Maxime Bernier and the Humbling of Andrew Scheer

Moments after Maxime Bernier called his party "morally corrupt" and went storming off to form his own, Andrew Scheer tried to carry on, as if nothing had happened,

But he just couldn't. A strange look in his eyes gave him away. He couldn't lie his way out of this one.

He knew that Mad Max had almost certainly ended his hopes of becoming Prime Minister, and God's Servant in Canada.

And as if that didn't hurt enough, he also knew the worst was still to come.



He knew Bernier was now free to attack him and his party every day of the week.

And that it's going to be a horror show.

Especially since some in the media, like Scott Gilmore, are saying that Mad Max just might pull it off. 

Starting a new party is necessarily destructive in the short term and will do nothing but hurt the Tories as they go into another election. And, the likelihood of the venture succeeding is low—not quite a fool’s errand, but somewhere near the quixotic end of the probability scale. And, it’s easy to roll your eyes at political rabble-rousers in this country because they are so rarely sincere, self-aware or successful.

But, I will be paying close attention to what Mad Max does now. Not because I share his values—although I agree with every word he says when he attacks our state-protected dairy cartel—but because he may very well succeed.

And then there's what Stephen Maher wrote about those who have been looking for another kind of Con party.

And how Bernier humiliated Scheer and left him looking like a weak leader.



You have to hand it to Maxime Bernier. 

I am skeptical as to how many seats his new party will ever win outside of his own ancestral fiedom in the Beauce, but when he took a blowtorch to the Conservative Party on Thursday, he did so with intellectually consistent arguments, presented vigorously, and there are reasons to think he will find a constituency for his message.

Along with the reminder that the times they are a changing.

Populists around the world are pushing once-forbidden issues into the mainstream, disrupting seemingly stable party systems with new movements. There is no reason to think that Mad Max can’t do the same thing here.

So while Bernier may not be the brightest bulb in the universe...



Nothing can be ruled out.

And as Martin Patriquin points out, this is the bottom line.

Bernier’s new political outfit may be a hit. It might tank. Either way, every vote for Bernier will be one less for the Conservative Party.

It’s the Unite-The-Right in reverse, where the Crazy Vote win means a Conservative loss once again. 

The one I've been waiting to hear for so long.

The Cons are divided, Scheer is going have to take his party even further to the right to take on Bernier, so we'll be able to smoke them both.

And the only thing better than that is this:

The sight of the ghastly Harperite Rachel Curran surrendering to Justin Trudeau.

I mean some things are priceless eh?

Who knew Maxime Bernier would make it so easy to destroy the Cons?

And let the party begin immediately...