#ScrimshawSix: Tory Leader

Enjoy

The headline tells you what this is. Oh, and buy my book, I don’t shill it too much anymore.

Patrick Brown Doesn’t Know What He’s Doing

Saturday saw the news that Patrick Brown had gotten the MP for Calgary-Oklahoma. Michelle Rempel-Garner, to be one of his campaign co-chairs. Rempel-Garner has been a chameleon of the Conservative movement, being a well-respected moderate in the early Harper years who had a stellar relationship with Megan Leslie before tacking right when the winds changed – but leading the push to remove the old, one man and one woman, definition of marriage from the Tory platform. If there’s coherence, I can’t find it, but she isn’t what’s interesting, Brown is.

Brown swallowed the Buffalo Declaration or Manifesto or pile of dogshit that Rempel wrote two years ago whole to get her support, which means he’s fucked, and he knows it. If he was the frontrunner and he wanted Rempel’s endorsement, he wouldn’t have had to swallow the ludicrous bullshit about how the west has been failed by the Central Canadian elite (of which, of course, he is a leading member, but I digress). He made the call that he needed a Western woman in a place of prominence, and he had to accept quite a high price to get it done – and that he said yes is a sign of just how tall his hill to climb is.

Has Anyone Seen Fancy French Jeb Bush?

Was the hype for Jean Charest so thin that one bad announcement video and a shit answer on Huawei was enough to scare everyone off?

Given that Charest is the unemployed one of the main four, this should be his opportunity to really make a run at this leadership race, as the two MPs and Mayor of Brampton have actual day jobs to get back to, and yet, he’s nowhere to be seen, and he’s dropped off the news entirely. From credible challenger to other ran in record time?

I almost want to buy the rhetorical hype and buy the Charest dip as a way to short Patrick Brown, but he’s Quebecois Jeb Bush, and everyone who thought because he won an election 14 years ago he could win this needs to give up their columns and TV spots.

CTV, Fire Tom Mulcair

Speaking of people who need to give up their columns and TV spots, Mulcair’s 2022 has seen him say Charest will easily handle Skippy and that Chrystia Freeland might be the person to create peace between Russia and Ukraine.

Yes, the same Chrystia Freeland who cannot enter Russia.

No, I’m not joking.

Mulcair was a brilliant leader of the opposition in 2012-15 and since he went into the 2015 campaign with the advice to smile at all times, he has lost his mind. His continued prominence is an insult to CTV’s viewers and damaging to their intelligence. Stop giving him a platform.

When Was The Last Time Conservative Moderates Beat Expectations?

A lot of the conversation around Skippy’s place as the frontrunner is that “well, so was Peter MacKay”, because people hate intelligent debate, but they’re missing the right historical marker. It’s not that MacKay was the frontrunner here that matters, it’s that he was the moderate. Christine Elliott in Ontario blew two leadership races as the frontrunner, because she got run down on her right by Patrick Brown and then Doug Ford. In 2017, Bernier’s status is weird to classify, but it was Brad Trost who was the surprise of the night, and the O’Toole/Raitt factions got smashed when so many in the commentariat really wanted to have a chance. When was the last time the Tory left beat expectations?

I don’t actually know, but that’s the point. The Tory left loses because that’s what happens in the Tory Party, and that’s why Skippy’s gonna win.

Are We All Underrating Poilievre?

Chantal Hebert is out today with a take of such idiocy I’m surprised a smart woman could be dumb enough to write it – that the future is uncertain and that because people were very dumb about how Paul Martin would rule forever, Skippy has a chance to become PM.

This flavour of take is some of my least favourite shit in the whole world, because it’s just playing on people being dumb. Unlikely Thing X Happened, Ergo Unlikely Thing Y Is More Likely isn’t analysis, it’s piss flavoured piss being passed off as beer (also know as Budweiser). My brain is broken in many ways, but to me, an unlikely thing happening makes more unlikely things happening less likely, because that’s how math works, but also, fuck off Chantal, it’s a shit argument.

If you would like to make an argument Skippy can win the Prime Ministership, make it based on the conditions of today and what is actually happening, not some fanciful notions about events nearly two decades ago. Oh, and for his warts, JT is a much better politician than Paul Martin.

Who Will Win?

One of my weirdest days of my life was the day Max Bernier formed the PPC. I was in Kingston, I dislocated my kneecap, and I got it put back in before being driven back to Ottawa by my father. As we drove, the Australian Liberals picked their new leader, and I had a lot of money on Scott Morrison to be the next Liberal leader because I thought he could beat whoever came second, and he did.

The reason I thought he would win was because, in that three way leadership race, he was the middle – with Julie Bishop on his left and Peter Dutton on his right. I thought that Morrison would beat Dutton on Bishop’s MPs if she came third, and I thought Dutton et al would much rather him than Bishop if Dutton came third. Dutton and Morrison was the final two, and Morrison beat him on this logic.

The logic here’s the same – a Lewis/Skippy final two sees the Tory left pick Skippy, a Skippy/Charest or Skippy/Brown final sees Lewis and the Tory right picking Skippy, and I can’t see Skippy in third. In some ways, O’Toole was the same way in 2020 – has Lewis and O’Toole been the final two, MacKay’s preferences would have easily elected O’Toole.

The math doesn’t exist for a non-Skippy winner. It’s that simple.