05.30.2017 02:01 PM

Scheer: the grinning extremist

From Michael Coren’s carefully-researched piece in the new NOW magazine:

  • “Scheer’s religious faith is especially significant. He is a traditional Roman Catholic, the son of a deacon. He is an opponent of abortion, equal marriage, trans rights and euthanasia. He voted against Bill C-16, which adds “gender expression or identity” as a protected ground to the Canadian Human Rights Act…While Scheer has insisted that he will not open up most of these issues for debate, he has also talked on the campaign trail about a “friendlier more welcoming Parliament for individual members to introduce legislation protecting pre-born human rights.”
  • He’s especially committed to home-schooling and independent schools, both very much part of the conservative Christian community. He has proposed a $1000 tax credit for home-schooled children and to make up to $4000 of independent school tuition tax deductible.”
  • “The influential anti-abortion and anti-euthanasia group Right Now wrote on its Facebook page on Sunday: “Still celebrating the victory of Andrew Scheer becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party of Canada! Thank-you to all our volunteers who worked tirelessly selling memberships and getting out to vote! You made the difference!” … Rest assured that Christian conservatives will remind Scheer and his people, many of them right-wing Christians themselves, how much they “made the difference” at every opportunity.”
  • “One of Scheer’s central supporters, campaign manager Hamish Marshall, a long-time conservative organizer and former Harper aide, is also a director of The Rebel News Network, the website run by Ezra Levant and that Maclean’s recently described as one of the “world’s top purveyors of conspiracy and far-right bombast.” …How much influence the Rebel gang will have with the new Conservative leader remains to be seen.”
  • “Beyond satisfying his supporters, Scheer toes the hard line himself. During Britain’s Brexit campaign, he wrote an ill-informed and rather callow column for the National Post supporting Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union…Aside from the intrusion of a Canadian MP (Scheer is also a former Speaker of the House) taking a side in a foreign nation’s vital referendum, he effectively allied himself with the right of Britain’s Conservative Party and with United Kingdom Independence Party on the issue, which has more than its share of racists and fanatics.”

25 Comments

  1. Ted H says:

    So, what else could we expect from a f**king Conservative and so-called Christian who would have been polishing the nails along with the other Philistines were he around 2000 years ago.

    • Howard says:

      Don’t forget Germany’s National SOCIALIST party.

    • Ted H says:

      Les, my comment is appropriate to Conservative hypocrisy, your comment makes no sense, Progressives are a long way from Stalinists and Howard, National Socialists are not Socialists but Fascists, and on the political spectrum they are actually closer to Conservatives.

      • Ted H says:

        Well Fred, when you describe the extreme version of your conservatism as Libertarianism, I can actually understand and respect that, however calling extreme liberalism “Communism” is totally off the scale. Liberals at their best are centrist and base their policies on facts. I think Conservatives are much more ideologically driven than Liberals, trying to fit square pegs in round holes, other than that they are just too conservative.

      • The Doctor says:

        “liberals base their decisions on facts “.

        Yeah, like the EH-101 cancellation and building the Highway to Nowhere. Spare me.

      • Ted H says:

        Actually I meant to say Pharisee, not Philistine, lots of practising Christians (and I am one) are like the Pharisees (I hope I’m not) that Jesus criticised so much in the New Testament, they were like the Christian Conservatives of our day. They wouldn’t know Jesus if he came up and kicked them in the nuts, they are all about the law and not about grace. Just being a so-called practising Christian doesn’t mean you actually understand the reality of being a follower of Christ. By the way Les, I haven’t called you any names but I will just say a prayer that Jesus will come and kick you in the nuts. Bless you brother.

    • Simon says:

      Uh, you realize it was the Roman state, not the Philistines, who were polishing the nails 2000 years ago? The Philistines died out when they were conquered by Assyria about 600 years or so before that.

      But hey, play right into the narrative that liberals have to resort to hysterics when attacking Christians to their right.

      Just like Adam Vaughn, for the record, who, in the last few days accused Scheer of:

      1) Voting against every civil rights advance in the last 25 years. (Yes, Vaughn actually said 25 years. Scheer was only elected to the House in 2004, meaning there are 12 unaccounted for years in which Scheer was presumably trotting the globe, voting against any civil rights proposals wherever he could find them).

      2) Wanting to turn the clock back to the 1980’s. Scheer is 38, he was barely 1 year old in 1980. Perhaps he wants to turn the clock back to a time when one’s biggest concerns were getting to the monkeybars first at recess, or cleaning your room so you could get an extra piece of cake? I know I would. And to be honest this would be a great complement to his campus free speech bill in a good cop/bad cop kind of way.

  2. Miles Lunn says:

    No doubt I agree the Conservatives didn’t choose the best leader, but if they lose in 2019 as expected, I think there is a reasonable chance his replacement will be more moderate. That being said I don’t think he is any more conservative than Harper was, just not sure if his the political smarts as Harper did to stay away from wedge issues and keep the more kooky members in line.

    • Ronald O'Dowd says:

      Miles,

      He’s a pale imitation of Harper and IMHO is 100% guaranteed to follow the Harper template. Liberal strategists already know this but they have to do their job, to try and take him down, piece by piece.

  3. Mark says:

    I’ve never voted Conservative in my life, but this barrage of So-Con stuff is getting tiresome. As an example, Neil MacDonald’s piece today on the CBC website was a shrieking piece of hysteria. As an LPC supporter since my first election in the early-80’s, I’m getting sick of the holier-than-thou Trudeau crowd, who support everything it seems except the right of conservative Christians to participate in our democracy.

    • Jon A says:

      Conservative Christians have every right to participate. When they decide to dictate, they can go hang.

      • Howard says:

        That doesn’t make any sense. Nobody of any political can “dictate” anything until in a majority government situation after which they can thereotically dictate all they want. George Smitherman, as Ontario Health Minister, imposed his views on the public when he decided that taxpayers should foot the bill for sex change operations. Is dictating views okay only if one is an illiberal progressive?

      • The Doctor says:

        So can you give an actual example of them “dictating” anything of significance in Canada?

        • Jon A says:

          Sure. Jason Kennedy suggested that schools should “out” kids in GSAs to their parents. Example given.

          • Howard says:

            But Jon, that was a suggestion (a despicable one, if true), not an order. The clue is in your own post : “…suggested…”

          • The Doctor says:

            Sorry but you are wrong. I disagree 100% with what Kenney suggested, but that’s all it was and that’s all that it came to: a suggestion. What I’m talking about is an actual example of social conservatives actually dictating anything socially conservative in nature to anyone else by force of law in Canada in recent years . I am a hardcore social liberal, and I cannot think of an example of that off of the top of my head. Sure we have lots of socons musing about stuff and shooting their mouths off, but that’s not “dictating” anything. Nobody has actually been forced to do anything socially conservative in nature or actually been prevented from doing anything socially liberal in nature.

          • fdoconnor says:

            There was the Conservative’s inadequate prostitution non-legalization law.

          • The Doctor says:

            Look, first of all I personally support legal and regulated prostitution, so my position is more progressive than that of any official federal party. But more to the point, your example does not prove or illustrate your point. Both the Conservatives and the Liberals have pursued Prohibitionist policies towards prostitution pretty much ever since Canada has existed. So the prostitution issue is hardly some illustration of progressive, freedom-loving Liberals versus Prohibitionist Conservatives. I actually think the safe injection site issue is a better example of your point. The thing is, opposition to those sites and that approach to drug policy is not limited to Conservative supporters. And that’s not an issue that directly affects that many people, as important as it may be.

  4. Howard says:

    This line of attack isn’t going to work as easily as it did 20 years ago, for the simple reason that Canadians are no longer a captive audience to the illiberal progressive bombast emanating from the state-funded CBC and other media outlets.

    Not that I think he has much chance of winning in 2019. Historical precedent is on the side of the Liberals winning another mandate although it may well be as geographically lopsided as 1980, with Quebec sending 65+ Liberal MPs to Ottawa alongside a drastically reduced contingent from Western Canada.

    • fdoconnor says:

      20 years ago a lot of these values where shared by many Liberal MPs as well.

      I know the Liberals are desperate to get back at the Conservatives for all those times they defined new Liberal leaders, but they might be going too far.

  5. whyshouldIsellyourwheat says:

    Scheer’s support of Brexit in the op-ed was framed entirely in the context of sovereignty, and parliamentary sovereignty. The vast majority of Canadians would NEVER accept the lost of sovereignty that membership in the EU would entail. The US Canada Free Trade Agreement and NAFTA, which the Liberals and the NDP opposed, represent a far less loss of sovereignty relative to the lost the EU membership entails.

    The vast majority of Canadian would be opposed to membership in the EU if they truly understood the terms of membership, and the control it gave to unelected bureaucrats to make laws and to tax without representation.

  6. whyshouldIsellyourwheat says:

    The vote breakdown of the Conservative Leadership Convention was 45% libertarian, 40% conventional small-c conservative, and 15% social conservative. It was a ranked ballot where all the votes were cast before the leadership event.

    Andrew Scheer did NOT court the social conservative vote. He offered them nothing. They had their own candidates in Trost and Lemieux. Bernier made more promises to the social conservatives than Scheer did.

    It was not a delegated convention where Peter McKay had to make promise to David Orchard to win, or Mulroney to Crosbie, etc. Scheer offered Trost or Lemieux nothing. If he did, they would have dropped out two months ago. The votes were already in. Scheer got more support in the end from conventional small c conservatives than social conservatives.

    The Liberal spin-meisters and their hacks in the mainstream media are framing a narrative as if the Conservative leadership were a delegated convention with voting between ballots and horsetrading. None of that is possible with a points-based ranked ballot.

    In the end of their ranked ballots, the social conservatives and the conventional small c conservatives supported Scheer over Bernier, because they knew Scheer would give them a fairer hearing than the Bernier people would. Proof: the nasty fundraising e-mail, the Bernier camp sent out the day before the leadership event, and the profile in iPolitics of Bernier’s campaign manager.

  7. the salamander says:

    .. as a seriously non partisan observer & critic of contemporary ‘politicians’ pretending to be public servants, I beieve I just witnessed some 18 months of partisan posturing.

    I came in the form of musical chairs.. and when the prancing and dancing was over, there was Andrew Scheer, smirking in surprise as Michel Bernier howled in despair.

    What struck me even more ludicrous.. was a ‘candidate’ named Brad Trost who unless I’m mistaken, was still in the charade, after Dear Dr Kristiin Kellie Leitch could not find a chair in time. In my view, the only honest candidate was Michael Chong – who actually needs to create his own Party & never allow anyone named Kouvalis, ‘Faith’, Levant or Ray Novak to join..

    An aside – Warren.. you could do well, and go far, working with that guy Chong

  8. billg says:

    Andrew Scheer….He’s Not Here for Queers.
    I liked the Just Visiting Con attack ad, so, I gotta side the Libs here.

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