2022 Conservative Party of Canada leadership election

[DL]

I think one big problem with Poilievre goes beyond his rabidly rightwing policies. The guy is utterly charmless and is from central casting as "the mean guy". You watch him speak and he is grim humourless, sarcastic and seems like he would take pleasure from tearing the wings off flies in his spare time. He is NOT a nice person at all.

I'm not saying that to be successful a party leader has to be "Mr. Nice guy" - but there has to be some personality trait people can connect with. Poilievre is yet another beady-eyed, hyperpartisan life long political nerd who was probably holed up in his bedroom at the age of 16 reading the Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand. Poilievre manages to make Stephen Harper look like Mr. Congeniality

I know there is a segment of the far right that is attracted to mean-spirited, pitiless politicians (one need only look at Trump) - but I think that among Canadians as a whole, this will be a liability.

[DL]

Doesn't Charest also believe that climate change exists and introduced a carbon tax in Quebec? Another thing that would make him ANATHEMA to the vast majority of Tory members

[DL]

It must be very difficult for all these Tories in Canada to figure out what stance to take on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. On the one hand many Tories have a visceral anti-Russian attitude dating back to the Cold War and on top of that the Prairie provinces have a huge number of Ukrainian-Canadians. BUT, these days its Trump and Fox News that determines what positions rightwing conservatives are supposed to take and the word from Foix News is to celebrate the Russian invasion of Ukraine and to be pro-Putin - so what will all those MAGA types in the CPC do now?

[DL]

FYI, there is no “convention” members will vote by mail or online or whatever across the country. People will not convene anywhere like the olden days of delegated conventions

[DL]

Charest said "to have a national conservative party that is able to represent every part of Canada .. that is our responsibility to be that national political party' So it is kind of a vague statement and leaning onto geography.

My mind works in such a way that I was like every part of Canada could mean every province, so P.EI. is the only province with no conservative riding so a big priority is to win a riding in P.EI. /s

Or maybe what Charest means is that a national conservative party cannot keep writing off urban Canada. The vast majority of Canadians live in cities and right now the Tories have ZERO seats in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, almost nothing in Winnipeg, Ottawa, Hamilton, Halifax, are losing ground in Edmonton and have only a couple of very exurban seats on the fringes of the Greater Toronto and Greater Vancouver Areas. I can remember when the federal Tories were able to win seats in the middle of Toronto. maybe they need to figure out how to do that again.   

[DL]

While its tempting to see Brown as some sort of stalking horse for Charest - keep in mind that apparently if Brown runs he will position himself as an implacable opponent of Quebec's Bill 21 that attacks Muslims. Needless to Charest will take the exact opposite position on that issue.

[DL]

If Patrick Brown runs for the leadership it likely means he will NOT be running for re-election as mayor of Brampton since the deadline to file is before the date when the winner of the Tory leadership is to be announced. I wonder who might run for mayor now? Maybe Brampton will finally get a South Asian mayor.

[DL]

There's always the option of asking a sitting MP of the CPC to step down so he can get a seat through a by-election. Last time this happened was in 2000 (only months before Chretien called a snap election), when then-PC member Scott Brison stepped down to give Clark a chance to win a seat. Jagmeet Singh didn't do this and waited for an NDP-favourable byelection to emerge naturally, but it's not clear yet that Singh has set a new precedent.

The Tories are the official opposition and have over 100 seats so if Charest were to become leader, chances are there would be several MPs who would be happy to step aside for him. The NDP had a much smaller caucus when Singh won and there were not that many seats that were good fits for him. He also did not set a new precedent since Alexa MacDonough and Jack Layton both became federal NDP leader's without having seats and neither of them entered parliament through a byelection - they both waited until the next general election.   

[DL]

Agreed, gives Conservatives time to put together a platform and actually look like governing in waiting, not just an anger machine as now.  For Liberals, it really depends how things go.  Go well they benefit, go badly do not.  NDP I think is probably biggest loser as if goes well, Liberals get credit while go poorly they get blamed for enabling.

Its a bit of a myth that parties that are junior partners to governing parties in minority parliaments always do badly in the subsequent election. In fact its a very mixed bag. Everyone points to what happened to the Lib Dems in the UK under Nick Clegg in 2015 after 5 years of being in coalition with the Tories. But the fact is the Lib Dems and the Tories were never a good fit. The Lib Dems see themselves as a party of the left and as an "anti-Tory" party, so what Clegg did in 2010 was always seen as a bit of a deal with the devil. Plus Cameron brought in brutal austerity measures that were EXTREMELY unpopular with the people who had voted Lib Dem. It was the equivalent of what would likely happen if the NDP ever made a deal to put the Tories led by Poilievre into power. That would be political suicide.

This is a very different situation and polling has shown that the VAST majority of NDP voters are supportive of a deal with the Liberals - especially one where the NDP gets so many of its policy objectives addressed. Keep in mind that in Ontario in 1985 the NDP signed an accord that put the Ontario Liberals in power. It did not work out so badly for the NDP. In the subsequent 1987 election the Liberals won a majority but the NDP also gained ground and became the official opposition and then in 1990 when Ontarians wanted to throw out the Ontario Liberals - they gave the NDP under Bob Rae a majority!

For the NDP the enemy is invisibility and irrelevance and this deal makes Singh the centre of attention and he can point to how even with just 25 seats he was able to deliver a lot to his voters.

 

[DL]

I wonder how it makes Poilievre look that he has been promoting crypto-currencies like Bitcoin and claiming they are a "hedge against inflation"...at a time when all these crypto currencies are collapsing in value and people are calling this week "crypto crash week"?