Tuesday, February 01, 2022

The Knives Are Out



Erin O'Toole is in trouble. Word has it that a third of his caucus wants him gone. Paul Wells has been anonymously talking to a member of that caucus:

This MP strongly supports Erin O’Toole’s removal as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.  As you’ll have heard, they have company. The party’s leadership will certainly be the top issue at Wednesday’s caucus meeting, if O’Toole can even hang on that long.
Replace O’Toole? With whom? “I don’t think it matters. To me it doesn’t. Anything would be better than this. I’m to the point of preferring a name drawn out of a hat.”
Why? The “straw that broke the camel’s back,” this MP said, was “the ham-fisted response to this trucker convoy.” The Conservative leader spent last week and the weekend looking for an attitude in response to the arrival of thousands of protesters in the nation’s capital: from studied incomprehensibility to assorted shades of support and concern.
“No matter what position you have” on the truckers, “he had it too,” the MP said. “Nobody believes the guy any more.”

The Conservatives have been in a foul mood ever since they lost the election:

It’s in the nature of straws that they only break the backs of already-strained dromedaries. The trucker protest follows last week’s partial release of an internal report about the 2021 election defeat that “could have been written by Fred DeLorey,” a longtime Nova Scotia Conservative who was the party’s national campaign manager and is a staunch O’Toole supporter. The report “contained such gems as ‘universal praise for the leader’s performance’… It was a completely sanitized view of what happened.”

And that foul mood blows across from the American border. The Conservatives have been infected by Trumpism. Through it all, one thing has remained true of Donald Trump: He destroys everything he touches. It appears that will hold true for the Conservative Party of Canada.

Image: The Financial Post


14 comments:

Anonymous said...

There is an eleventh commandment in Canada: If the grandfather voted Con then the father and grandson must do the same.
That is the rule here in Alberta. Anyong

Anonymous said...

I'd say the Con leadership race is already on. Poilievre and Lewis spent the weekend in Ottawa serving coffee to the stupid, to the selfish, to the racists and fascists. They were like Mother Teresa to the party's traditional base, providing far friendlier service than the Good Shepherd Mission down the road. Poilievre and Lewis are going for the motherlode. As Trump said, "We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated.”

Cap

zoombats said...

All this leads to the absolute and continuing lack of choice we have in this country of ever seeing a distinct quality of leadership. A parade of ineptness that has voters in a state of choosing the "lessor of two evils" over and over again. Even our protest vote choices are a joke. Man it's hard not be a cynic. I guess in view of what's happening all over, it's not just a Canadian conundrum.

Owen Gray said...

It's a commandment that leads to a dead-end, Anyong.

Owen Gray said...

The fools are commanding lots of public attention these days, Cap.

Owen Gray said...

It's not just a Canadian problem, zoombats. In the United States, in Britain, and in Canada the official "conservative" parties are ill-equipped to deal with the world we all live in.

Northern PoV said...

"Through it all, one thing has remained true of Donald Trump: He destroys everything he touches. It appears that will hold true for the Conservative Party of Canada."

While tRump can be blamed for lots of stuff, the ritual suicide of the CDN CONs is all self-inflicted.

Owen Gray said...

The circumstances change, PoV. But the Conservatives make a habit of this.

Lulymay said...

With respect to Cap's comment, Owen, I just saw on the best description of these characters making a lot of noise in Ottawa and being a general nuisance back there as:

"The Flu-Trux-Klan" - seems rather appropriate, given their stance on the vax.

Owen Gray said...

It's a catchy phrase, Lulymay. And, given the Confederate flags in attendance, quite apt, too.

The Disaffected Lib said...

I wonder about the aftermath from this idiocy. As we've witnessed in the US, these protest movements seek allies wherever they can be found including some groups that are borderline seditious.

If the Tories pick someone like Poilievre, will he keep the party at a safe distance from these radicals or will he choose to ride that tiger if only to keep Bernier from poaching votes?

Owen Gray said...

Good questions, Mound. Poilievre is a bomb-thrower -- a dangerous man.

jrkrideau said...

@ The Disaffected Lib
As we've witnessed in the US, these protest movements seek allies wherever they can be found including some groups that are borderline seditious.
Too late. If the prime fund-raiser is a member of the Maverick Party and what passed for leaders had a manifesto calling for the overthrow of the Gov't, the seditious 9atd whatever) highjaked the protest basically from the word 'go'.

I would love to know how many legitimate truckers were there.

Owen Gray said...

Reports seem to indicate that there were a lot more non-truckers than truckers, jrk.