By Gabriel Haythornthwaite
In a three-round snore-a-thon, Canadian Conservatives have managed yet again to select a leader genetically, culturally and politically engineered to help Sunny Mimbo PM regain a majority government.
Certainly, Erin O’Toole is a nominal improvement for the Tories who, this time out, did not settle for a leader pretending to be a prestigious insurance broker before becoming professional parliamentary cretin. In (O’)Tool(e), the Cons have a Corporate Lawyer to make the case for an end to the Communist rule of Central Canadian Corporate Elites.
Finally, a Bay St. Bag-Boy will get his slimy hands on the Helm of State.
That species of parasite really needs this break and the country is desperate for such original and inspired leadership.
The Conservatives Love (Almost) Everybody
Speaking of inspired, check out the well-mixed bromides of our (probably not) next Overlord:
'Acknowledging the party needs to broaden its base to win the next election, O'Toole reached out to all Canadians in all regions of the country and from diverse backgrounds.
"I believe that whether you are Black, white, brown or from any race or creed, whether you are LGBT or straight, whether you are an Indigenous Canadian or have joined the Canadian family three weeks ago or three generations ago," he said.
"Whether you're doing well or barely getting by. Whether you worship on Friday, Saturday, Sunday or not at all … you are an important part of Canada and you have a home in the Conservative Party of Canada." - (CBC News, August 23rd)
Sounds like the would-be Dear Leader’s speech writer scraped this muck from a binned first draft of the One-America sermon Barack Obama has regurgitated ad nauseam for a generation. (O’)Tool(e) is assuring us that the Cons will represent almost everyone, though he did forget to mention the homeless.
The speech writer here has done some serious research—they got the very newest PC nomenclature right for the natives, though someone should let the natives know that their identity really only means something in conjunction with the country that is still trying to wipe them out. And you have to figure that those who are "barely getting by" will benefit most from the ever-more extreme corporate welfare schemes dished out by a federal Tory regime.
Such "Unicorns in Every Pot" rhetoric from Tooley-Boy is consistent with his inane run as a 'moderate' corporate plunderer for the Con leadership in 2017; a Tool(e) for all Seasons and Reasons didn't go over super-well that time round. But in his second leadership run, Bay St. Bag-Boy added pandering for the Foaming Mouth Faction to his strategy, netting the backing of rival leadership candidate and Black regressive, Leslyn Lewis, to put his Tool(e) over the Top.
Faux-Populism and Vote Rigging
I think it is worth noting that the Trumpiest candidate, Derek Sloan, came a distant last which could mean that regressive faux-populism is best sold to the savvy Conservative member sans beard. Or that populism is merely a sound-bite trick for country-club Cons whose out-going leader, Admiral Scheer, railed against “establishment elites” from the humble institution of Parliament shortly before joining the regular executive folk who inhabit corporate board rooms.
Sadly for McKay, who had a narrow lead in the first ballot, his unwillingness to court the would-be ‘Fash’ in his Party led to his downfall. It's ok. Once, Bay St. Bag-Boy hands Sunny Mimbo PM his second majority in the next year or so, McKay will have a chance to make good on Tory buyers' remorse. And then, the Liberals (and incidentally the entire country) will really be in trouble. Buckle up.
In yet-another demonstration of the weird rigging and unpredictability that govern nominally democratic ‘one member-one vote’ contests, Lewis actually got more outright ‘raw votes’ than either (O’)Tool(e) or McKay in the second round. Nonetheless, she was sent to the back of the voting-outcomes bus due to a convenient “weighting” system created by ranked preference balloting.
In regards to the professional vote processing at work in the Tory leadership contest, apparently there was a small hitch in the form of an automated machine inconveniently shredding ballots. No biggie. They just had human beings, working under an undoubtedly enlightened management regime, tape them back together. The only harm done was the media having to wait 6 extra hours to dutifully publish Con Party press statements for the public record.
Pund-idiotry
Demonstrating the highest intellectual standards present in the academic realm, CBC News acquired emails from two profs who have revealed shocking hard-hitting insights into the meaning of the (O’)Tool(e) victory while offering free gold-plated political advice to this country’s Loyal Opposition. Jonathan Malloy, Carleton Poli Sci prof, intoned that the Cons needed to get themselves into a “growth mindset” and ‘broaden’ their regressive appeal in time for the next election. In other words, try to get more votes next time round. Dealing with “social conservatives” is key to this never-thought-of approach…how do you trick would-be ‘Fash’ AND run-of-the-mill chumps to vote for you?
Not to be outdone, Memorial Poli Sci prof, Alex Marland, suggests that the new leader’s job will have to prioritize keeping the party united and those geniuses in the Tory caucus ‘on-message’. I hope (O’)Tool(e)’s team is writing this stuff down.
Éric Grenier, CBC’s answer to Nate Silver, does a little better by sticking to boring poll number crunching. In a CBC News article dated August 24th, Grenier does see some problems for (O’)Tool(e), the first being that 68% of surveyed Canadians, and a majority of Con-voters, do not know enough about the Bay St. Bag-Boy to form an opinion of him. That’s rough. Expect some bullshit cross-country listening tour in the near future to bore everyone into liking the (O’)Tool(e) Tories.
Even worse (or better) is a recent Léger poll that matched up a leaderless Conservative Party against its elite rivals versus one led by (O’)Tool(e). The Headless Tories polled a shit 29% but that was 3 points higher than one with Bay St. Bag-Boy at the helm. Ouch.
The Tory machine is clearly in need of some repair beyond mere tinkering. Can (O’)Tool(e) live up to his namesake and work that corporate lawyer magic to rebuild a party populated by would-be ‘Fash’ trolls while getting enough of the citizen Munchkins to vote for their slop?
Gabriel Haythornthwaite is a PhD Candidate at Western University's Faculty of Education and a long-time political trouble-maker.
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