When what passes for the conservative movement in this country does something abominably stupid, such as freak out about the cost of a swing set (ostensibly because the Liberals complained about a $16 glass of Conservative orange juice once upon a time?), I like to say that if there is a right-wing conspiracy in this country, then someone deserves their money back.
I say this because the left would have you believe that enormously profitable Canadian corporations are in league with conservative elected officials to screw over the little guy and enact a white supremacist agenda.
Then you look over at what the CPC is actually doing, and you see that they are putting together websites making fun of the PM's tendency to take personal days, using a joke that stopped being funny last decade.
I understand that a car full of clowns is scary for some people, but to the rest of us they're far too goofy to be considered a threat. And so it is with the conservative movement in this country: If you're going to try to make the case that some secret injustice is being perpetrated by the right, you must absolutely provide evidence that the right is competent enough to organize and execute such a plan, even badly.
Bog-standard conservative yelling about wasted public dollars, even when that yelling plays fast and loose with actual facts, simply does not evoke associations with the Trump administration, and yet Chantal Hebert seems to be trying to do just that.
It is, of course, possible for a nominally conservative government to be threatening and ridiculous. The actual Trump administration can preside over the ripping of children away from their parents and Twitter fights with late-night TV talk show hosts simultaneously.
But if anyone's doubling down on a fake-news narrative, it's got to be the left. Not just because they are suggesting Scheer's evasions are tantamount to Trumpian falsehoods, but because they themselves are trying to push the narrative that Canada is being beset by an epidemic of falsehood, and that this not their own incompetence is the reason why Doug Ford won.
To ignore the fact that the Liberals ran an absolutely wretched campaign here in Ontario requires a level of intellectual dishonesty that I don't even think Trump himself would be capable of. And yet, that's exactly what Liberal campaign manager David Herle did on the latest installment of his podcast, where he had the temerity to state (in public mind you) that "Kathleen Wynne offered a superior product to sell."
Yet as risible, and as typical, as Herle's failure to acknowledge his own failings is, it remains comparable to the distractory tactics of the CPC. It is only when you consider the Liberal establishment's incompetence when it comes to dealing with the fake news problem and the other unsolved problems that fuel the anger of the Trumpets that a clear distinction emerges.
The half-assed manner in which Kathleen Wynne attempted to call out Doug Ford. Gerald Butts intervening on Twitter to shut down one single Catherine McKenna parody account after a Canadian quasi-celebrity was fooled by it. Outsourcing the fact-checking of Canadian Facebook because we apparently aren't up to the task of doing so ourselves. These are the solutions dreamed up by the West-Wing binge-watching blue checkmarks currently occupying the Trudeau PMO, to a problem that they told us was eating away at the fabric of our democracy.
Were Trudeau and his army of fact-checkers to actually rip those who are insufficiently verified away from their social media, and were they to actually follow the example of the Chinese basic dictatorship that they so admire, it would actually send the message that they were willing to back up their apocalyptic rhetoric with commensurate action. But that would make it harder to fundraise off the threat of Conservative "negative and divisive politics", which is, not so coincidentally, the same sort of grift conservatives are frequently accused of.
The first person, or group of people, who can demonstrate that they can govern well, as opposed to just doing so in a way that meets fundraising targets, will find that they are the ones who are beating back the populist threat, and that's the realest news you'll hear all day.
Written by Josh Lieblein