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Because I've been calling Patrick Brown out for months, some readers may have gotten the idea that I don't want him to win.

Well, let me clarify nothing would please me more than Patrick Brown becoming Premier of this province.

Not because I'd be thrilled to have him as the province's First Minister, mind you, but because it would finally prove a few things that many know to be true but at least for now have yet to be confirmed as verifiable facts.

Conservative principles are a joke

Is anyone going to claim that Patrick Brown is in the same universe as a conservative principle?  I mean, supporting Patrick Brown unironically basically marks you as a barking partisan, but not even Patrick's most ardent supporter is going to call him principled.

There was always cause to suspect that these principles were mere lip service paid to the idea that there was some difference between the parties.  If Brown wins while other conservative leaders tried and failed, expect fewer and fewer leadership contestants and elected officials to bother pretending.

This also creates a dilemma for a group of Principled Conservatives like Conservative Futures, who you might expect to speak out against Patrick Brown, but I guess despite being super principled they can let it go just this one time because we hate Kathleen Wynne that much, right?  Actually no.  No, that's not how it works at all.  That's the textbook definition of partisanship over principle.

The Conservative base enjoys being treated like cattle

I alluded to this in my last rant on Patrick Brown's behaviour.  As much as the Brown loyalists want to spin otherwise and as much as they want to talk about "shooting outwards, not inwards", the PCPO is in the state it is in because of the party bosses' actions.  The party does something stupid, the base gets angry, and then the party tells them to shut up because "they're helping Wynne".

It was the party, not the base, who pulled stunts at nomination meetings across the province.  It was the party, not the base, who called for "revenue neutral carbon pricing."  It was the party, not the base, who played footsie with the anti sex ed crowd and then claimed that it was merely a one night stand.

But somehow we have forgotten all of this.  We have people on Facebook at this precise moment admitting that Brown is a dud and that the process was likely abused, but the most important thing is that Wynne goes and that somehow, after the change in government they will hold Brown's feet to the fire?  Sure, let us all know how that works out.

Liberals rule this country

"Oh, what's the big deal if some nominations got screwed up!  This happens in every party!"

"So what if Patrick supports a carbon tax Trudeau will make it law in 2018 anyway!"

"It'd be great if we could run a real conservative campaign, but Ontario is far too left for that!"

These and other lame excuses currently being made excusing the PC Party of Ontario indicate that plenty of PC supporters have admitted that fighting the Liberals is far too hard.  And after a decade-plus of Harper mostly banging his head against a wall and constant failed PC Party campaigns from coast to coast to coast, that's not a position without merit.

But for Patrick Brown to actually win while tacitly endorsing all of the above means that creating a viable political alternative to the Liberals is not a goal that anyone, conservatives least of all, really want to accomplish.  We are fine with being a democracy in name only, a one Party state backstopped by a class of untouchables.

The fact that Patrick Brown a man who could stand beside Emmanuel Macron or Justin Trudeau and not seem entirely out of place is a viable conservative leader in this day and age and in this country really does suggest that there is something special about Canada that makes it a globalist paradise.  Or it may suggest that Canadians could fight back, but we have simply allowed the Liberals to rule over us.

Either way, with Patrick Brown at the helm, the blame can no longer be laid at the feet of the Liberals.  We have met the enemy, and he is us.

Photo Credit: You Tube

Written by Josh Lieblein

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.