What happens when the dog catches the car?

You know what we mean: dogs sometimes chase after passing cars, but they never really catch them. The cars are faster than the dogs.

But what does the dog do when it actually catches the car?

In this little analogy, the dogs are conservatives — Republicans down South, social conservatives up here — and the car is abortion. And, this week, the dog finally caught up to the car.

Interestingly, the conservatives, like the dogs, aren’t sure what to do next. They, and we, weren’t expecting this. Arf.

The conservative majority on the Supreme Court of the United States of America slammed on the brakes, to extend the metaphor. They authored an opinion that was leaked, and the opinion wants to make abortion illegal again.

And now the conservative canines — the ones who have been barking about abortion since Roe v. Wade was handed down, a half-Century ago — don’t know what to do with themselves. It’s a problem.

For them.

That’s because legalized abortion has been a prodigious source of fundraising, recruitment and propagandizing for American conservatives for decades. It has fattened the coffers and the membership rolls of conservative think tanks, candidates and political parties. It has been manna from heaven, you might say.

And now, basically, it’s gone.

The leaked Supreme Court decision has flipped the table. What was once a cherished asset on the Right has become an unexpected asset on the Left. And conservatives are now left wondering about that old saying about politics.

You know: be careful what you wish for — because you just might get it.

For progressives in the United States — mostly card-carrying Democrats — the Supreme Court’s leaked decision to take away the constitutional right of women to control their own bodies has energized them like no other issue could. Instantly, too.

Within minutes of the bombshell report landing on the nation’s computer screens, protests were seen on the steps at the Supreme Court, and my inbox was filled with abortion-related emails from the Democratic Party, busily fundraising and organizing for November’s midterms. They’ve spoken about little else since the leak.

Oh, and by the by: for anyone hoping to suggest Politico broke the story to covertly help out the Democrats, let me remind you that Politico’s last three big controversies were: (i) offering pro-Trump branded content, (ii) publishing attacks on Bernie Sanders that smacked of anti-Semitism, and (iii) cheerfully providing a platform for pro-Republican pamphleteer Ben Shapiro.

My view is that a conservative judge or clerk leaked the ruling to precondition Americans for the final one. But they — like all judges everywhere, who don’t know jack about politics — didn’t anticipate the backlash, which has been historically huge. And negative.

For American women, the Supreme Court’s decision to expropriate their reproductive systems is an unmitigated disaster. It is terrible.

But for Democrats, it is a game-changer. Already, it has energized their troops and their candidates. And it has given President Joe Biden a crusade to lead into the midterms and beyond.

And not just down South.

Canada, the last time we checked, is not an American state. But Canadian progressives — Liberals and New Democrats alike — have seized on the Roe v. Wade draft decision as if it had been rendered by our own high court. They’ve been tweeting and commenting on it 24/7, too.

There’s a reason for that, as this space noted the night the Politico story broke: pro-choice sentiment crosses partisan lines. Conservative women are mostly pro-choice, too. And they will vote against their own party if they sense Pierre Poilievre or Leslyn Lewis — both of whom have been, or are, longtime anti-choice advocates — want to recriminalize abortion.

In the war rooms I have run over the years, I sometimes remind my youthful charges that getting no answer is sometimes better than getting one. Leaving an issue unresolved is often better than wrapping it up.

Abortion was like that. Conservatives have lost the one social issue that has benefitted them the most, for decades. And now progressives own it.

The dog, you might say, has caught the car.

And now the dog is going to get run over by it.

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Justin Trudeau. Campaigning. With Doug Ford.

Well, not quite, but pretty close. Just this week — just one (1) day before the formal launch of the 2022 Ontario election campaign! — there were Messrs. Trudeau and Ford. At a campaign-style event, announcing a huge auto sector investment.

Trudeau with Ford. In Windsor. In Ontario. In Canada. In Windsor. We did not make this up.

OK, OK, I’m having a bit of insider-politico fun, there. Remember the 2006 federal election campaign?

Paul Martin’s resident campaign wizards came up with that ad about soldiers in Canadian cities with guns. The ad was intensely idiotic, and it was mocked widely. Martin was later obliged to pull it.

So: members of the oxymoronic Paul Martin brain trust were on Twitter this week, following the big Trudeau/Ford auto sector announcement. They were unhappy.

“What is Trudeau doing?” one Martinite fumed, adding that Ontario Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca “should try to get Trudeau defined as a third party to at least limit his spending.”

Ho, ho.

Now, it is somewhat understandable why the Martin folks were upset. (I guess.) After the aforementioned 2006 federal election debacle, in which they wrecked the Liberal Party of Canada for a decade, the Martinettes headed down Hwy. 401 to Toronto. Whereupon they proceeded to wreck the Ontario Liberal Party for a decade, reducing it from a majority government to a political rump with seven (7) seats.

And here they were, back like a stain on the carpet. Angry that Justin Trudeau was doing an announcement with Doug Ford.

Except, um, this: Justin Trudeau is Prime Minister of Canada. Doug Ford is the Premier of Ontario. Partisan differences notwithstanding, it’s their job to occasionally work cooperatively to help create, you know, jobs.

Do they vacation together? Not as far as we are aware. Do they have sleep-overs, and read comic books with flashlights in their sleeping bags? Unlikely. Is there a bromance brewing?

Well, not necessarily. But a Justin-Doug bromance isn’t outside the realm of possibility, either. Let us explain.

As this space has observed previously, Ontario voters are pretty smart. They’re not like my home province of Alberta, where voters elect conservatives at every level of government, and then are shocked and hurt when conservatives start taking them for granted.

No, Ontario voters favour “alternation” — that is, they put Liberal Justin Trudeau in power in Ottawa. And then they put Conservative Doug Ford in power at Queen’s Park.

And that’s how it has always been, really.

For nearly six decades, one party winning at both levels has happened only once. That was in 2003, when Dalton McGuinty’s Ontario Liberals won big — and after Jean Chretien’s federal Liberals won big in 2000. (Key factor in each: some Warren Kinsella fellow ran the war rooms for both leaders. Here’s my business card, etc.)

So, in fairness to Justin Trudeau and Doug Ford: the two leaders may not love each other, but they definitely need each other. Victory by one practically guarantees victory by the other. So get ready for more of this:

Trudeau with Ford. In Windsor. In Ontario. In Canada. In Windsor. We did not make this up.

(Because it makes sense.)

— Kinsella was chairman of Jean Chretien’s war rooms in 1993 and 2000, and Dalton McGuinty’s in 2003, 2007 and 2011.

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Think the U.S. Supreme Court decision to outlaw abortion is irrelevant to Canada?

Think again.

Because Politico’s bombshell revelation Monday night — a leak of a draft opinion of America’s highest court on the seminal decision that legalized abortion in the United States, Roe v. Wade — is going to have profound consequences for many politicians. On both sides of the border.

In the U.S., overturning Roe v. Wade isn’t a political earthquake — it is bigger than that. It’s something beyond description. It’s akin to the shifting of political tectonic plates.

Among other things, it will lead to many Democratic Party victories in the coming mid-terms. That’s important, because Joe Biden was heading to an electoral pounding in November. No longer: He now has a wedge that will hasten the end of Republican careers.

It’ll lead to demands — which Biden may grant, after the mid-terms — to enlarge the high court and load it up with progressive jurists. That’s a given.

And how Politico got their hands on a draft Supreme Court opinion? That’s big, too. The resulting inquiries will certainly preoccupy lawyers and politicos (and maybe detectives) for years to come. Why? Because such a leak is something that has never, ever happened before. It means the Supreme Court justices are at war with each other, basically.

But overturning Roe v. Wade won’t just shake up American politics. It is going to have big political consequences up here, too.

Because if you think Justin Trudeau will hesitate to use abortion against his conservative opponents, you are dreaming in Technicolor. Abortion is the ultimate political wedge — one that mobilizes most Canadian women, of all stripes, to vote to maintain control over their bodies.

For Pierre Poilievre, the frontrunner in the Conservative Party leadership race, the return of the abortion debate is very, very unhelpful. For years, the Ottawa-area MP has enjoyed the support of the Campaign Life Coalition, the powerful lobby group that wants to outlaw abortion, gay marriage and euthanasia.

On its web site, the Campaign Life Coalition gave approving green check marks to Poilievre for voting for bills that would make it an offence to “kill or injure a pre-born child” — and to “protect women from coercion to abort.” For most of his political career, Poilievre has opposed abortion, full stop.

Only very recently — as the prospect of seizing the Conservative leadership grew larger — did Poilievre abandon his previous positions on abortion and gay marriage, thereby angering the Campaign Life Coalition. But, under his leadership, he still admits he would permit MPs to bring forward laws to criminalize abortion.

That matters. Because, even if Poilievre has magically experienced a whiplash-inducing reversal on abortion, the likes of MP Leslyn Lewis have not. Lewis is a social conservative extremist — and her presence in the upper ranks of the leadership contenders can’t be dismissed. Lewis doesn’t hide her opposition to abortion, saying: (There’s) nothing hidden about it.”

Exasperated conservatives will point out, correctly, that conservative jurists do not presently dominate on the Canadian Supreme Court. They will say, correctly, that neither Stephen Harper nor Brian Mulroney rigged our highest court with social conservatives.

But do you think Trudeau will ever hesitate to use a divisive social issue to pulverize his Conservative opponents? In 2015, 2019 and 2021, did the Liberal leader ever seem reluctant to beat Tories with whatever club was laying nearby, however cynical that may be?

No and no. Trudeau has used abortion to hobble Conservatives before, and he’ll do so again. The reversal of Roe v. Wade guarantees it.

On Monday night, you could almost hear the corks being popped on the Veuve Clicquot at the Office of the Prime Minister.

Because abortion is back.

And abortion kills — Tory political careers.

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Ukraine.

Remember that? Country in Eastern Europe, 40 million citizens. Has been invaded by Vladimir Putin, a war criminal, who has been murdering thousands of Ukrainian men, women and children since Feb. 22.

It was in all the papers, Putin’s Ukrainian war. Everyone, everywhere, was paying attention to it.

And then … many of us just stopped paying attention.

Instead, many of us have pointed our clickers in the direction of the vomitous Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. Or the vainglorious Elon Musk buying Twitter. Or housing prices. Or an election in Ontario. Or the weather.

But the Russian slaughter in Ukraine? Not as many are paying as much attention to that one anymore. And — given that Putin’s criminality is getting dramatically worse at this precise moment — that is a problem.

A big problem, because Putin has been counting on us moving on from his campaign of wholesale slaughter against the Ukrainian people. Like the Nazis before him, the Russian autocrat knows that genocide is always much more efficient in the dark.

Many of us, this writer included, are guilty of turning away from what is happening in Ukraine. And, indirectly, aiding and abetting Vladimir Putin as we do so.

Children pose for a photo on the pedestal of the Soviet monument to Ukraine-Russia friendship dismantled by workers in Kyiv on April 26, 2022, amid Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Photo by GENYA SAVILOV/AFP via Getty Images)

Children pose for a photo on the pedestal of the Soviet monument to Ukraine-Russia friendship dismantled by workers in Kyiv on April 26, 2022, amid Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Photo by GENYA SAVILOV/AFP via Getty Images)

In politics, the successful players know all about this tendency. When a scandal breaks, for instance, they know that if they hunker down and stay quiet, the mob will usually move on. They’ll carry their pitchforks and torches to protest the next outrage.

In the political war rooms I’ve run, I will therefore often say this to the assembled youngsters: “We have a national memory of seven minutes.”

In politics, that can be good news or bad news. If you are grappling with some bad news (see scandals above), you can be reasonably confident it’ll “blow over” soon enough. But if you’ve got a good story to tell — as Doug Ford, Steven del Duca and Andrea Horwath will all be labouring to do on the Ontario campaign trail over the next few weeks — short attention spans are pretty unhelpful, too.

It’s not that voters and/or citizens are in any way dumb, I tell my war room charges. They’re smart and intuitive and highly attuned to their own self-interest. It’s just that they are also very, very busy. Getting the kids to hockey or soccer practice, getting to and from work, making ends meet, worrying about the rent or a mortgage payment, catching up on sleep. They’re busy.

So, says Democratic Party thinker David Shenk, an overabundance of news and information — about everything from Johnny Depp to a genocidal war — becomes “data smog.” There’s too much of it, so Joe and Jane Frontporch just tune it all out.

In the era of smartphones — which are neither smart nor phones, anymore — that’s a simple survival mechanism. To remain sane, a lot of us disconnect to avoid information overload.

A picture taken on April 23, 2022 shows a child living in a large underground parking lot in Kharkiv, eastern Ukraine, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Photo by SERGEY BOBOK/AFP via Getty Images)
A picture taken on April 23, 2022 shows a child living in a large underground parking lot in Kharkiv, eastern Ukraine, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Photo by SERGEY BOBOK/AFP via Getty Images)
Which, as noted, is what Vladimir Putin is counting on. He needs us to turn our attention away from Ukraine.

If we all care less about Ukraine, so too will governments. Here in little old Canada, our national government — surprisingly, happily — has been doing a pretty good job supporting the heroic efforts of Ukrainians in this war. But, if the Trudeau government senses that our collective focus on the war has diminished, so will their efforts. That’s how politics works.

So, turn off Johnny and Amber. Turn off Elon Musk. Turn off all of the other things that, at the present time, just aren’t as important.

Ukraine, and the valiant Ukrainian people, need more than our ammunition and armaments and aid.

They need our attention, too.

Now, and until the end.

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