#ScrimshawSix: Six Thoughts On The Conservative Leadership Race
I'm Drunk And Y'all Asked
I have no interesting motif for this article, and frankly I’m pretty drunk on rum and cokes right now, so let’s just get into it – y’all want it, so here are six thoughts on the Conservative Party Of Canada Leadership Race, in no order.
Yes, Skippy’s (Still) The Favourite
There has been a lot of spilled ink over the chances of the erstwhile member for Stittsville-And-Some-Other-Shit, Pierre Poilievre, but all of it fundamentally comes down to the fact that coronations are boring for news directors, and getting an interesting Conservative leadership race is better for ratings than a fait accompli, but fundamentally, this race is still Skippy’s to lose.
The decision to run the leadership through early September is what’s best for the Party – there’s no need to wrap your leadership race up by July like Skippy wants, because Candice Bergen will be the leader through the Parliamentary sittings and then the new leader will be in place by the return of Parliament in the fall. Giving the party an extra two months to make the choice means that there will be no doubts that the will of the selectorate is what is rewarded when the chips fall.
That said, just because MacKay wanted an early leadership race, didn’t get it, and lost doesn’t mean that Skippy will. What will end up happening is everything will be delayed, both in terms of formal events and in people giving a shit. I don’t think had the pandemic-induced delay not happened MacKay would have won in 2020 because the Conservative membership just don’t want to nominate a moderate, and when the time comes, they’ll key in who they want. And it won’t be someone the Laurentian Elite likes, because a voter base of anti-abortionists and homophobes won’t elect the candidate of PJ Fournier and the Toronto-Quebec City corridor.
No, Jean Fucking Charest Won’t Win
I respect Jean Charest.
Okay, I don’t, that’s a lie, but I respect Jean Charest circa 1995 at least. As the son of Montrealers who left because of language politics and division, I love Charest for what he did in 1995, because I am eternally grateful for the fact I don’t have to find my passport every fucking time I want to go get drunk at Winnie’s or smoke a cigar in Dorchester Square. I will always hold Charest in a little bit of respect for that fact, and I’m glad his 15 years as Leader of the Quebec Liberals basically killed the PQ. But come the fuck on.
This man supported the Long-Gun Registry, hiked the HST back to 15% after Harper cut it, and is one of the biggest believers in carbon pricing in this fucking country, and you think he can win a Conservative leadership race in the Year Of Our Lord 2022? Have your lost your everloving minds? Vraiment?
The candidate of people who read Chantel Hebert is not going to win a Conservative leadership race where the membership is overwhelmingly western, and no matter what fantasy you have about the party’s anti-majoritarian points system saving the party, Conservative members in Ontario are also fucking SoCons. Get it through your fucking heads. Nobody in English Canada under the age of 40 knows Charest as anything other than the asshole who lost an election because of corruption and tuition fees.
Conservative Members Don’t Want To Moderate
The morning after the Canadian election, I recorded a podcast interview with a good friend of mine Justin Robert Young, who knows nothing about Canada and wanted an election results explainer, so he asked the only guy he knows in Canada to explain it, and I did. That day, on the pod, I mentioned a statement by the Campaign Life Coalition which blamed Erin O’Toole’s failures on, and I wish I was joking, his moderate turn in the campaign, implying that if O’Toole had stayed the course as a true blue Conservative, he woulda won. It’s laughable, but as I said then, it’s a sign of what the grassroots think.
Now, months later, it sticks in my mind, because it’s still true today – the average Tory member is a batshit crazy person who hasn’t left 1955 and the average Tory strategist knows that the only chance of winning an election is with a dose of moderation, but the average member cares what the average strategist thinks in the same way I care when my homophobic Albertan Uncle tells me about what women I should date.
The last three credibly contested leadership elections amongst the two major parties have seen the electability candidate lose twice (Bob Rae in 06, MacKay in 21) and in 2017, amongst the last two both were ideologues, just different kinds (Bernier a libertarian, Scheer a Christian nutter). The notion that party members want a win is ludicrous.
Whoever Wins Will Lose, So Who Cares
Scrimshaw’s Paradox: Any leader who gets through the Conservative Membership cannot win a general election.
This is still true.
If I Were The Liberals, Gerard Deltell Would Scare Me Most
Conceding #4, if I’m the Liberals I’m praying for O’Toole, and I’m terrified of the former leader of the ADQ Gerard Deltell, because Deltell could scramble the map in Quebec in a potentially unfun way but also, his brand of intelligence and cultural conservativism has the best chance of putting together a coalition of Trois-Rivieres and Thunder Bay, which is basically how the Conservatives will eventually stitch together 150 seats, whenever that happens.
I’m less bullish on what Deltell could do in terms of winning Liberal seats in Quebec, but he would be a genuine scramble of the electoral, and, like, I don’t think he wins Laval, but like, maybe, man. They’re too stupid to do it and he won’t run, but that’s who would scare me.
God Our Media Sucks
Our media have collectively decided that the words “moderate”, “sane”, and “electable” all mean the same thing, and they don’t. There is, and this is the technical term, fucking nothing to suggest that Jean Charest is particularly sane or particularly electable, but CTV and CBC have no problem using those three words interchangeably to describe Huawei’s former lobbyist.
Yeah, did I mention Charest worked for the Chinese while they were torturing the Two Michaels? No? Oh, yeah, he did. Fuck Charest, and fuck everyone who carries his water by pretending that just because he managed to be the corrupt Premier of our most corrupt province while the PQ floundered into oblivion that he is somehow an electoral force nationally. Get your heads out of your asses and stop caring water for someone just because he’s a good quote and you’re nostalgic for the 90s.