Bruce Dowbiggin
The Cooler: Harper Attempts To Pacify CPC Over Poilievre
As demons go, Stephen Harper always left something to be desired. While the media and his political opponents painted a picture of a diabolical schemer bent of hoarding power, Harper mostly bored ordinary Canadians. For all the strenuous efforts of newsrooms and chat rooms tapping him as Trump, The Harp lacked a certain je ne sais quoi when it came to ruthless maniacs.
So the sudden re-appearance last month of Canada’s previous PM to throw his support to Pierre Poilievre in the Conservative Party leadership race took on a sinister tone with the usual suspects. Harper’s brand of lukewarm western populism was taken out for another thrashing. CBC typically quoted a Dutch political scientist Hans Mudde as saying, ”Populism presents a Manichean outlook, in which there are only friends and foes.” Etc.
In truth it is likely Harper emerged from the business of making money to bless Poilievre’s massive lead in the CPC leadership for several reasons. The most obvious is that he recognizes the inevitability of Poilievre’s win and wishes to deny the media an electoral horse race orgy till September.
But mostly it is to signify that despite the Toronto Star and CBC’s histrionic protests, Poilievre will be a populist more in Harper’s own image than that of Donald Trump. He only appears radical to the pearl clutchers of urban Toronto.
You can understand why the Family Compact is agitated by Poilievre. With their Golden Boy Justin Trudeau imploding and Poilievre talking about removing the Bank Of Canada governor and stripping CBC of funding, this threatens to get out of their control. Not even the RCMP can bail out Justin now. Harper’s benediction is meant to still that radicalism in the mind of Tory voters.
But as we wrote on May 22, 2022, Poilievre himself is unafraid to thrash about in the Trumpian waters. He’s rejecting further debates, walling himself off from the Trudeau-funded media. “Poilievre has channelled the voters’ disgust with Trudeau and the Ottawa status quo epitomized by the Trucker Convoy. That disgust includes the grandees of his own party who foisted Scheer and O’Toole on the nation .
Their 2022 candidate is the well-worn place holder Jean Charest, failed Conservative and tainted Liberal premier of Québec from 2003 to 2012. Charest’s policy chest sounds like a throwback to the days when language battles and Québec sovereignty were the burning issues. He’s pro-choice, and he knocks PP for supporting the Truckers.
In the (first) debate, Poilievre did not spare Charest. “Now, Mr. Charest learned about the trucker convoy on CBC like other Liberals… He believes I should be cancelled from this leadership race, and disqualified, his words, because I don’t share his Liberal viewpoint.”
“That is the kind of cancel culture and censorship that you would expect from Justin Trudeau, but instead we’re getting it from this liberal on this stage.” He then slammed Charest on his Quebec Liberal party’s alleged acceptance of illegal donations during his time as Québec premier. And his ties to Huawei. “The average trucker has more integrity in his pinky finger than you had in your entire scandal-plagued Liberal cabinet,”
It was red meat for frustrated Conservatives who finally see a champion in the manner of Florida governor Ron DeSantis, a tiger who won’t back up in the face of Andrew Coyne huffing and puffing about nasty truckers. It resounds with Conservatives who refuse to accommodate themselves to a Liberal reality.
Naturally this brought out the Conservatives version of Charlie the Tuna. They want Tories with good taste, not Tories who taste good. They’re appropriating all the Donald Trump derangement beloved by Canadian pack Media.
“Yesterday’s debate was embarrassing for our party,” said CPC leadership candidate Scott Aitchison. “The fighting, yelling and screaming. The partisan cheap shots at fellow Conservatives. We will never win another election if this is how we talk to each other and Canadians.”
Yeah. Because all the “fighting, yelling and screaming” is why Canadians refused to vote for Scheer and O’Toole. Erstwhile Ontario leader Patrick Brown, who took a powder in the debate, also played the Stop Shouting card. “After watching the debate, I can’t help but wonder: how can any of these candidates expect to unite our party and expand our Conservative coalition if they’re already adopting a scorched-earth approach?”
Reform Party founder Preston Manning also demurred. “Stay away from the personal attacks that only poison the party well and reinforce the public’s negative perception of party politics.”
Have these people noticed that, while the CPC plays rock/paper/scissors, the Liberals are waging drone war on them? Like Republicans— who talk tough and then support Democrats sending g $40 B in untraceable money to Ukraine— the CPC has a credibility problem.
They want to win the government. To do so they need to penetrate southern Ontario and urban areas of Montreal and the Lower Mainland B.C. The leaders of the party— prompted by the Hill press corps— insist that you can beat Trudeau by using a feather duster on him.
Poilievre— a bilingual Alberta product who represents an Ottawa riding— dares to disagree. (He says he would fire the Bank of Canada governor if elected prime minister). He’s willing to go over the heads of the CBC chattering class and Liberals pollsters who offer unwanted advice such as: “Conservatives must ask themselves if they are falling victim to the ease of stoking and selling the politics of anger,” says pollster Tim Powers.
The outcome of a Poilievre leadership may be another schism between Reform elements and establishment Ottawa TV panel figures. But Poilievre’s attitude in the face of Trump phobia will remain much like the irascible John Diefenbaker who blew out of the West in 1957, defying the status quo, to win the PMO twice. In the face of blowback from those quivering at Liberal omnipotency Dief opined, “You can’t stand up for Canada with a banana for a backbone.”
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft YearsIn NHL History, , his new book with his son Evan, was voted the eighth best professional hockey book of by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted seventh best, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
Been quite a month for political plot lines, no? Since Joe Biden went full Sling Blade in his debate with Donald Trump to a near-fatal assassination attempt on Trump in Pennsylvania to the Democratic Party staging a Covid-inspired coup against Biden. And now Ms. Montreal, Kamala Harris, being retro-fitted into the Dems’ nominee against Trump while her media pals hastily erase her past.
You rarely get this much red meat from the people who run the American political system. Most of the time the public is encouraged to think that Aaron Sorkin’s version of politics on The West Wing is how it works. Earnest liberals gamely coping with venal right wingers and foreign potentates in airtight 60-minute chunks.
There have been occasional attempts to pierce the fog. Veep showed politics as Benny Hill farce, Wag The Dog showed Hollywood’s staging counter narratives. The Death of Stalin showed the totalitarian state managing leadership succession.
But thanks to mainstream news networks, American politics for the most part is shown as a horse race to the White House, one with show ponies, handicappers and media jockeys. That seems to be the way people wish to consume their constitutional republic. Show business for ugly people.
That’s likely why the naked bones of the process being shown so explicitly since June 27 has upset people. Like the making of sausage, the making of laws is a distasteful sight. Guts and tissue on a blood-stained abattoir floor are hard to un-see. The fainting-goat followers of The West Wing are upset that the man with his hand on the nuclear codes can’t zip his own fly anymore.
Gullible liberals, with their fondness for the Covid administrative state, are most upset with all this honesty. As we wrote in September of 2023 of this Gallup Poll : “It shows that from 1972-2022 that GOP trust of media has plummeted from 41 percent to under 10 percent, while independents have gone from 53 percent to under 36 percent trust. IOW, their former favourite news sources don’t jive with their everyday reality.
But Democrats in the poll have vaulted from 64 percent to 76 percent in trust of media. Why? One reason probably lies with being told the narratives that please them. That give them comfort. These consumers allow legacy media’s fact checkers to sort out what they should know from “disinformation” without getting their hands dirty with the original story.” IOW, give me The West Wing.
The previous occasion when political machinations were so stark was the Western cultural upheavals of 1967-74, when assassinations, race riots, civil disobedience and blatant political chicanery poisoned the culture. Faced with insurrection and Charles Manson’s flower-power insanity, the powers of the time abandoned politesse for bare-knuckled reality. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were dispatched to another realm, LBJ was told to go back to his Texas farm, and sources inside the FBI apparatus stabbed Richard Nixon after the greatest presidential win in U.S. history.
There was little subtlety. Chicago mayor Richard Daley saw to that in Grant Park. CBS reporter Dan Rather was gut punched on camera at the DNC convention for getting too close, and VP Spiro Agnew was canned in favour of the genial Gerald Ford, friend of the donor class and Warren Report booster. He and Jimmy Carter smoothed the anxieties of the urban middle class that went from protest to pacified. Martin Sheen über alles.
By the 1980s Ronald Reagan was crushing the Soviets, and Aaron Sorkin began his soothing epistles to the sanctity of the political process. Ted Turner’s birth of CNN cable news in the ‘80s codified the game. Guard rails were erected to keep news in its place. The true power brokers like donors and PACs were grated anonymity. Anyone defying the rules of the DC Media party— hello, Rush Limbaugh— was sent to the gulag of right-wing radio.
The emergence of brash NYC hotelier Donald Trump was first seen as fodder for the cable-news showbiz narrative. He’d be the sideshow carny to distract zombie voters from the coronation of Hillary Clinton. MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough thought he was money, constantly pimping for Trump on his morning show. What a laff riot he’d be.
Then Donald got too close to the untouchables. He discovered there were probably 50 million votes just lying there waiting for someone to pick up. Certainly not the bespoke DEMs. Or the Bush Republicans with their pals in the armaments and pharmaceutical lobbies. It was free money, and when has Don Trump ever left money on the table?
From the instant he started talking about borders, foreign wars and the Swamp he had a target posted on him. Because there is no treachery like class treachery the Swamp sought to destroy him in 2016. Chuck “Schemer” Schumer confirmed it: “Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”
WASHINGTON, DC – MAY 12: Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) holds a news conference following meetings between Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and GOP congressional leadership at the U.S. Capitol May 12, 2016 in Washington, DC. The Senate Democrats pointed to policies they say that Trump and Republicans in Congress agree on and said they were both operating from the same textbook. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
When he punked Hillary in the voting they employed the FBI, CIA and Barack Obama’s machine in a coup attempt predicated on Russia. While it was a struggle, they managed to keep the real story from their MSNBC/ NYT devotees, who to this day, still recite the Russiagate tropes. To them it was a West Wing plot line in which their liberal friends would persevere.
For all that the game was in still peril. Then came Covid. The Left and Neo-Con Trump haters were able to orchestrate a quasi-election in 2020, replete with historic voting totals and hastily-assembled regulations— hello vote harvesting, unsupervised drop boxes— never seen before.
Aging longtime DEM loyalist Joe Biden “a blowhard senator, a bad guy, a fabulist, corrupt, and a preternatural liar who didn’t hold a single consistent principle in his career” was appointed as place holder till the Obamas and Nancy Pelosi could orchestrate a new Barack in 2024. It almost worked, until Biden’s debate meltdown against Trump advanced the agenda and threatened the donors.
As the world watched in amazement it was out with Joe and in with Kamala. They don’t care who knows. Between now and the election in November expect more Black Swan events to unsettle the public and advance the globalist agenda.
During that time, never forget that confusion and chaos are the calling cards of the Far Left. Far from being a problem, the head-spinning reinvention of normal is their goal. Don’t believe legacy media, they’re happy for this.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
It’s unlikely Donald Trump will have time or energy for a post-presidential TV encore. But were he to do so at the age of 85 he might call it You’re Not Fired! In this take on his Apprentice franchise, Trump brings on governments officials and employees who’ve never been fired despair egregious mistakes, many costing lives.
They compete to see which one made the most gargantuan mistake without ever taking responsibility. Bonus points are awarded for players who can say things like “The buck stops here” with the most cloying insincerity as they keep their job. At the end of the episode Trump declares to the winner, “You get to keep your job forever. Better yet, we are giving you a raise.”
It’ll be a smash hit. Certainly he can talk from firsthand experience about government service being the gift that keeps on giving. To its employees and contractors. This past weekend, for instance, a complete cock-up by the Secret Service nearly cost Trump his life in front of a worldwide TV audience. As snipers tried desperately to put down a shooter, Secret Service folks heroically draped themselves over the president’s body. (At least those tall enough to shield Trump from incoming fire.)
The term heroically is key here. While the sunglasses/ walkie-talkie dudes risked their lives in service of the president, their superiors safely back in a DC office were cravenly insisting that they’d do better next time. In an NBC interview, Biden appointee Kim Cheatle claimed the mantle of “the buck stops here.” She promised transparency in finding out why her department had failed so many basic tasks of the raid to almost getting Trump’s head blown off.
What she didn’t do was resign in shame for almost getting the former and likely future POTUS killed. Nor was she asked to resign by her boss at Homeland Security, Antonio Mayorcas. Ditto the Big Boss, Joe Biden. Even when DEI appointee and Jill Biden chum Cheatle tried out a shameless meme about the sniper’s rooftop being unsafe (too severe a slope), no one asked for the keys to her office.
She held tight to her pension even when it was revealed her squad knew the shooter was around hours before the shots that wounded Trump and killed at least one other. That Trump was allowed to take the stage when the sniper’s parents were desperately calling police to find him. That her claim of local police screwing up was debunked. That the crew was undermanned while a more experienced crew worked a Jill Biden function.
Look, this is not to conduct a review of the protocols flubbed and the roofs abandoned. This is about accountability. To say that there is no glory without honour. And from Biden on down, honour has been MIA throughout the years of affirmative hiring and official bungling. They claim glory, but it’s a shattered chalice.
As just one example, DHS head Mayorcas still gets a seat at Joe’s cabinet table despite the total breakdown of border security. So does Kamala Harris, who was named “czar” for border security. Transport secretary Pete Buttiegieg has overseen fatal bridge collapses, train derailments and transit shutdowns without connecting it to his administration of the department.
The same absence of responsibility has ruled in the decade of Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government in Canada. While his father earned (and then wasted) some honour by facing down rock-throwing separatists in 1968, Justin has been Brave Sir Robin, high-tailing it to the rear at the first sign he might be asked to show some stones.
While his media toadies downplayed Ol’ Yellow Stain at the time of the Truckers Convoy, most now acknowledge that had he emerged from under his desk at the Rideau Cottage in the early days to confront the protesters the disaster might have been averted. Instead, Skippy sent in the Ottawa Police and the Mounties to do his job, thereby converting a temporary problem into a historic assault on civil rights and the dignity of his office.
Whenever the coast was clear, Trudeau has predictably acted like a schoolyard bully to give himself gravitas. In addition to the Convoy, there was his draconian vaccine assault on the unconvinced, the cemetery pantomime leading to calling his nation genocidal at the UN, the imposition of the Carbon Tax and the honouring of a former Nazi in Parliament to silence his Ukraine critics. To impress his UN, EU and WEF pals he’s dissed Donald Trump at a distance, something that will now haunt him after November.
His cabinet and party quickly learned that they’d never be canned if they polished the PM’s apple. Most recently came the news that a cabinet minister had ordered the military to prioritize his fellow Sikhs in the frantic retreat from Afghanistan. Using the armed forces to protect your kin? Trudeau gave Harjit Singh Sajjat a pass because Harjit thinks (publicly at least) that the Boss is swell.
The Chinese cutouts in his caucus are likewise exempt from accountability, because Justin wants to be loved in Beijing. Why not? When he’s been repeatedly nailed on ethics violations or self-dealing he’s just gone la-la-la-la-la-la and moved on to new catastrophes. Or had a former Governor General whitewash his devious dealings.
In fact, the only way to get in trouble with Trudeau is to DO your job properly. Justice minister Jodi Wilson Raybould, a signature appointee as a woman and native, was canned by Trudeau for insisting the RCMP get to the bottom of a scandal from Quebec-based SNC Lavalin. Bill Morneau was edged out, because his view of a functioning economy didn’t include the top-down imposition of fantasist climate and gender diktats.
Both Biden and Trudeau drone on about restoring people’s faith in government without ever asking whether there are the problem. When your heart is pure, they say, your mission is noble. Now shut up.
Except Biden and later Trudeau are about to find out that their public is in no mood to shut up anymore.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
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