Crashout

On Harper’s Offer And Non-Denials

Mark Carney did Rosemary Barton’s CBC show this morning (which I am very happy about as a matter of pure democratic accountability), and in the interview claimed that Stephen Harper approached him about being the Finance Minister at some point in 2012. Dimitri Soudas gave a statement to the CBC that said Carney “is not telling the whole story” and that Harper doesn’t support Carney in any way now.

I wasn’t going to write about this when I saw the claim earlier today, but this statement from Soudas is staggering. Not so much in what it says - nobody is under any illusions Harper wants Carney to win the next election - but what it doesn’t say. It doesn’t say Carney and Harper never had a conversation about a political future. It never said that there was no concept of that being worthwhile. It never said they never discussed who would replace Flaherty, who was widely speculated to not contest the 2015 election even before his resignation (and then eventual tragic death). It was a denial, if you can ever call it that, by calling misleading and out of context. That’s notable.

The Conservatives have been bouncing around from attack to attack in recent weeks as they try and figure something out on Carney, and they’re struggling for a very obvious but real reason: they don’t want to be here. Carney was supposed to be Ignatieff 2.0, a boring and out of touch elite pretending to be some every man. I refuse to listen to the sanctimony festival that is The Rest Is Politics, but the clip of Carney admitting he’s a Globalist Elite is the best thing he could have done. People don’t actually hate voting for elites, they hate elites who pretend they’re not elite to win votes. Carney has better instincts that the Tories expected and are prepared for.

The honest answer is that the last years of this government the Liberals have been marred by exits and departures of the intellectual class of the staff-level PMO hires, and the coalescing of the government and the party into a tighter and tighter ring of people who were not ready to fight the politics that Poilievre requires you to fight at. The Conservatives were ready to run against a party and a leader bringing a knife to a gunfight. They’re not ready for a party that brings a grenade launcher.

Clearly, the Conservatives believe these polls, of which Mainstreet and EKOS both backed up the kinds of results we’ve been seeing. We know they are, because they’re relaunching their message and launching ill advised bromides about Flaherty and trying to make this about a whole lot of other shit than the crisis before us. It’s evident they don’t have a plan for the next election that isn’t just gliding on everybody’s complete hatred of Justin Trudeau. They might still win, if the hatred of Trudeau is enough to keep some Liberal-Con swing voters in the CPC tent, but they won’t win anywhere as convincingly as they would have.

Did Carney get an explicit offer to be Finance Minister that he turned down? Maybe not. But the difference between an explicit deal and being sounded out for the job where everybody knows that the explicit words being used aren’t the actual words intended isn’t a defence. We’ve all been in “hypothetical” conversations where everybody has been required to uphold the farce because it’s easier that way. Whether it was an explicit offer or some form of “understanding” or something else is irrelevant. What is relevant is that the Conservatives launched this attack on Carney’s relationship and role working with Flaherty and Harper this week not out of confidence but out of fear. It is exceedingly clear they’re worried.

Yes, plenty of Liberal partisans - including many who hate me because I pushed for Trudeau’s ouster - are going too far claiming that the Tories are cooked and that Carney will win, but the fundamentals of this race are radically changed. The Liberals don’t face what they did in 1984 or what the Conservatives faced in 1993, which is a well organized minor party off their other side with a great leader. Ed Broadbent was a credible place for the left to go in 1984, and disaffected PCs had two parties, led by two generationally good politicians in Lucien Bouchard and Preston Manning, to go to that allowed those egregious vote splits that decimated the PCs. Jagmeet Singh is not exactly Ed Broadbent, and while the Bloc matter in this saga, Poilievre isn’t going to sweep Gatineau and the western island. It’s a fundamentally different situation.

There is no guarantee the Liberals win the next election - hell, right now I don’t think they will! - but there’s also no longer a guarantee the Conservatives will. And the longer they focus on dumb shit like this, the more they make unforced errors, the more they leave their head firmly lodged up so far up their own asses they need a surgeon to get it out, the worse this will get for the Conservatives.

The core truth to politics is that you need people who are intensely partisan but also incredibly aware of their partisanship to be successful. It’s a tight line to walk - you need people who are able to put themselves into the other shoes and be able to see the board properly, while still being able to ruthlessly execute your partisan agenda. The Conservatives are run by someone whose experience of Liberals is overly influenced by hanging out with the Canadian equivalent of Stewart and Campbell. Whatever her merits, Jenni Byrne is running an operation right now that is incoherent.

The fact that it’s been a month since Carney launched and they don’t have a coherent message is unacceptable. The fact that the CPC launched this attack on Carney this week about disrespecting Flaherty without knowing this was up our sleeves is bush league amateur hour bullshit. It’s just plainly not up to the standards a party that claims to be a ruthlessly efficient political machine should demand.

Do I think Carney’s some perfect politician? No, God no, but he’s been considerably more impressive than I expected or could have hoped. I’m still deeply worried about the campaign, and there’s a reason I’m trying to write these columns in a way that the people in his orbit who read my work will listen to my ideas. But Carney has the Conservatives running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Their message is in tatters, and it won’t get better.

And that’s a win in and of itself.