Kevin O'Leary is said to be leading the Con leadership race by a comfortable margin. Even though he won't commit to remaining Con leader, unless Canadians give him a majority.
This is balls to the wall. I can’t do what I need to do in this country without a majority mandate. I can’t cast out the virus of Trudeau without a majority mandate. … You have to go into the mandate with people understanding what you’re going to do.”
As he told the Hill Times the other day, he doesn't have the time to even THINK about failing.
“I don’t have contingency plans on failure. That doesn’t work. That’s not how I run my business. I set a goal; I achieve it, the majority of the time. That’s why I’m successful. I don’t waste my energy planning on failure.”
Or it seems the time to attend Con leadership debates.
Like the one he skipped yesterday in Toronto.
So he could celebrate his wedding anniversary in Miami AND appear on American TV to talk about the state of the Trump regime...
But not the disastrous state of the Con Party, which the former Harper pit bull Jenni Byrne is now claiming he could destroy.
"Although people remark that he is very Trump-like, he's actually completely the opposite," Byrne told Evan Solomon, host of CTV's Question Period.
Trump "knew his voter coalition, he knew the out-of-work steelworkers and autoworkers in Michigan and Pennsylvania and Ohio, and he spoke to them every single day... He knew who his base was," Byrne said.
In contrast, she said, O'Leary doesn't know the Conservative Party base, which risks breaking apart the coalition former prime minister Stephen Harper built.
And the even better news?
Some Cons like Scott Gilmore believe that the moment has come to send the old party to the graveyard.
The Conservative leadership race has been hard to watch, unless you support the Liberals or any other political party in Canada —in which case it’s been a laugh a minute. But for people like me, I am left wondering how I ended up in a party seemingly dominated by xenophobic, economically illiterate, populist buffoons.
Or just bury it forever.
Maybe it’s time we considered starting something new: a right of centre party that genuinely believes in individual liberty, that the state has no right to tell us who we can love, what we can smoke or what we can say—a party that doesn’t want to put more people in jail, but rather believes citizens should be given every opportunity possible to defend themselves before the law.
All signs suggest the Conservative party is about to choose a leader who either doesn’t champion these ideas, or actively opposes them. When that happens, those of us who do should finally consider building ourselves a new home.
Gilmore now claims he is stunned by the support he is receiving.
“I didn’t expect it to be a very common view,” Gilmore told The West Block‘s Vassy Kapelos this weekend.
“But I’ve been stunned at the thousands that have responded … and that everybody has a very similar story, which is that they believe in fiscal conservationism but at the same time, they’re more socially moderate.”
And of course, I'm almost as excited as Gilmore and the other Red Tories, because any kind of split would be the end of the Harper Party as we know it...
He came, they united, they conquered, they lost.
All the Con media couldn't put them together again.
And with a little bit of luck they won't be back for a generation...
11 comments:
I don't think douche is in the lead. He will probably win the first round and then get beaten on 2nd and 3rd choices. They'll probably end up with intellectual featherweight and known bimbo Maxime Bernier.
This guys whole shtick is to invest in low cost labour low regulation environments. Not Canada. Not Canadian.
O'Shithead is so over the top in his boasts that I cant help but laugh. Funnier still is that he's leading the race.
That speaks volumes of the quality of this particular tribe of Neander-Cons that would support him.
I do hope he wins Simon as it would ensure the death of the Harper party and perhaps a viable alternative will be born.
In the spirit of your last graphic, I wrote this:
Stephen Harper ruled from his wall,
While those around him took the fall.
All the King's horses, and all the King's men,
Were either in jail or in tears at the end.
JD
Once the domain of third world countries election hacking has now gone mainstream. The techniques are simple but in order to work, the political figurehead has to be a boisterous snake oil spewing actor with no moral compass. Mister Wonderful is up to the job, the other candidates not so much as they are either ideologues,lack sufficient ego, have inflexible views, have allegiance to other backers, poor acting skills, etc. If he is nominated as leader winning the next election should be doable because unlike the US, Mister Wonderful only needs approximately 40% of the popular vote to obtain a majority.Nothing motivates like negative fake news smattered with a few facts, built around a conspiracy and tweeted by an army of bots to a profiled audience. Stories such as "Trudeau visited a mosque because he is a secret Muslim about to implement sharia law" seems to motivate targeted voters more than a long drawn out story on Mr Wonderful's somewhat nefarious business practices which are unlikely to change if he becomes PM. Hopefully one of the less connected Cons will win the leadership race or we will have figured out a way of breaking the election hacking loop without restricting free speech.
RT
A political party leader who admits that he would be unable to govern in Canada without a majority is informing the public that he's utterly unfit for the job. But that doesn't mean that there aren't enough fools in this country to elect him. They've done it before. The last PM in a minority situation who admitted to that personal inadequacy in leadership ability eventually got his majority.
hi anon...you may be right, O'Leary may be inflating his support, or simply benefiting from his greater name recognition, and with the ranked ballot voting system may not have the staying power to win. My gut feeling is that somebody like Andrew Scheer could benefit from that system, but it's such a Con clown show I suppose anybody could win. And I don't see any of them leading the Cons back to the Promised Land...
hi anon...fortunately I did watch quite a few episodes of the Amanda Lang and Kevin O'Leary show, so I'm quite familiar with Mr Marvellous and his wild and crazy views on all sorts of things. And you're right, his low cost labour low regulation mantra is definitely not Canadian...
hi JD...I think you have the right attitude, O'Leary really shouldn't be taken seriously. And it does tell you all you need to know about the current state of the Cons. And of course it would be perfect if he did become leader, but resigned immediately after losing the election, leaving the Cons to go through another long leadership race, this time with even MORE candidates !!! If that's the case I might run myself, because I figure ANYBODY could win.
And I like your poem a lot. All it's missing is a *SPLAT* at the end... ;)
hi RT...oh great, you had to come along, and bring me down. Here I am suggesting that I should probably support O'Leary for comic effect, and now you're telling me he could win??? Seriously though, I know what you're saying. Trump's messaging was crude and simplistic, but in the age we live in obviously very effective. I think I've mentioned before how Trump once said his illuminati moment was when he realized that simple was powerful. Still, I don't think O'Leary could win an election in this country. For he may be a loudmouth but he has feet of clay...
hi John... I hope you're wrong, but I suppose these days anything is possible. I was one of those who didn't take Trump seriously, and now feel I'm serving a four-year sentence for stupidity. But as I told RT, I can't see O'Leary winning an election in this country. He's said too many dumb things, and the fact that he clearly prefers to live in the U.S. can be used against him, like the Cons used against Ignatieff. I don't see the next Con leader as anything more than caretaker, until the Cons decide who they are, and can escape the shadow of Harper...
You make some good points RT but I think that after Canadians witnessed the shit show that was the American election and now seeing with their own eyes just how incompetent their "astute businessman" president is, I highly doubt the majority would fall for the same campaign style O'Shithead is trying to bring to us.
He'll gain traction with the far right but other than that, his tires are as bald as his inflated head.
JD
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