If I'm being generous, I would measure in microseconds the time it took for Ontario's opinion makers to go from declaring that Patrick Brown's series of reversals on Ontario's sex-ed curriculum had cost him the riding of Scarborough Rouge River to praising him and his PC Party team to the skies for their historic GTA breakthrough.
Despite laying out the facts in my last column showing why the Liberals seemed fated to lose the riding a fate that they accepted all too quietly for my liking and despite my prediction being seen through (AGAIN) it's apparent that clearer heads are not going to be prevailing anytime soon.
The fact that PC Party advisors allowed themselves to get entangled in this issue yet again demonstrates how conflicted they are about differentiating themselves from the Liberals in any meaningful way.
Even when they're winning, they seem to be losing it somehow.
Perhaps the most baffling thing about the party's sex-ed shuffle is how inconsequential the issue turned out to be to the by-election's outcome. The margin of victory suggests voters had made their minds up fairly decisively already.
There was no need for Brown or whoever actually wrote the initial letter promising to scrap the curriculum to jump at this shadow and there may have been no need for him to recant after the fact.
And if the PC's are going to beat the Liberals in the general election, they have got to resolve this existential anxiety somehow.
Simply put: are the PC's a "modern and inclusive party" or aren't they?
If they are "modern and inclusive" if they are truly trying to advertise their squishiness to voters then that means they have to get comfortable with talking out of both sides of their mouths sometimes the way Liberals do.
The Liberals accept that they are a brokerage party, unbound by "ideology." That means they are happy to take whatever position will earn them votes. That could have been what Brown was trying to do on sex-ed, but he did it so abruptly that it was impossible to tell.
It's far more traditional for Conservatives to pay lip service to the idea of being principled and spend an inordinate amount of time rationalizing why their leaders have to compromise on pretty much every one of those principles to get into and stay in power.
Brown, for his part, has never seemed interested in excusing his own deviations with the kind of knowing smiles and nods that were commonly employed by senior members of the Harper government he was a part of. His explanations for reversals are quick and pointed, with no space for letting disappointed defenders of conservative dogmas down easy.
He may have grown used to changing his tune quickly as an elected member of the CPC, but he appears to have forgotten that some of the more experienced hands still prefer to pretend. Kathleen Wynne, for her part, always takes care to behave as though she is acting in accordance with the people's views before she leads her party, and the province, towards some disastrous new scheme.
Liberals are not completely without scruples. They chafe at being asked to sell the left-field ideas and explain away the sleazy odours currently emanating from the Premier's Office. But their leader is so practiced at making it seem like she's doing it all for Ontario's own good, and so careful to play the sympathetic grandma whenever her party gets their back up that they always get over their reservations.
Brown provides no such mothering to his party faithful. He may have grasped the essential lesson of Canadian governance tell the people what they want to hear, principles be damned but he has neither the gravitas of age nor the soft touch of diplomacy.
In short, if Brown wants to convince people that he and his party are an acceptable substitute for the Liberals instead of a bunch of ideological wolves in sheep's clothing, then it will not do just to talk the centrist talk on a few key issues. He must soothe the weary consciences of the people he seeks to govern, and slowly ease their grasp on those pesky principles they hold so dear.
Written by Josh Lieblein
