I can only imagine how pleased Pierre Poilievre must have been, to be the first Con to welcome the far-right truckers to Ottawa.He cheered their arrival, he defended their occupation, he brought them donuts and coffee.
And for a while at least the move paid off, as the convoy kooks bought lots of memberships and helped give him a big lead in the Con leadership race.
But that was then, and now it's a nightmare.
For now it turns out his convoy buddies were riddled with potentially dangerous terrorists.
Now we find out that while Poilievre was pandering to the convoy crazies, and claiming they weren't a threat, the RCMP was worried that some of their own officers were part of the problem.
So Poilievre must be held accountable for having fanned the flames of toxic Trudeau hatred, and inspiring others to go after the prime minister in the most bestial manner.
While he whoops it up with the ghastly far-right thug Jeremy MacKenzie, the founder of the Diagolon terrorist movement.
It's a deeply disturbing picture, so much so that some in the media are warning that Poilievre is taking this once peaceful country to a very dark place.
Poilievre has gone too far. It’s time he started to cool down his rhetoric and chill out the more radical segments of his base before someone — a politician, a police officer, a journalist, an ordinary citizen — gets seriously hurt, or worse.
Others wonder whether can contain the beast he has unleashed...
Like the dwarves who dug too deep for riches in the mines of Moria, Poilievre has plumbed the depths of social media for conspiracy theories and grievance rhetoric, coming up with campaign gold by embracing the freedom convoy and anti-vaxxers. It has earned him a ton cash for party coffers and a record number of new memberships.
The question now is whether Poilievre can contain the populist beast he has unleashed by channelling his inner Stephen Harper, or whether he’d rather hop on its back, ring firmly embedded, and burn the place down.
And quite frankly, I don't think he can. In fact I don't think he will even try to hold back the terrorist beast he has unleashed, for if he did he'd lose half his base.
And besides, he has been sowing rage for so long...
Now he can only be described as a terrorist sympathizer himself.
And the good news?
Most ugly members of his Convoy Party may love him.
More than half of Conservative voters in Canada want Pierre Poilievre to lead the CPC party, suggests a new Ipsos poll conducted exclusively for Global News.
But most decent Canadians will make sure he is NEVER Prime Minister.
Despite Poilievre being the widely perceived frontrunner for leader among Conservative voters, less than one in four Canadians appear to have a positive impression of him, the poll suggests. That’s a drop of two points from July.
His grand plan to turn Canada into a fascist country is going nowhere.
And Canadians are laughing at him already...