We haven't heard much from the PC Party of Ontario recently, save for Patrick Brown's decision to support the Ontario Liberals' motion condemning Islamophobia and his scoring some easy points off the government when it came to calling them out over disconnecting some Ontario residents' hydro in the dead of winter.

Supporting Wynne's anti-Islamophobia motion may have been the last straw for some as far as Brown was concerned, but all in all, his choice to go along to get along rated relatively low on the PCPO botch-o-meter.  There was nothing to be gained from getting involved in a battle over semantics with the Liberals while a similar fight is taking place at the federal level and crowding out provincial politics in general.

This calm spot, and others like it, is a time when the PCPO can repair the damage caused by their previous missteps.  Unfortunately, they're so battle weary and the party's top brass is so completely committed to maintaining a low profile that they never do take advantage of the lack of scrutiny.  They just cruise along in their comfort zone, blithely ignoring signals from the membership and the media, pretending everything is A-OK.

At the best of times, the PCPO is actively disdainful of their membership.  As I've said previously, despite the fact that the party's decisions to immolate themselves in the midst of previous election campaigns and by-elections always came from the very top, it's the rank-and-file who gets the blame each time for "distracting" the party.  So, you can count on any advice offered up from below to be acknowledged with a smile and ignored.

It's too bad, because the reason why the base is so restive and angry is because they don't feel like they're being listened to.  If the top brass actually heard out the members until they stopped yelling, things might improve.  Sadly, the PCPO brain trust has come up with some of the most creative excuses and spin I've ever seen and heard for not taking this step.

After listening to members complain about the party for years, I've done the work of curating those comments into 5 simple suggestions that really aren't that hard to implement:

Stop pretending nobody is watching you, or is too mad at the Liberals to notice your screw-ups

The Liberals are sure good at pointing out that conservatives are being a bunch of big fat hypocrites, aren't they?  We recently saw this at the federal level, where the Liberals discovered that Rona Ambrose was criticizing Justin Trudeau for vacationing on the Aga Khan's private island while she herself was lounging on an oil billionaire's yacht.  Whoops!

Even if Team Blue manages to squiggle out of these embarrassing scrapes, as Ambrose did, the fact is that she thought nobody would notice or care.  And if the PCPO falls into that trap, they will end up swinging and missing like the CPC did.

It's getting near budget time, for example, and the PCPO will begin their annual litany of complaints over overspending.  Fair game, but has anyone checked if the party's MPP's voted themselves another pay raise recently?

Hear out your worst critics instead of assuming they'll never listen to you

I never understood the CPC's strategy of using criticisms from the so-called "far-right" to burnish their own supposedly moderate credentials, especially since the architect of this theory, Tom Flanagan, eventually found himself under the wheels of the bus.

Patrick Brown is playing his own version of this game.  You see, he tried listening to those awful so-cons and the Rebel crew and all he got for it was more trouble, so he now has an excuse to ignore them.

As we saw with the Oosterhoof debacle, however, shoving the more radical elements of the party into the closet works in the short term but creates problems in the long term, because- as I said earlier- ignoring people makes them angrier.  Like it or not, Brown will have to deal with attacks from the so-cons and he'll have to push back against them, or lose the argument by default.

Call people back

I don't really need to explain this one too much, do I?  The PCPO has admittedly gotten a little better on this front since the Hudak regime, but it's still not where it needs to be.

"I'm busy" isn't an excuse for not welcoming new party members or potential nomination candidates with open arms.  We're all busy, and not everyone knows as much as the insiders.  Regardless of what someone has said or done in the past, or even if they were a Liberal yesterday, they still deserve a fair kick at the can.  We may not like it, but that's the process.

This seems as good of a time as any to remind various party stalwarts that complaining on Facebook about someone's lack of credentials makes you look defensive and scared, and that you care more about protecting your spot than sharing it with others.

Bozo eruptions don't lose elections- freakouts over bozo eruptions do

An astonishing number of PCPO activists believe they can go an entire election without something bad or controversial happening to the party.  As if the Liberals will just wear their shame into defeat.

Even if this has actually happened in the past with the short-lived Peterson government, it's unlikely that Kathleen Wynne will just go quietly into the night.  If nothing else, past behaviour will predict future behaviour.

So can we please stop panicking over every little wheel wobble?  Can't we just assume that the left will attack us no matter what we do, and deal with the issue decisively instead of pretending like it doesn't bother us?

Try being authentic for a change

As I said at the beginning of this article, not attacking the Liberals when there is nothing to be gained from it makes sense.  The problem is that Brown's PCPO refuses to attack when it's needed, which is in response to Liberal attacks.

During the John Tory years the same mistake was made.  The party calculated that butter would not melt in Tory's mouth, and that any attacks on the man would make the attacker look unhinged and ridiculous.  Maybe so, but the attacks clearly stung Tory, and worse yet, he never responded until it was too late.  So much for Tory the Unassailable.

In the Hudak years, not much was made of Tim's character because the party seemed to have learned that making your leader out to be a moral exemplar created a ridiculously high bar, but they forgot to give Tim a coherent personality to speak of.  Depending on the day of the week you would get Fake Smile Tim or Angry Tim, and you never got Responds To Liberal Attacks Effectively Tim.  If you look at Hudak's relaxed and personable personal conduct since leaving the PCPO, you see just how much of a put-on his acts were.

Now with Brown as leader the party has continued to divert attention away from his personal life, putting out inspiring stories about overcoming stutters and writing to Brian Mulroney about acid rain.  All very heartwarming, but how does this make Brown the kind of guy you can relate to?  Can he tell a joke?  Did he ever get pulled over for speeding?  If you prick him, will he bleed?

Patrick Brown could and should be allowed to relax and have fun every so often.  The fact that the party can't let him do that shows how scared they really are.  But what would you expect from a party who claims that they are constantly blindsided by attacks that everyone else could see coming a mile away?

Written by Josh Lieblein