Tag Archive: Aga Khan

The Liberals had a caucus meeting, too

— 11.08.2019 09:31 AM

It happened yesterday. You didn’t hear much about it, because all the drama had happened the day before, with the seven-hour-long Conservative mass-suicide disguised as a caucus meeting.

The Liberal caucus meeting was a happier affair. For one thing, the newbies – and Trudeau has a lot of them in his caucus – are now just two short years away from qualifying for the fabled gold-plated Parliamentary pension. That kind of boodle tends to keep the natives from getting restless.

Ditto re-election. A lot of them didn’t expect to be back. Forget about Aga Khan, Gropegate, LavScam and the Griswolds Go To India – who could ever expect to survive multiple mid-campaign revelations about their leader wearing racist blackface? But they did. They did.

So, the Grit nobodies were happier than the Tory nobodies (that’s what Justin’s Dad used to call MPs, by the way – nobodies).

But all is not well. A sampling of the Liberal Nervous Nellie list:

• The Emperor’s Clothes. He doesn’t really have any. Liberal MPs universally do not trust the judgment of Trudeau or his inner circle like they used to – they’ve simply made too many big, big mistakes. Exhibit One: turning a sure-fire second majority into a minority. There’s no mutiny on the horizon – but nor is this the united, happy group it once was. Many are looking past Trudeau, now.

• Events, dear boy, events. Who said that? Harold MacMillan? I think so. Anyway, the aphorism applies here. The Mounties have indicated that they haven’t closed the book on LavScam. Trudeau himself has said there are more Trudeau scandals/embarrassments as-yet unrevealed. The economy is expected to slump. The Tories may indeed get a leader who knows that God loves gays, lesbians and women who get abortions, too. And so on, and so on. Events happen, events affect political fortunes. Liberal fortunes, too.

• They didn’t win. If the Grit caucus is being honest with themselves – a tall order, we know – they will admit that Andrew Scheer lost. Justin Trudeau didn’t win. They were up against a placeholder Tory leader, one who didn’t inspire, but who has “hidden agenda” stapled onto his DNA. And they were up against a Conservative Party that forgot that data analysis is no substitute for voter ID and GOTV. I wager that won’t happen next time: I think the Tories will have a new leader (because, honestly, they have to get one) and a Senator Doug Finley-style election operation (because that wins elections, not columns of numbers).

But what do I know? I worked for Hillary Clinton in three states, and I was sure we were going to win.

Maybe Andrew Scheer will get another chance and become an actual progressive conservative. Maybe Justin Trudeau will learn from his many documented mistakes. Maybe the economy will be fine and the RCMP will decide that obstruction of justice is no more serious than a broken taillight. Maybe, maybe. Who knows.

All I know is the Liberal gathering didn’t generate as many headlines. And that suggests the Liberals are learning.

And the Conservatives? They aren’t.


Comments (42)

My latest: why isn’t Andrew Scheer way ahead?

— 10.04.2019 09:48 AM

So, Andrew.

You don’t mind if I call you Andrew, do you? It’s better than what I sometimes used to call you, which was Blandy Andy.

I stopped calling you that because you figured out a way to make the bland thing work, like Brampton Bill Davis did. You embraced your inner ordinariness.

You starting hanging out in hockey rinks and you commenced rubbing Timbits all over your torso – which, unlike Prime Minister Blackface, you have never exposed to a grateful nation. You became the Canadian Everyman, and you made it work for you.

The pocketbook stuff, too. That was good, too. You and Hamish concluded, rightly, that voters regard everyone in politics as an unindicted co-conspirators, so you stopped hollering all the time that Justin is a crook. You just kept talking about how hard it is for regular folks to get by, and left the scandalmongering to the media. That was smart.

And the polls bore fruit, sort of. Ipsos says you’re ahead, and you have been for the entirety of the campaign. Nanos says you’re tied with Trudeau for best choice for Prime Minister, which is way better than you’ve been in the past.

But. But, Andrew, seriously?

Why haven’t 110 per cent of respondents declared you their favoured choice for Prime Minister? Why isn’t your party a kabillion points ahead of the Liberals? Why, Andrew, why?

Because that’s the question everyone is asking themselves, Andrew. Hell, that’s the question members of the Liberal caucus are asking themselves – many of whom had purchased political funeral insurance, and now they’re wondering if they can convert it to another kind of policy at the insurance brokerage where you used to fetch coffee and answer the phone.

By any reasonable standard, Andrew, Justin Trudeau leads the most corrupt – the most casually evil – government in Canadian history. It is shiftless; it is reckless; it is soulless. It is a mess.

And they could still win, Andrew. They could still beat you. How can this be?

A scan of Trudeau’s press clippings reads like a grand jury indictment.

• In LavScam, he obstructed justice when he tried, repeatedly, to stop the criminal corruption trial of a Québec-based donor to his party.
• He violated conflict of interest laws when he accepted freebies during a junket to the Aga Khan’s private island.
• He lied about electoral reform, and balancing the budget, and improving relations with the provinces and the world.
• He made us an international laughingstock with his Griswolds Vacation India trip, and enraged the world’s largest democracy – our ally and Commonwealth partner.
• And, most recently, he admitted he repeatedly mocked black people by wearing blackface and jumping around like an ape – and he admitted that there’s more of it out there in the ether, but he doesn’t know how much, because he was wasted a lot of the time.

After all that, Andrew – after all that scandal, more of which this newspaper has been investigating for weeks, stay tuned to this bat-channel, everyone – why aren’t you way ahead? Why aren’t you creaming Chewbacca Socks?

Why, to cite just two examples from the past 24 hours, did you attract fewer people at a Brampton rally than Justin Trudeau’s Portuguese Water Dog, Kenzie, gets during a stroll through the park?

Why can’t you put an end to the interminable questions about your CV, and simply joke that you’re so boring, you’re the only guy in Canada who brags about being an insurance broker?

None of it makes sense, Andrew. None of it. You should be playing Fortnite with Hamish about now, getting ready to move into wherever we put Prime Ministers these days.

Instead, you’re fighting to get a decent lead. Instead, your caucus are whispering about the next leader.

It’s crazy, Andrew. But one thing isn’t crazy at all:

You’ve got three weeks left to win this thing.

And if you don’t, you’ll forever be remembered as the guy who couldn’t beat Prime Minister Blackface.


Comments (63)