Today’s book purchases
Mad Max’s pals
This week’s column: he’s just visiting, too
Spring 2009: the tulips were blooming, the birds were chirping, and Ottawa was buzzing about the prospects of Prime Minister Michael Ignatieff.
The polls looked good. The pundits were saying nice things. Stephen Harper’s regime was slipping.
Liberals were accordingly feeling optimistic, so they threw a little party. Staff moved the long tables out of the boardroom in Centre Block’s Room 409-S, and caucus and staff were invited to pop by for a drink. A smiling Ignatieff worked the room, clapping Liberal MPs on the back and listening attentively to Liberal staffers.
He approached Yours Truly, positioned by one of the windows overlooking Centre Block’s lawn. “You look unhappy!” Ignatieff said.
“Happiness is a trick,” I said to the Liberal leader, which made him laugh. I paused. “The Tories have been too quiet about you. I don’t like it.”
“Stop worrying so much,” Ignatieff said, smiling, and then moved away to chat with others.
It was his party, in more ways than one, so I didn’t try to spoil it on that sunny day. I was a bit of an outsider, a hired gun, so I didn’t then tell Ignatieff what I had been told by Conservative friends earlier: that they were getting ready to spend millions on an ad buy to define Ignatieff before he could define himself. They were going to say he was an interloper, a foreigner. They were going to say — over and over, everywhere — that he was “just visiting.”
When I briefed Ignatieff later on — with his worried Chief of Staff, Ian Davey, listening in — he was dismissive. “A million Canadians live and work outside of Canada,” he said, irritated.
“None of them are running to be prime minister,” I said, as Davey nodded. “Lots of people think that anyone who wants to run a country should live in that country, you know.”
Ignatieff didn’t buy it. It won’t work, he said.
It did.
The Conservatives’ anti-Ignatieff “Just Visiting” campaign was arguably the most effective political ad campaign in modern Canadian history. I can’t think of another that has worked nearly as well. “Just Visiting” indelibly branded the acclaimed Harvard intellectual as an effete, out-of-touch tourist to Canada. It destroyed him and the once-great Liberal Party of Canada, reducing it to third place, a rump in the House of Commons.
You know where this is going, perhaps. It is astonishing — it is beyond belief — that the once-great Conservative Party of Canada is now embracing Kevin O’Leary, another Boston resident. Another interloper. Another guy “just visiting.”
The evidence that Kevin O’Leary is just visiting Canada, you see, is indisputable.
- There have been 11 Conservative leadership debates since early November. O’Leary has shown up for only three, claiming that he had business to attend to in the U.S.
- On his own reality TV show and in interviews with U.S. media, O’Leary has clearly stated that “Boston is home” — quote unquote.
- O’Leary has lived in Boston for a generation and he won’t commit to living in Canada — even if he wins the CPC leadership.
- Before his leadership bid, his LinkedIn page listed Boston as his home. Before that, it was Palm Beach. Now he claims it’s Toronto.
Forget about the fact that Kevin O’Leary — like that other reality TV star, Donald Trump — isn’t really a conservative, and is all over the map ideologically. Forget about the fact that — like Trump — O’Leary is a vulgarian and a creep, grabbing women, mocking women, dismissing women.
Forget about the fact that he is — as the National Post’s Andrew Coyne called him — “a clown,” a caricature who has never held political office, and who doesn’t have a single coherent policy. Forget about the fact that he doesn’t speak a word of French. Forget about all that.
Kevin O’Leary is the Conservative Michael Ignatieff. If mass delusional psychosis continues to beset paid-up Conservative members, and if they actually select Kevin O’Leary to lead them, the attack ads practically write themselves. Just PhotoShop O’Leary’s shining pate over Ignatieff’s face and run those Conservative Party ads all over again. They’ll work.
Kevin O’Leary, like Michael Ignatieff, is just visiting Canada. As leader, Kevin O’Leary will lead the Conservatives to their greatest defeat since 1993 — ironically, the very year he commenced his move to Boston, Mass.
Oh, and Team O’Leary? Michael Ignatieff at least had the intelligence to move back to Canada before offering himself as its leader.
Still didn’t work.
Day Without A Woman
At Daisy Group, on Wednesday, we are going to be participating in the Day Without A Woman, as urged by the Women’s March. The women in our firm will therefore decide whether they want to be at work or not.
If you are interested in learning more, information is here:
- Women take the day off, from paid and unpaid labor
- Avoid shopping for one day (with exceptions for small, women- and minority-owned businesses).
- Wear RED in solidarity with A Day Without A Woman
In which the United States, 2017, becomes Germany, 1941
Highly-scientific poll™: will the Hydro cut work?
Vote now, vote often!
Ontario's 25 per cent #Hydro cut will make the government:
— Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) March 3, 2017
You couldn’t pay us to buy it, actually
Spotted by a friend at Washington’s Dulles airport. Sorry, Unpresident Trump: nobody wants you.
Sigh
Nick Adams new book, Green Card Warrior, is a must read. The merit-based system is the way to go. Canada, Australia! @foxandfriends
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 3, 2017
Somewhere, @JustinTrudeau just cringed. #uspoli #cdnpoli https://t.co/OI7Re6HwkJ
— Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) March 3, 2017
Fully-clothed Warren on shirtless Justin
In which I provide a quote that is frankly incoherent:
Political Consultant Warren Kinsella says although the Prime Minister may have had nothing to do with the images surfacing, when it comes to image, the PM is smarter than you may think.
“I think this guy is a genius about how to use his image. Uses his image in a way that advances the country. Some of us here at Daisy Group worked on Hilary Clinton’s campaign and we heard it over and over again. Justin Trudeau is a hunk and why don’t you send him down here, to help us out. It was funny, but embarrassing because you want your prime minister taken seriously”.
If you can make any sense of that, whatsoever, feel free to drop me a line. Story link here.
LOCK HIM UP
Oh look, the Klansman-pal is in a spot of trouble:
Then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) spoke twice last year with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Justice Department officials said, encounters he did not disclose when asked about possible contacts between members of President Trump’s campaign and representatives of Moscow during Sessions’s confirmation hearing to become attorney general.
And he spoke at those confirmation hearings under oath. Based on the early evidence, he perjured himself, beyond a reasonable doubt.
Donald Trump and his cabal are worse than crooks. They’re indisputably traitors, as well.