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Justin Trudeau and Andrew Scheer are agreed on one thing, at least: the next election is going to be plenty nasty.

The 2019 election will be decided less than a year from now. So, the two main party leaders say it’s going to be down and dirty. Should we believe them?

Not really. If you think criticizing the public record of someone seeking high public office is “dirty“ – well, yes, it’s going to be dirty. But criticizing the public record of your opponent during an election – their quotes, their votes, their use of our tax dollars – is in no way dirty. It’s democracy, in fact.

But Blandy Scheer and Petit Justin still insist elbows will go up as the play moves into the corners. So, what can either leader expect? What are the vulnerabilities that the Liberal and Conservative war rooms can be expected to exploit?

Herewith, a helpful list from an old war roomer for staffers to clip and pin to the war room fridge door.

• Trudeau’s Inner Drama Teacher: For three months in the Spring, the Prime Minister and his party dropped precipitously in the polls. If an election had been called at the time, they would have lost it. What happened? In a word, India. The Liberal leader’s trip to India was an unmitigated disaster. When he played dress-up – when he danced like an extra in a bad Bollywood flick – Justin Trudeau enraged and embarrassed Canadians. It suggested to them that he was not ready for prime time, still. Expect the Conservatives to make full and frequent use of the Indian imbroglio.

• Scheer’s Disunited Right: Andrew Scheer’s biggest problem isn’t just Justin. Since the Summer, it’s been Mad Max Bernier. Without a party name, without a party logo, without any party fundraising, Bernier became a major factor when he broke away from Scheer’s Conservative Party. In the intervening months, the problem has grown only worse. Bernie is polling in the double digits, and he hasn’t even really done anything yet. Expect Trudeau to fight to have Bernier included in the leader’s debates, and to draw attention to him at every stop on the campaign trail.

• Trudeau’s Scandal Rap Sheet: Trudeau hasn’t racked up nearly as many scandals as Brian Mulroney – who he speaks to more than any other former Prime Minister, coincidentally enough – but he is no longer as lily-white as he once was. He’s lost ministers to scandal and #MeToo allegations – and Trudeau himself is the first sitting Prime Minister to have ever been found to have violated a federal statute. Expect to hear plenty about the Agha Khan and Bill Morneau’s French villa in the coming months.

• Scheer’s Almost Alt-Right: With Mad Max in his rearview mirror, and anti-immigrant sentiment surging across Western democracy, Andrew Scheer has decided to go Trump-lite. As a result, he has come perilously close to embracing the very anti-migrant bigots he professes to oppose. It is not a good look. Of late, Scheer has been running a pre-campaign that would be a winner in rural Mississippi – but not so much in modern Canada. Watch for Justin Trudeau to shine a spotlight on Scheer’s Almost-Alt-Right tendencies.

• Trudeau’s Less-Than-Stellar Legislative record: Despite a string of achievements in his first majority term – with progressive and historic changes to the Criminal Code, social policy and governance generally – Justin Trudeau’s father was reduced to a Parliamentary minority in 1972. Will Justin Trudeau – whose only significant legislative achievement has been the legalization of cannabis – do likewise in 2019? Scheer’s Conservative war room will almost certainly remind voters that Trudeau’s legislative record has been exceedingly thin gruel.

• Blandy Scheer is just that: Bland. And the Conservative brain trust knows it, too. Canadians don’t know who Andrew Scheer is – and those who do, find him remarkably unremarkable. The Tories have therefore been running ads in prime time – and even during the cherished ad breaks during Hockey Night in Canada – to raise Andrew Scheer’s profile. It hasn’t worked. Scheer continues to resemble a man who is highly uncomfortable in the role in occupies. The Grits will waste no opportunity reminding Canadians that the Conservative leader is a charisma-free zone.

Which leader is most vulnerable? Which war room has the most with which to work?

It’s a mixed bag, as noted. But, on balance, the election remains Justin Trudeau’s to lose.

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At one point, Chretien missed a punchline, and everyone laughed anyway. He then re-did the joke, and everyone laughed even harder.

“I’m getting old, you know,” he said.

No one cared. We’re all older, too, but not on that night at the Chateau Laurier. Not even 25 years later.

He made us feel younger again. He made us laugh at the lines we’d all heard before. He made us remember why he – more than any other – remains the most-loved Prime Minister. Still.

There is a joy in politics, but it can be fleeting. The lows are deep. The losses, keenly felt.

For those of us who had the privilege to work for him, Jean Chretien lifted us up. He suffused politics with pure joy. And fun, and camaraderie, and achievement.

Want to be Prime Minister for a long time, Petit Justin? Then pay close attention to what Jean Chretien did. Watch his moves. Learn.

He was the great one.

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Faith Goldy, an excellent candidate for Toronto mayor, pro Rule of Law, pro Make Canada Safe Again, pro balanced budget, &…BEST of all, Pro Western Civilization and a fighter for our values. @FaithGoldy will not be silenced. https://t.co/uqkeaUjm7i

— Steve King (@SteveKingIA) October 17, 2018

Who is Steve King, you ask?

Here’s Steve King:

• “Diversity is not our strength. Mixing cultures will not lead to a higher quality of life but a lower one.”
• “I’d ask you to go back through history and figure out where are these contributions that have been made by [non-whites] that you are talking about? Where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?”
• “For every [migrant] who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds—and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.”
• “With the inter-marriage, I’d like to see an America that is just so homogenous that we look a lot the same.”
• “It’s not wrong to use race or other indicators for the sake of identifying people that are violating the law.”
• “There’s been legislation that’s been brought through this House that sets aside benefits for women and minorities. The only people that it excludes are white men… Pretty soon, white men are going to notice they are the ones being excluded.”
• “When you think about the optics of a Barack Obama potentially getting elected President of the United States – I mean, what does this look like to the rest of the world? If he is elected president, then the radical Islamists, the al-Qaida, the radical Islamists and their supporters, will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11.”

Steve King is a white supremacist.  So is Faith Goldy.

Oh, and she got her ass kicked yesterday.  She’s so goddamned dumb, she was literally in the wrong court – and it’ll cost her thousands.

She and King deserve each other.

 

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The End.

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Can Donald Trump be managed? Can so-called “populists” be persuaded to moderate their so-called populism?

Anyone who has paid the slightest attention to politics, in the past two years, knows the answer. The answer is no.

But the optimists – mainly traditional conservatives, like former Prime Minister Stephen Harper – stubbornly persist in a decidedly Pollyanna-ish outlook. Against all available evidence, they continue to believe that the derangement that is Trump-style populism can be wrestled to the ground.

Harper is a traditional conservative, standing on a shrinking patch of political real estate, and he’s responding to the crisis like traditional conservatives too often do: by suggesting that the likes of Trump can somehow be accommodated. But if the nasty, brutish and short-sighted Trump era has shown us anything, it has shown us how profoundly wrong that view is.

Uncharacteristically, the new Harper is a sunny, cheerful Harper, all pigtails and puppy dogs. In his new book, Right Here, Right Now: Politics and Leadership in the Age of Disruption, Harper acknowledges that Trump’s rise has been both “disruptive” and “dysfunctional.” But, bizarrely, Harper then goes on to call Trump’s dysfunctionality “benign and constructive,” which is nuttier than Trump is.

Here’s a snippet from Harper’s book that has been excerpted in the Globe and Mail:

“From Brexit to Donald Trump and the “populist” parties of Europe, [the populists’] success has hit establishment institutions with successive surprises that are provoking reactions leading from confusion to alarm and to outrage… If [traditional] policy does not seem to be working out for the public, in a democracy, you are supposed to fix the policy, not denounce the public.

But, if you listen to some leaders and much of the media, you would not know it. Their response is wrong, frustrating and dangerous. Wrong, because most of today’s political upheaval has readily identifiable causes. Frustrating, because it stands in the way of credible, pragmatic solutions that do exist. Dangerous, because the current populist upheaval is actually benign and constructive compared with what will follow if it is not addressed.”

Donald Trump is “benign and constructive?” Seriously? The only rational explanation, here, is that the straight-laced former Conservative Prime Minister indulged in the Liberal Party’s cannabis policy that he once denounced. Proffer policy, says Harper, and we will mollify and manage Trump’s lunatics legions.

That, to put it charitably, is highly naïve. You don’t offer sugar cubes to a rampaging bull, folks: you kill it.

Harper’s mistake, however, is not his alone.

The punditocracy and the commentariat made (and still make) the same critical error. They said Trump and Brexit couldn’t win, but they won. They said Trump and Brexit couldn’t do it, but they did it. Donald Trump – the bilious, buffoonish billionaire – is the President of the United States. It really happened, Mr. Harper. You’re not dreaming. And no amount of thoughtful “policy” will now offset that.

Donald Trump, having become famous on TV, knew one thing above all else: the political brain is all emotion. Logic and policy, if it plays any role at all in politics in this Century, play only a supporting one. Trump has therefore always known that if he talks like a regular guy, regular guys like will hear him, and they’ll support him, too.

Similarly, Trump and the Brexiteers know that most people – most normal people, anyway – pay little or no attention to politics. They’re Joe and Jane Frontporch, and they’re busy. They don’t have time for voluminous political party platforms, or sitting through political speeches, or reading campaign press releases. In the digital era, to wit, they’re overwhelmed by too much information, so they just tune it all out. That’s why the guy who attracts the most attention is Donald Trump (or those like him).

Guys (because they are mainly guys) like Trump and the Brexiteers are so outrageous, so brash, so loud, they break through the noise, and capture Joe and Jane’s attention, and dominate every media cycle. Harper’s book notwithstanding, that is why plain-talking Trump captured the White House, and why Hillary Clinton didn’t.

Here’s the reality: Donald Trump didn’t happen despite the traditions of the Republican Party – he happened because of the traditions of the Republican Party. Specifically, its recent traditions – and its willingness to hand over the keys to the car to the Tea Party types a decade or so ago, who promptly piloted the proverbial car into the proverbial ditch. The Harper, Romney and Bush types speak for the people who formerly ran their respective parties – while Trump speaks for the people who lack money and corner offices, but who presently run the show.

The progressive side of the continuum have always dismissed guys like Trump as red-necked, mouth-breathing knuckle-draggers. But now traditional conservatives like Stephen Harper are doing it, too.

That’s a big mistake that helps Trump, the Brexiteers and the conservative populists like them: it plays into their strategy, because it suggests the critics of Trump/Brexit/populism are snobby, latte-sipping elitists who profess kinship with ordinary folks – but who wouldn’t want to actually live next door to any ordinary folks.

Want to reassert control, traditional conservatives?

Destroy the populists. Wipe them out. A polite chit-chat, a la Stephen Harper, will only get you more of the very exile from which you are presently attempting to escape.

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For those still making up their minds about who to vote for in the biggest election in Canada, watch this. My guy John Tory goes head-to-head with a real pro, Steve Paikin.

Oh, me and Nick get talked about at the end. I’ll bet 99.9 per cent of voters couldn’t tell you who we are, even if they were offered 500 million bucks (which is what Ms. Keesmaat’s reckless promises will cost you annually, BTW. A seventeen per cent increase in your property taxes.).

Live Now: Seeking Toronto's Top Job https://t.co/02nZNQpj8w

— The Agenda | TVO (@TheAgenda) October 11, 2018

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Hypocrisy, nailed to a cross.

It is about three feet high, and it is found at the very centre of a massive, baroque throne. It rather resembles something one would find at Versailles, in fact. At a minimum, it is more ornate and more conspicuous than something one would see above the tabernacle, in a church.

And that is what Maurice Duplessis intended, one presumes, when he had it affixed to the blue walls of the National Assembly more than 80 years ago: to resemble a church. Back then, Duplessis – an autocrat and a bigot who ordered Jehovah’s Witnesses arrested for practicing their religion, and who led anti-Semitic campaigns to keep out Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Europe – called his province “the only Catholic government in North America.”

At the time of its installation in 1936, then, the crucifix was regarded as a literal embodiment of the solemn bond that then existed between the Quebec state and the Quebec church, when more than 90 per cent of the province’s population were Roman Catholic. But the crucifix even survived the Quiet Revolution, after which Quebec finally became a secular state.

Over the years, there have been reports written about it, and debates about it. In 2008, academics Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor recommended removing the cross. They said that “it seems preferable for the very place where elected representatives deliberate and legislate not to be identified with a specific religion. The National Assembly is the assembly of all Quebeckers.” All of the politicians in the National Assembly disagreed. They voted unanimously to keep it, in its hallowed spot above the Speaker’s throne.

Aware, perhaps, that they are intensely hypocritical for maintaining the crucifix, some Quebec legislators have argued that the Christian symbol has historical value. But this, too, is a lie. The original crucifix is long gone. The one that is up there, now, is a copy, surreptitiously nailed to the wall in 1982.

During one of the more-recent debates, last Fall – when controversy was raging about “Liberal” government’s bill that would force women to remove veils when getting on a city bus, or going to see their doctor – Francois Legault, the leader of the CAQ, was asked about the decidedly-unsecular symbol hanging above his head in his workplace. Legault shrugged. He said the crucifix should stay. “We have a Christian heritage in Quebec and we cannot decide tomorrow that we can change our past,” said the leader whose very party name is about Quebec’s future. “I don’t see any problem keeping it.”

“A Christian heritage.”

Therein lies the problem, of course. Legault is no longer a mere member of the opposition in the provincial legislature. In a few days’ time, he will be Premier of Quebec, presiding over a massive majority in the National Assembly.

At his very first press conference after the election, then, Legault dispensed with any notion that he would be the Premier of all Quebecois. To the Muslims (with their headscarves), and the Jews (with their kippahs), and the Mennonites and the Amish (with their traditional styles of dress), and the Hindus (with their tilaka markings on their faces), Legault’s message was plain: I don’t represent you. I don’t care about you. You are second-class citizens – or worse.

Here’s what he said, at that first press encounter: “The vast majority of Quebeckers would like to have a framework where people in authority positions must not wear religious signs.” And then, knowing what he wants is wholly contrary to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and every human rights code extant, he went even further: “If we have to use the notwithstanding clause to apply what we want, the majority of Quebeckers will agree.”

From the man who said he would march newcomers to the border who lack the ability to properly conjugate verbs, and expel them – to…where? Cornwall? Vermont? Newfoundland and Labrador? – we shouldn’t be surprised, one supposes. Francois Legault has already revealed himself to be another petty, pitiful aspirant to Maurice Duplessis’ throne. He’s a hypocrite.

Andrew Scheer, however, is seemingly fine with all of that. The Conservative leader was on the phone to Legault mere moments after the polls closed, heaping praise on the Premier-elect, promising future cooperation and all that. Justin Trudeau – looking and sounding like a Prime Minister should – was much more circumspect.

As he has done before, the Prime Minister said “the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is there to protect our rights and freedoms, obviously,” adding that the state should not “tell a woman what she can or cannot wear.”

He went on: “It’s not something that should be done lightly because to remove or avoid defending the fundamental rights of Canadians, I think it’s something [about] which you have to pay careful attention.”

And we are paying attention, now. Before he is even installed, Francois Legault is making national headlines for all the wrong reasons.

Jesus, from his lonely, lofty spot above the National Assembly, might remind Monsieur Legault about what he said in Matthew 23:3. You know:

“Do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.”

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From next week’s Hill Times:

During one of the more-recent debates, last Fall – when controversy was raging about “Liberal” government’s bill that would force women to remove veils when getting on a city bus, or going to see their doctor – Francois Legault, the leader of the CAQ, was asked about the decidedly-unsecular symbol hanging above his head in his workplace.  Legault shrugged.  He said the crucifix should stay. “We have a Christian heritage in Quebec and we cannot decide tomorrow that we can change our past,” said the leader whose very party name is about Quebec’s future.  “I don’t seen any problem keeping it.”

“A Christian heritage.”

Therein lies a problem, of course.  Legault is no longer a mere member of the opposition in the provincial legislature.  In a few days’ time, he will be Premier of Quebec, presiding over a massive majority in the National Assembly.

At his very first press conference after the election, then, Legault dispensed with any notion that he would be the Premier of all Quebecois.  To the Muslims (with their headscarves), and the Jews (with their kippahs), and the Mennonites and the Amish (with their traditional styles of dress), and the Hindus (with their tilaka markings on their faces), Legault’s message was plain: I don’t represent you.  I don’t care about you.  You are second-class citizens – or worse.

Here’s what he said, at that first press encounter: “The vast majority of Quebeckers would like to have a framework where people in authority positions must not wear religious signs.”  And then, knowing what he wants is wholly contrary to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and every human rights code extant, he went even further: “If we have to use the notwithstanding clause to apply what we want, the majority of Quebeckers will agree.”

From the man who said he would march newcomers to the border who lack the ability to properly conjugate verbs, and expel them – to…where? Cornwall? Vermont? Newfoundland and Labrador? – we shouldn’t be surprised, one supposes.  Francois Legault has already revealed himself to be another petty, pitiful aspirant to Maurice Duplessis’ throne. 

He’s a hypocrite.

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One of the first things François Legault said, after he won the Quebec election, was this:

François Legault, the premier-designate of Quebec, says he will invoke the notwithstanding clause to work around the Charter of Rights and Freedoms so that his government can ban people in positions of authority in the province from wearing religious symbols.

The Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) Leader said on Tuesday the plan would prevent public servants, including teachers, police officers and judges, from wearing religious garments such as the Muslim hijab and Jewish kippa while performing their public functions. He would also amend Quebec’s charter of rights to impose the ban, which is long-standing party policy, but barely came up on the campaign trail.

I’ve written a lot on this subject, some of which you can see here and here. Basically, my view (as a church-going Catholic, no less) is that the secular State should never interfere with the peaceful, divine Church (and synagogue, temple and mosque).  Nor the reverse.  Neither should be dictating to the other.

But the worst thing about Legault’s bigoted, unconstitutional declaration – in these ugly and brutish times – is this, of course: his rank hypocrisy.

This guy wants to ban “religious symbols” where Quebec public servants can be found, and use the notwithstanding clause to ram through his law, does he?  Except, what about this, found on the big wall where he works, and where he does his work as a public servant?

 Pictured: law-breaking in Quebec.

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