Conservative Party of Canada Leadership Race Megathread-May 27th 2017

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I hope Poilievre becomes leader. Both as someone who detests his ex-boss and someone concerned for Canada's democracy.

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The Tories need to move back to their Progressive Conservative roots and win back the immigrant vote if they want to win another majority.

If Harper just stuck to his "Justin's not ready and will increase your taxes to a gazillion" line, he would not have lost the immigrant vote so dramatically. After the Conservative Party revealed their true nature, it will be very difficult to win back these votes even if they campaign better next time. Trust betrayed is almost impossible to restore.

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But wouldn't MacKay be constantly asked why he quit this year? I can see him calculating that the Conservatives would likely lose in 2015, and barring any serious reason to the contrary, lose again in 2019, clearing the way for a campaign for the next election. He did say he hopes to come back when people want a more PC-style government. And, he's young enough to afford to wait a decade or more.

If he somehow gets it this time, I can already see the Liberal attacks calling him a coward who runs from fights.

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Ernie Eves resigned his seat at Queens Park in 2001 and then still came back a year later to get the PC leadership in 2002 and let's not forget Stephen Harper's own story - he was first elected to parliament in 1993 and then before he even finished his first term he resigned his seat in a huff and did not run in 1997 and spent the next couple of years plotting his comeback and ran against Stockwell Day

Neither of them declined to run for re-election in what was already obviously a tough fight. For MacKay to chicken out and then immediately waltz back in would create bad optics - worse than Ignatieff being "just visiting". If he has any leadership ambitions he should at least spend the next few years making a name for himself at a foundation.

But, by then, maybe Mark Mulroney will have been convinced to enter politics.

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It's quite amusing, a whole puff piece in Caroline Mulroney that doesn't say a single solitary word about what her views are on anything. Let's just remind ourselves that the next CPC leader will be elected by rank and file CPC members...and who are they? Largely evangelical Christians, redneck gun nuts and a lot of grumpy old men who with no post secondary education.

Come on, not *all* CPC members are like that. There are plenty who are socially moderate and merely want to make it easier to run their business.

There have been stories about Wall taking French lessons for years, this is nothing new...no one ever seems to have actually heard him utter a single word in French so Perhaps the lessons aren't going very well.

Unless he can overpower the incumbent native Francophone in a debate over corporate tax policy, he's jut not ready.

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Ivson even mentioned Stephen Harper returning to leadership!! The anonymous insiders say he's the only candidate who would run away with the leadership and keep the party united.

If hypothetically he did become leader, what would be the result of the 2019 election? Liberal 60% Conservative 25% NDP 10%, with turnout at 75%? And then, assuming the electoral system has changed, the CPC disintegrates?

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Ivson even mentioned Stephen Harper returning to leadership!! The anonymous insiders say he's the only candidate who would run away with the leadership and keep the party united.

I'm not so sure about that - a lot of Conservatives thought Harper was a big liability by the end of the campaign and privately seethed at his cold nasty personality and his hyper-partisan negative tactics.

Did these Tories seethe because of his nastiness or because the nastiness which worked in the past was not working anymore?

If it's the latter, this means the party hasn't entirely given up on him. And given the hyperpartisan way they've behaved since the election, I'm inclined to believe the latter.

If/when MacKay launches his bid, he'll immediately be dogged by his rivals by his decision to sit out the last election. Nobody likes quitters who shirk away from tough fights. Even if he ran for re-election and lost, he still would have been respected as a fighter, and someone would have gladly resigned for him. He'll be attacked during the candidate debates (which, of course, will be recorded by Liberal HQ). And if he's elected, the Liberal attack ads (intended mostly to demoralize Reform-Tories) will start the next day.

"Peter MacKay: He didn't stand with his colleagues. Will he stand with you?"

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Frpm inside the party MacKay deciding not to run might be a disadvantage but an advantage outside the party in creating some distance with the Harper loss. If he had ran and lost his seat, opponents could have said "He can't even hold his seat" and have to run against MPs who were re-elected.

Voters don't care about what-ifs. All they see is that MacKay saw a difficult fight coming and chose to duck and cover. His rivals (except the mini-me Donald Trump) will view this as a betrayal and will ost definitely bring this up in the debate. He should have a good response, but you never know (see Mulroney's "You had a choice sir").

Kenney is not exactly a household name yet. Though his connections with the immigrant communities make him a front runner. Also note, immigrants don't answer polls, and are not factored into weighting.

Given how almost all the immigrant-heavy ridings voted, they clearly rejected the nasty and divisive Conservative message. And such tactics make many immigrants who were attracted to the party for its message of low taxes and responsible social policy feel betrayed. All the festivals Kenney attended in the past decade will have gone to waste.

He isn't a household name yet, but if elected leader, he sure will be courtesy of the Liberal Party of Canada. I can already see the attack ads where his face is photoshopped into Harper's head. His Twitter feed already makes Gerald Butts feel like a kid in a candy store. Maybe the Liberals should hire the same douchebag who voice-acted the Conservative anti-Liberal attack ads.

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With the Conservatives moving further to the right, and the NDP ditching a centrist leader in favour of the Leap Manifesto, looks like the Natural Governing Party is truly back.

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Keep in mind that the liberals would only have to lose about 1% nationwide in 2019 and their majority is gone

Actually, they never had any majority, assuming a variant of PR is introduced.

If Canadian politics teaches you anything, it's that the results of the previous election have absolutely zero relevance to the next one. Remember how Mulcair tried to remind everyone he only needed 30-ish more seats to remove Harper?

But it's fair to say that neither the Conservatives nor the NDP will be in any position to form government. The events yesterday only reinforce that.

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It's one thing to be presumptive, and it's another to recognize the overall situation. It's of course far to early to call the next election, but it isn't unreasonable to comment on the huge advantage the Liberals hold. It means the Liberals must really, really screw up to lose in 2019. Whether, or how, this happens is anyone's guess.

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Kevin O'Leary's been awfully quiet lately. Either he's planning to surprise us at the last moment, or he regrets as a cheap knockoff Donald Trump.

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Stay classy, Conservatives: https://twitter.com/LindaFrum/status/779839392332611588

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The most amazing thing of all is that the Conservatives could have continued to make a big fuss over the PMO expense claims for the next few weeks and ended Trudeau's honeymoon. Instead, it barely made one news cycle before they chose to race-bait. Well, not really race-bait, but it seems awfully much like it.

"Anti-Canadian Values screening!" "She was born in Iran not Afghanistan!" If this sets the tone for the leadership race, then the CPC's survival as a national force is in doubt. After electoral reform is introduced (assuming it's a form of PR), and after their second thrashing in 2019, what holds it together?

The only reason why I wouldn't be breaking out the popcorn, is that one of these splinter parties is likely to be a European-style far-right party. And so far, Canada is one of very few western countries without such parties.

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If the Liberals were ruthless, they would shamelessly plagiarize some of Bernier's ideas like opening up more service sectors to foreign ownership and competition, and scaling back some supply management sectors.

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I remember when Kellie Leitch was asked flat out whether her ideology test would prohibit Roman Catholics and orthodox Jews, she stuttered like a deer in the headlights. That's the biggest weakness that her opponents should exploit.

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I wonder how the membership will take it, if one candidate decisively wins the popular vote, but a bitter rival candidate wins because of the points system. It'll be impossible to ignore the cries of "the rules are all rigged".

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Kellie Leitch openly praised Donald Trump, but she has none of his charisma or political intuition.

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A more likely scenario involves a Sanders-style outsider from the left who seizes control of the NDP through his/her loyal supporters. He/she denounces the Liberals as corporatist sellouts who occasionally throw a bone on social issues and the hapless Conservatives as useful idiots of Trumpist Republicans. The NDP paints all social issues as distractions from bread and butter issues, stealing votes from the other two parties.

Add in a Liberal government which has become unpopular due to corruption scandals, fatigue, or anything else, another recession/period of stagnation, *and* a Conservative party which is still reeling from the Harper years and which reeks of Republican odours, and the NDP could well surge to power.

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Unfortunately for her, the leadership race isn't a winner-take-all system like the Republican primaries.

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Either the day after the CPC leadership election, or the day after the 2019 election, we'll look back at Leitch's promise to bring Trump's "exciting" message to Canada as the move that killed her.

Now she's irrevocably tied herself to something she has zero control over. The Liberals won't have to insinuate about Leitch's scary agenda when she foolishly admitted it, and could immediately tie her to every disaster of the Trump Administration. And all the progressives who voted Liberal last year and who would be disillusioned, will be compelled to vote Liberal again.

As for electoral reform, methinks the Liberals will fudge a compromise where a referendum on reform will take place simultaneously with the next federal election, both to reduce overhead costs and to guarantee high enough turnout to enshrine public legitimacy of any subsequent reform.

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Because this freak show wasn't crazy enough.

What an utter douchebag.

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O'Leary with slight lead over Leitch in CPC supporters poll, with Bernier in strong 3rd. All other candidates are bit players. More importantly, Leitch and O'Leary are tied for "which candidate would you rank the last". Looks like the CPC leadership race will become an even greater dumpster fire than the Republican primary.

http://ipolitics.ca/2017/02/17/leitch-surges-in-latest-mainstreet-tory-leadership-poll/

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O'Leary with slight lead over Leitch in CPC supporters poll, with Bernier in strong 3rd. All other candidates are bit players. More importantly, Leitch and O'Leary are tied for "which candidate would you rank the last". Looks like the CPC leadership race will become an even greater dumpster fire than the Republican primary.

http://ipolitics.ca/2017/02/17/leitch-surges-in-latest-mainstreet-tory-leadership-poll/

Hopefully without the same ultimate electoral result.

http://globalnews.ca/news/3207501/kevin-oleary-justin-trudeau-conservative-leadership-race-poll/
With O'Leary as leader, Liberals and Conservatives would be neck-and-neck. But with either of the other two as leader, the Conservatives would win 26-28% - the worst result for the right in general since Confederation. Sad!

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Maxime Bernier is okay-ish on some social issues, is boilerplate conservative on some other issues, but his health care plan would basically end the publicly funded system as we know it. He also questioned climate science before "clarifying" that he's merely against political interference in science.

Kevin O'Leary might not be too bad for a Conservative. And to his credit he has explicitly repudiated Trump's well-known nastiness. Unfortunately over the years he's created plenty of attack-ad material (like how Boston is his true home, how it's great that seven people are wealthier than the bottom 50% of the world's population, promising to openly auction off senate seats, how there's nothing proud of serving in the military, etc). Plus, he refused to explicitly promise to seek an MP seat if he's elected leader.

Kellie Leitch is scary, but thankfully lacks all of the communication skills of Trump. What sort of tone-deaf prick would say something like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrWI-5N34es